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By the Creator of Big Boys: Cheer the F**K Up
By the Creator of Big Boys: Cheer the F**K Up
Apr 27, 2025 4:28 AM

Author:Jack Rooke

By the Creator of Big Boys: Cheer the F**K Up

This book will definitely make you laugh and might just make you cry, but it could also help save a life.

Praise for Big Boys:

'Sharp, clever, bold, tender, wise and looking at men from angles I've never seen before. And funny. Thank God for funny!' Russell T. Davies

'It is warm and funny ... can pierce your heart when you least expect it' Guardian

Praise for Cheer the F**K Up:

'Cheer the F**K Up is, without a doubt, the most meaningful and funniest book I have ever read on mental health and loss. Jack is a genius (fact) and he weaves together themes of love, grief, sexuality, trauma, growing up, mental health and friendship in a memoir that will stand the test of time. If you are a human living on this planet YOU NEED THIS BOOK! It has never been more important and never been more needed.' - Scarlett Curtis

'Once you've had the pleasure of reading a work by Jack Rooke, you'll have spent time with one of the funniest, warmest, most caring people I've ever known, and he'll feel like your new favourite friend. This book deals with difficult topics in such a beautiful, thoughtful and hilarious way. It's the book we all need in our lives.' - Nicola Coughlan

Cheer the F**K Up is a bold, brilliant and very personal account of a young comedian's experiences with mental health. An ode to the importance of friendship, Jack Rooke takes us on a mission to better understand the reasons why so many people are struggling, and how we can all feel better equipped in knowing how to support that one friend we might be that bit more worried about.

Part comedic memoir, part advice guide, this book is a fresh and timely take on a huge issue very close to Jack's heart - in 2015, while working as an ambassador for a male mental health charity, he lost one of his best friends to suicide.

Taking you on a journey through his life and experiences with grief, sexuality, depression and more, Jack offers his own frank and powerful advice on how best to have meaningful conversations about a loved one's state of mind. Hilarious and heart-breaking in equal measure, Cheer the F**K Up will definitely make you laugh and might just make you cry, but it could also help save a life.

Reviews

The sensational story of how a disaster was turned into a catastrophe, with the clarity, precision and humanity that you would expect from one of the most important voices of reason of the COVID era. A brutally compelling reminder that if voices like Devi's had been listened to, so many more could have lived

—— Owen Jones

Excellent . . . Fair, clear and compelling. And like all of Devi's contributions over the course of the pandemic, very accessible

—— Nicola Sturgeon

One of the most brilliant scientists in the world who has been proven consistently right in this crisis

—— Piers Morgan

Powerful . . . If we're to stop history from repeating itself when the next pandemic pathogen emerges, books such as Preventable are very much welcome

—— Oliver Barnes , Financial Times

Contributions such as Devi's will be the building blocks of the learning we need, as a global community, to create the awareness required for the healthier and safer world all people deserve

—— Dr Tedros, Director-General of the World Health Organization

Essential reading

—— Lorraine Kelly

Devi is a public health expert with deep knowledge and expertise in the field. She has a unique ability to translate complex public health challenges, research and recommendations into language experts and non-experts alike can understand. I always read and listen to what she has to say and I hope you will too

—— Chelsea Clinton

Brilliant. I read it like a thriller that I had lived through, a fascinating, detailed and personal account of the pandemic that takes you behind and beyond the headlines. I suspect it will be the most readable account of all the analyses that will follow

—— Chris van Tulleken

Sridhar's prescience transformed her into one of Britain's most prominent commentators once . . . In her new book, Preventable, Sridhar distils the lessons of the time

—— George Eaton , New Statesman

Those who have found Professor Devi Sridhar's expertise and calm advice invaluable since the arrival of Covid-19 will be glad to know that she has written Preventable

—— Rachel Cooke , Guardian, 'Nonfiction to look out for in 2022'

Devi Sridhar, professor of global public health at Edinburgh university, examines how the pandemic changed the world and how we might stop the next one happening

—— Financial Times, 'The books to read in 2022'

An intimate, unique, and inspiring perspective on the life and work of one of the greatest minds of our time. Filled with insight, humour, and never-before-told stories, it's a view of Stephen Hawking that few have seen and all will appreciate

—— James Clear, author of Atomic Habits

Stephen Hawking surpassed science and touched the world with his transcendent genius and heroic courage that inspired millions. In this intimate memoir, his long-time friend and physics collaborator Leonard Mlodinow, one of the finest science writers of our time, shares insights into Hawking that humanizes him while also revealing what made him one of history's greatest minds

—— Michael Shermer, author of The Believing Brain

Has the breadth and raciness of a Robert Louis Stevenson novel and the warmth of a David Attenborough natural history program ... What is delightful about his book is the love of the world it expresses, and the calm fortitude with which it considers our current predicament

