My desk drawer is a shrine to receipts I refuse to bin, a chocolate wrapper I’ve filed away for reasons I can no longer articulate, and a deodorant that has seen better days. If your handbag is anything like mine, you’ll recognise every single one of those.
Which is exactly why I laughed out loud when Serena Terry told me what’s in hers: an ungodly amount of old receipts, perfume, gum, a chocolate wrapper kept “as though I can submit it for tax purposes”, and an emergency makeup bag she calls optimistic. “At no point has concealer resolved the emergency I was actually having,” she says, “but there’s still a chance it could save the day.”
I sent her a few questions before she heads back on the UK leg of her Therapy tour this October. Her answers are funny, honest and a little bit feral — and I think you’ll find them refreshingly normal for someone whose career depends on strangers finding her hilarious.
First, the quick bio
Serena is an Irish comedian and writer with more than 4 million followers online. She’s the author of two Sunday Times bestselling novels, and she became the first female comedian to sell out Belfast’s O2 Arena — a feat she admits still doesn’t feel real, especially since she was privately battling depression at the time. (Her background is well documented — see the Serena Terry Wikipedia page.)
Right now she’s just finished writing her third book, Hormone Hostage, a non-fiction title coming from Pan Macmillan in 2027. She’s developing a sitcom, opening Danny’s, a new comedy club in her home city of Derry, and launching a new YouTube comedy series, Barely Briefed, in November.
She’s also a mum, which is where it all gets very real. “Monday to Friday is fairly typical working-mum life,” she tells me. “I’m up around 7am, feed the dog and cat, get the kids up and take them to school. Everyone gets fed and encouraged, apart from me.”
Her office is a pile of LEGO and odd socks
“I don’t have an office and my kitchen table is my desk,” Serena says. “I’m currently on my laptop trying to develop a television script beside a pile of odd socks and a huge mass of LEGO that my son was building last night and I was too lazy to tidy up. It will probably stay where it is for another day or two.”
I’m saving that line for the days I want to give up on my own tidy-home ambitions. After lunch she walks the dog, works a few more hours, then it’s school pickup, dinner, housework — and bed at “a very sensible 10pm, which is admirable behaviour from a woman who has absolutely no intention of going to sleep.” Instead she scrolls “until I’ve learned something upsetting about the world and something completely unnecessary about a stranger’s kitchen.”
“We’re allowed to congratulate ourselves for not raising ar*******”
Asked about her greatest achievements, she gives the classic mum answer first: her children. “Clichéd, I know, but they’re two incredible young people, very different personalities but both funny, kind and emotionally intelligent.” Then the honest footnote: “We do each other’s heads in, obviously. I don’t want anyone picturing us around a campfire holding hands, but they talk to me about everything.”
And then the line I underlined twice: “I think we’re allowed to congratulate ourselves for not raising ar*******. There, I said it. Go us.”
Professionally, it’s the O2. “Looking back, I’m proud of the show, but also of the woman who managed to get herself onto that stage and make people laugh.”
Her decade of hard lessons
The ambition question is where the interview gets the most honest. “To be okay and make sure my kids and family are okay,” she says. “Which sounds like modest BS, I get it, but some weeks that’s a fairly ambitious plan.”
Her 30s were a genuine storm: she lost two of her brothers eight weeks apart, plus one of her best friends and her dad last year. Six months of depression left her unable to work, she stumbled unwillingly into the depths of perimenopause, got diagnosed with ADHD, and her marriage ended. “Not only has all of that built character, it’s given me so much perspective.”
She turned 40 in March and is embracing it. “F*** sweating the small stuff or seeking the ‘happiness’ that everyone else has, life is too damn short.”
On career advice, her answer to anyone staring down a comment section is this: “Somebody not liking you doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. And you don’t need to attend every argument you’re invited to.” Seven years into comedy, she’s “much better at accepting that comedy, like all artforms, is subjective. Not everyone will find me funny. Fair enough.”
Her advice for first-time mothers
“Accept help. Ask for help. If someone offers to do your washing, don’t say, ‘Oh no, you’re grand.’ Give them the basket before they reconsider.”
That last bit will live in my head for years. “You don’t have to prove you can do everything alone. Don’t be a silent hero. There’s no award at the end, just more washing.”
And her parting note on motherhood: “Loving your child and wanting an hour when nobody touches you can co-exist and doesn’t make you a bad mother. In fact, you’ll be a happier one.”
Where to find her
You can follow Serena on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
Catch her new stand-up show Therapy this October in Newcastle, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Liverpool, Leeds, London, Manchester, Bristol and Birmingham.
Happiness, for her record, is “being content with who I am and what I have, without comparing my everyday life to somebody else’s” — plus, ideally, being hormonally regulated and free of pubic hair growing rapidly on her chin. We can all take something from that.
Wear it well — Elise