I wish I was the hero my daughter thinks I am

MARION McMULLEN finds out how Suzi Ruffell juggles life as a top comedian with being a ‘really cool’ mum

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Have you ever been starstruck? It’s a bit of a name drop but Alan Carr introduced me to Spice Girl Mel C and I was speechless. It’s the only time that has ever happened.

All I managed to say was ‘you mean a lot to me, you always will’ and then Alan went ‘oh, she’s gone weird, I'll take her away. It was funny and embarrassing at the same time. I’m never as cool as I'd like to be.

How would you describe your new comedy show The Juggle?

(Laughs) It’s called The Juggle because we have to name the shows before we write them. I knew that it would be about me doing lots of things including being a mum, but the through line has ended up being about how I realised that my five-year-old daughter has the highest opinion of me now that she'll ever have. She knows about none of my flaws. I told a funny story on stage about my daughter and a woman from the back of the room shouted out ‘you just wait until you've got a teenage girl’ And that shifted the idea to be about ‘I’ve got this finite amount of time where she thinks I’m really cool!’ So it’s about that and also that I wish I was the hero she thinks I am.

You talk about your own parents on stage. Is it true that your dad once paid you £15 to eat a spoonful of mustard powder?

My dad likes jokes and dares and this happened when I was 11. it burnt my mouth and my dad and mum had a row.

There was also the time he took me into a haunted house at a theme park and basically he got scared and left me in there. I talk about that in the show and it links everything together. That was the day when my dad stopped being invincible and one day I'll stop being invincible to my daughter.