—— John Banville, author of The Sea

What a remarkable feat: taking a mysterious, oddly social, keenly intelligent bird of prey that most of the world has never heard of and animating the creature with such beauty that it comes fully alive in our imaginations. Jonathan Meiburg went on an equatorial search for the latter-day descendants of the age-old caracara and brought back - a little like Darwin himself - travel report, documentary, biography, social history, scientific treatise. And all of it so wonderfully readable

—— Paul Hendrickson, author of Hemingway's Boat

This book is an evolutionary labyrinth, taking Meiburg to the end of the world following a single, curious predator. Vivid, beautiful, and scientifically rich, crawling with jungle ants, blasted by Antarctic winds, his tales will transport you from the page to wilder places

—— Craig Childs, author of Atlas of a Lost World

If you've ever been at a dull party and then met a person who suddenly brightened the vibe with energetic conversation about his abundant enthusiasms, you know a little of what it's like to come upon Jonathan Meiburg and his first book during a pandemic

—— Washington Post

A wonderful book about a fascinating species of bird. I loved its layering of ethology, travel writing and part biography of the author and naturalist, William Henry Hudson. I found myself as enthralled by the birds as I was by the landscapes of South America - from Patagonia to Guyana - Meiburg travels through in search of them

—— James Macdonald Lockhart, author of Raptor

In A Most Remarkable Creature, Jonathan Meiburg introduces us to surely South America's most misunderstood birds, the caracaras. Written sensitively and with an artist's eye for detail, this beautiful and well-researched book sets the record straight, and leaves us yearning to spend time with these intelligent, curious creatures

—— Jon Dunn, author of 'The Glitter in the Green'

[An] elegant debut... Meiburg's voice is poetic... clear and beautiful

—— NPR

Meiburg's writing possesses that rare, and very readable, ability to tread surely between the studious and the conversational that renders his obvious deep knowledge pleasingly lightly-worn

—— Will Burns

Even non-bird watchers (like me) will enjoy this esoteric and erudite investigation into the striated caracara... the startlingly intelligent, sociable and yet little-known member of the falcon family

—— Tom Robbins , Financial Times, *Summer Reads of 2021*

I used to look up to the stars for thoughts of infinity, eternity and divine cooperation. This book revealed to me I could find the same inspiration beneath the soles of my feet in less than a foot of soil. My walks on earth will never be the same as they were. The writing, observation and devotion is infectiously compelling. The learning is deep and immense

—— Mark Rylance

A magnificent new overview of how we might live and feed ourselves without destroying ourselves ... It is riveting ... Along with a dazzling array of stats, there's also impressive investigative reporting ... rich food for thought, devastating figures, startling insights and even the odd joke ... A hugely important read

—— Christopher Hart , The Sunday Times

A call to raze the pastoral imaginary so that we can begin to think clearly about how we produce food and steward the soil ... To have any chance of turning the age of extinction into an age of regeneration, systemic reform, based on the facts, not pastoral myth-making, is essential

—— Philippa Nuttall , New Statesman

Colossally important... You've got to read it

—— Max Porter (via Twitter)

A treasure trove of hope and solutions, and a vision for a sustainable, healthy, equitable world. We meet inspiring farmers as well as some radical solutions ... Comprehensive, devastating, rousing ... An essential book

—— Rowan Hooper , New Scientist

Big ideas, beautifully written and the portraits of people building the alternatives are gorgeous! Makes you angry and enraptured with the beauty of the natural world all at once

—— Aaron Bastani (via Twitter)

A paean to the wonder that is the ecology of soil, scientifically informed and beautifully told. The perfect bank holiday read

—— Yadvinder Malhi, Professor of Ecosystem Science at the University of Oxford

Phenomenal. Clear, eloquent, fearless and devastating in its analysis. A revolution in the future of food

—— Adam Rutherford (via Twitter)

Glorious ... intelligent, deeply researched .... The point Monbiot makes so ably and so necessarily is that system change is both essential and possible through a complexity of solutions ... The stakes could not be higher. If a book can change hearts and minds about one of the most critical issues of our time, this rational, humane polemic is it

—— Gaia Vince , Observer

Revolutionary ... Rigorous, bold and clear-sighted ... To conjure the miracle of more food with less farming, we need to rethink what lies beneath our feet

—— David Farrier , Prospect

Vivid and memorable... Regenesis is a compelling, deeply researched account of a deeply broken food system and how we might heal it

—— Irish Times

A compelling story of soil, food and farming

—— Financial Times

Ambitious and deeply researched ... Monbiot exposes, with journalistic flair, the 'gulf between perception and reality' about where and how our food is produced ... it includes some fascinating case studies ... bristling with ideas and imagination

—— Laura Battle , Financial Times

Eye-opening, persuasive, meticulously researched [...] Monbiot thinks globally [... and] his arguments take account of the needs of everyone in society

—— Amy Liptrot , Guardian

A paean to soil, told more gracefully and memorably than anyone before him... Regenesis is likely to become a classic. Monbiot is a writer of the first rank

—— Bill McKibben , Times Literary Supplement

Inspiring, courageous, and bursting with ideas

—— Jeremy Williams , The Earthbound Report
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