“I don’t hold any candle for drama versus comedy.”
― Jo Brand
“Everything becomes magnified at night. Sounds travel in a different way, it’s dark, and everything seems far more spooky.”
― Jo Brand
“There are two types of people in this world: one who opens a packet of biscuits, has one and puts the rest back in the cupboard, and one who eats the whole packet in one go.”
― Jo Brand
“Even nice things don’t make you happy when you’re tired.”
― Jo Brand
“I think some people ramp a side of themselves up for performance purposes.”
― Jo Brand
“I like reading, I like boring things, and yet I think people for ages had this image of me that I was on the tube with a chainsaw looking for any likely candidate.”
― Jo Brand
“Being Christian towards poor people means trying to improve their lives and give them back some self-respect.”
― Jo Brand
“We women continue to swallow this line that it’s unladylike or even proof of being a lesbian if you wear flat shoes like Doc Martens. I’m prepared to put up with that accusation, because at least my feet aren’t killing me and I don’t look like a bandy ostrich.”
― Jo Brand
“I’m too nervous to eat before I go onstage, and I’ll usually eat out after the performance or when I get home at midnight.”
― Jo Brand
“There are so many cliches associated with mental health – such as the ‘fine line between lunacy and genius’ – which are, on the whole, a load of rubbish.”
― Jo Brand
“When I got married, the Sun ran the headline: ‘Here comes the bride, all fat and wide.’ Luckily, it was a few days after the wedding – but it was still hideous to read at a great romantic moment.”
― Jo Brand
“Having children is fab. They keep me young and make me get up in the morning.”
― Jo Brand
“You don’t really see ugly people that are old, or a bit grotty and smelly, in the media. If a Martian came down, they would think we were all tall, thin, attractive and wealthy.”
― Jo Brand
“My preference is swimming in the sea. I find the sea is more liberating, wild and good fun rather than plodding up and down a pool.”
― Jo Brand
“I think self-esteem is fluid. It’s not a fixed state, and so some days are better than others.”
― Jo Brand
“I like to read my diary occasionally to remind myself what a miserable, alienated old sod I used to be.”
― Jo Brand
“What they did was to make a pilot and it may well go to series at the next festival but I don’t have any news on that. It’s already been on Paramount actually, but as it’s on Paramount it’ll probably be on several more times… hopefully.”
― Jo Brand
“So, my style has hopefully changed over the years and it is more relaxed, and I do tend to smile and have more than one expression these days hopefully – which I didn’t at the beginning.”
― Jo Brand
“Over the years I attempted to make my style a bit more relaxed ’cause the initial style you couldn’t watch for more than ten minutes without wanting to kill me.”
― Jo Brand
“I swam at school a lot. Long-distance swimming in pools, and diving, then when we moved to Hastings when I was 13 I used to swim in the sea all the time; I loved it out of season and when it was rough.”
― Jo Brand
“It’s actually very hard when you’re settled in one place to completely uproot yourself and go.”
― Jo Brand
“I’m not a flag waver for obesity. It’s not healthy, and you have a crap life because there is such a downer on it.”
― Jo Brand
“You look across the board at comedy quiz shows, and they are mainly hosted by men.”
― Jo Brand
“Does anyone really go into nursing intending to be apathetic, cold and removed from suffering? I find that very difficult to believe.”
― Jo Brand
“Anything is good if it’s made of chocolate.”
― Jo Brand
“It’s a video release as well so I have to be perfectly honest and go, probably not specifically for DVD, but there are extra bits on it that aren’t on anything else, so as exciting as that sounds.”
― Jo Brand
“One of the guys that used to run it – for some reason I’ve no idea why he used to call me the Sea Monster and I was just looking around for a name and thought that’ll do. That lasted for a couple of years probably.”
― Jo Brand
“I had always fancied a go at the comedy and when it started to go reasonably well and the opportunity arose for me to move into it full time, I just couldn’t turn it down. I just took the risk, and I just wanted to see if it would work and thankfully it did.”
― Jo Brand
“Who do I like? I am a big fan of French and Saunders – not that that they are particularly stand-up I have to say, but I think they have been great for women and they are of themselves just incredibly funny whether they are male or female.”
