(Photo: BBC)

There is no one quite like Philomena Cunk, the hilariously deadpan interviewer played by Diane Morgan in various Charlie Brooker specials and now, her own standalone shows. "Where does your lap go when you stand up?" she once asked a human biology expert. With her new mockumentary Cunk on Earth premiering on Netflix, we're getting to know Morgan, the talented comedy actress also known for her roles in After Life, Mandy, and Sundance Now's Motherland. Here are 10 things you may not know about this utterly unique performer. 

1. Her partner is comedy producer Ben Caudell. 

Caudell's credits include numerous Charlie Brooker and Philomena Cunk specials, Motherland, Peep Show, and The Cleaner. They have been a couple since 2015 and live in Bloomsbury, central London.

2. She has had a wide variety of jobs.

Morgan's undeniably varied résumé includes stints selling tea towels, packing dog worming tablets in a factory, and peeling potatoes in an old-school British chippie. "If you do those awful jobs you realize what people have to go through on a daily basis and how much they need to laugh," she told The i. "You meet real people in those jobs. You get loads of ideas for real characters."

3. She studied at East 15, an acting school known for producing method actors.

But it wasn't necessarily for her. "Some classes were pointless," she told The Observer, "you know, throwing bean bags around. That sort of rubbish." Morgan was even banned from one class after making fun of an exercise in which students were handed a shoe, then asked to tell their classmates how they felt. "I took the shoe," Morgan recalled, "and said I felt really angry that I'd wasted money doing this crap."

4. Her career took off when she finally tried standup.

In an interview with The Observer, Morgan admitted that she "put it off for years" even though people kept telling her she was a natural standup comic. "Then 30 was approaching and I thought, s**t, I’d better do something with my life, so I gave it a go and started gigging," Morgan continued. "I was working in telesales at the time and it seemed incredible to me that I could earn the same money for 20 minutes on stage. Casting directors came to gigs, so I started to get bits and bobs. But it wasn’t until I auditioned for Charlie Brooker that everything changed overnight."

5. She is happy, however, to have left her standup career behind now.

As soon as TV work came flooding in, Morgan never looked back. "I never wanted to do, like, an hour of standup in Edinburgh [Festival]," she told Rolling Stone last year. "That’s the natural progression as a standup: you build up a 20-minute set and then you do an hour in Edinburgh. I can’t think of anything worse than doing an hour of standup, especially if you're dying. The thought of being five minutes in, the audience not being with you. They’re looking at their phones and chatting."

6. She currently has 500 adult diapers taking up space in her garage.

Morgan explained why, in her trademark deadpan style, during her 2022 appearance on The Graham Norton Show.

7. Though she stars in Motherland, she has no intention of becoming a mother herself.

"I've never wanted kids. I think I was born not wanting kids," Morgan told The Times last year. "Never for a split second have I ever thought I wanted them." She does, however, have a rescue dog called Bobby. "I wanted a dog for ages and Ben was, like, 'No, I don’t want a dog,'" Morgan added. "And then after my dad died I was, like, 'I really need a dog now.' I'll tell you what, as a cure for grief, he was such a lovely distraction."

8. She is related, albeit rather distantly, to three notable British actors.

Namely: Frank Finlay, who was Oscar-nominated for his role as Iago in Laurence Olivier's 1965 film of Othello; Jack Wild, who played the Artful Dodger in the 1968 Oliver! movie, and Julie Goodyear, who starred in the popular British soap opera Coronation Street.

9. She is longtime friends with Maxine Peake.

They grew up in the same town, Bolton near Manchester, and bonded over a shared love of comedy.  Morgan has admitted she was incredibly jealous when Peake landed a part in Dinnerladies, a late-1990s sitcom by their comedy hero Victoria Wood. "It was all I’d ever wanted, and she’d gone and done it," Morgan told The Guardian. "And she knew it, she knew it. We used to sit on her bed and read Victoria Wood books together and read out her sketches. But it all worked out in the end."

10. Her most famous character, Philomena Cunk, was originally going to speak with an upper-class English accent.

Because another character in Charlie Brooker's Wipe series, Barry Shitpeas, spoke with a Cockney accent, Brooker wanted Cunk to sound posh. "He thought that people might think we're taking the p**s out of working-class people," Morgan told The i. However, Morgan was convinced that using her own accent was the way forward. "I thought it would sound so much funnier in a Bolton accent. It just does, I don’t know why. It flattens the words out," she said.

Do you have a favorite Diane Morgan moment?