Jess Robinson

The former Britain's Got Talent star reveals how men abusing power affected both her and her grandmother

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Jess says writing the book was a coming-of-age experience

When comedian and impressionist Jess Robinson decided to dig into her German Jewish ancestry, she found an unlikely shared sense of identity with her maternal grandmother, who had lived through the Holocaust.

At 23, Jess, now a regular on Dead Ringers, Spitting Image and Horrible Histories, was struggling with a fledging acting career. At the same age, her German Jewish grandmother Rosi Schul, a teacher, documented in her diary how she was deported to Poland by the Gestapo, suffering and witnessing the horrors of the treatment of her countrymen by the Nazis.

So forms the juxtaposition of Jess's book, Life Is Rosi, as the diary entries of each woman’s life experiences - Grandma Rosi’s from 1938 to 1943, Jess's running concurrently from 2006 - are compared and contrasted.

Rosi suffered horrific internment in the Polish town of Zbaszyn where she stayed more than six months. Jess, at the same age, was trying to sort out a mortgage. There's a lot of gallows humour.

“She was so stoic and so compassionate, and that, and her love for children saved her life,” says Jess.

The book blends humour and seriousness, exploring how both women coped with trauma in their young lives. Jess suffered sexual harassment by a director and an assault by a taxi driver, which she didn't report.