― Jo Brand
“I wouldn’t say I was organised at all. I just have to prioritise. Is it more important for them to be organised, or to have their dinner, do you know what I mean?”
― Jo Brand
“It’s got too much hard work slapping them and telling them to shut up.”
― Jo Brand
“Again, with two small children it’s incredibly hard to commit yourself to anything because you’re just getting interested in it and someone comes along and goes I want Thomas The Tank Engine on, and screams the place down until you put it on.”
― Jo Brand
“I don’t know if we will ever try again because those sort of things are very hard to organise but yes, I’ve known Doon for years and John as well but I hadn’t met Will before, and he turned out to be a good laugh.”
― Jo Brand
“The thing I thought about doing it was it’s Comic Relief and you’ve got to be funny. So although I did try to sing properly it obviously has hilarious results when you can’t sing.”
― Jo Brand
“I was really, because I thought it was extremely excruciating when I watched a tape of it, that my husband taped for me and I never watched it again after that.”
― Jo Brand
“It’s inevitable that if you do okay on something like that you don’t just annoy people, that it will make a difference because it seemed like such a lot of people so, yes I would have to say that it has done.”
― Jo Brand
“I’m sure some cynical people would point to that as the main reason for doing it for a lot of people.”
― Jo Brand
“I just don’t like travelling very much.”
― Jo Brand
“I think there’s a far more general audience now because I’ve done more populist stuff on telly.”
― Jo Brand
“People say you should read your criticism because it will make you a better person but it doesn’t. It just makes you a sad bitter old showbiz nightmare.”
― Jo Brand
“By crying on my bed, drinking quite a lot and feeling tempted by drugs. Well, just not reading it to be perfectly honest with you. I know it’s a bit of a copout.”
― Jo Brand
“I don’t know really, it doesn’t feel like it has changed to me but I think to have to move with the times. Try out different areas and not get stuck in 1978.”
― Jo Brand
“I find it difficult to judge myself, but people say that I have become a bit more socially acceptable over the years in terms of my material; which apparently at the beginning – though I never really intended it to be – was man hating and now is just a bit more cuddly.”
― Jo Brand
“With two small children, I haven’t had a wash since 2001 so the chance to go shopping is way down the list. It is something I do intend to get.”
― Jo Brand
“I made a supreme effort not to do that thing that parents do, which is to bore people without children to death by going on and on about how funny their children are, so there’s none of that hopefully.”
― Jo Brand
“So, I kind of rather was hoping that people thought it would have a nice mixture of different topics and it also takes in the fact that I’ve had two children recently.”
― Jo Brand
“Whatever situation you are in, that is what is normal for you.”
― Jo Brand
“Wild men are so enormously attractive.”
― Jo Brand
“And I also felt that no one in an audience could abuse me worse than the sort of abuse I had had at work as a psychiatric nurse.”
― Jo Brand
“I like the purity of stand-up because it is all about whether people laugh at your jokes. Either they laugh or they don’t.”
― Jo Brand
“They say revenge is a dish best eaten cold, but for most people, by the time it’s ready to eat, they just don’t fancy it any more.”
― Jo Brand
“People can forgive each other.”
― Jo Brand
“When you get to know someone, you find there’s something nasty in their woodshed.”
― Jo Brand
“I do say no to lots of things, actually! I know it doesn’t look like it. But I have a tendency to a) be rubbish at saying no, and b) be pushed by some kind of Protestant work ethic.”
― Jo Brand
“There are comics who treat women fairly appallingly. But I can be great friends with them because I don’t tend to do that ticking of boxes: it can make life too simplistic.”
― Jo Brand
“I have friends who vote Tory, and I’m appalled, but that’s not to say they’re not great people in so many other ways.”
― Jo Brand
“There have been some very extreme hecklers in audiences whose bile was so hateful and so meant that it would be a bit frightening to think that all I’m doing is jokes and yet someone hates me that much.”
― Jo Brand
“I have big friends who won’t go swimming because they’re too embarrassed about it. I feel that’s such a shame, because actually people should be encouraging fat people who are exercising to do it, not pointing and laughing.”
― Jo Brand
“There’s a general sense that women are more relaxed and less defensive in comedy than they used to be. I think it’s easier than it was but underlying it all there is still a pretty sexist view of women on stage, which to me hasn’t changed that much.”
― Jo Brand
“I like to shock people.”
― Jo Brand
“I remember when Victoria Wood started to come through, and I thought she was great, though she and I are very different in our approach.”
― Jo Brand
“My mum always felt that women deserved as much as men, and should have as much power, so I suppose I opted to go into a very male-dominated arena to try and prove that.”
― Jo Brand
“I have two brothers and we basically spent our lives playing in the woods, falling in ponds, getting chased by wasps and riding donkeys that we shouldn’t have been riding.”
― Jo Brand
“I wasn’t one of those hideous children who make their parents sit through hour-long performances when you’re seven. I didn’t do anything like that thankfully.”
― Jo Brand
“I’d love to live in Kent but it’s all a question of work.”
― Jo Brand
“I thought I was funny as a kid.”
― Jo Brand
“I’ve seen a lot of women give up after they’ve had three or four bad gigs in a row. It’s very difficult to learn not to take nasty heckles personally.”
― Jo Brand
“Even when I wasn’t overweight I was never one of those girls or women who wanted to look nice. I always thought it wasn’t important.”
― Jo Brand
“I have a utilitarian approach to dressing; as long as I quite like it and it covers me up, I don’t care what it is.”
― Jo Brand
“There are 10-20 times more male comics than female comics; it’s something to do with the social structure of society.”
― Jo Brand
“I like men. They are hugely entertaining, but they have a lot of shortcomings and you just have to bear those in mind.”
― Jo Brand
“Each generation has a backlash against the generation before.”
― Jo Brand
“I’ve never, ever had people being aggressive to me in public or abusing me, and actually quite a lot of men do say to me, ‘You’re quite good’ – though they can’t bear to go, ‘You’re great.’”
― Jo Brand
“I think my comedy, the put-downs I do to hecklers, are the accumulated bitterness of years of people feeling that it’s perfectly acceptable to make a comment on your appearance when they don’t even know you.”
― Jo Brand
“I think the key attributes for a good speaker are someone that’s articulate and someone that puts a fair amount of humour into what they do.”
― Jo Brand
“I’m just trying to spread the word and upturn the myth that actually you should be resting after cancer treatment. You shouldn’t; you should be getting out and doing any kind of exercise you can. You don’t have to run a marathon, but you just have to up your activity levels.”
― Jo Brand
“I am a hip-hop artist, as you probably know. My hip-hop name is Big Smalls.”
― Jo Brand
“Jeremy Clarkson is rather charming, but I can’t stomach his public persona. I don’t like his casual racism and casual misogyny.”
― Jo Brand
“I went on the pill when I was 16, put on four stone… so that proved to be a very effective contraceptive.”
― Jo Brand
“I must be an anorexic because an anorexic looks in the mirror and sees a fat person.”
― Jo Brand
“There are lots of people who believe that caricature of me the tabloids created, so they think they don’t like me.”
― Jo Brand
“I still get blokes who say, ‘Oh you hate men, don’t you?’ And I say, ‘No, I just hate you.’ I really love doing that, just to see the look on their faces.”
― Jo Brand
“I love doing stand-up. It’s so self-contained – you go there, you do it, you go home – but with telly, there are too many people involved with it with opinions. You have a product, and everyone wants to change it.”
― Jo Brand
“There are problems with nursing – such as the issue of nurses all having to do degrees these days. But that doesn’t mean to say the entire infrastructure of nursing is falling about and that it is populated by unfeeling psychopaths, which is, frankly, the implication sometimes.”
― Jo Brand
“To me, a politician’s job is to listen to constituents’ problems and try to sort them out.”
― Jo Brand
“I suspect most politicians feel overwhelmed because people’s lives are a real struggle, full of unhappiness, and you would probably feel powerless to do anything about it.”
― Jo Brand
“Occasionally, some sitcoms still stereotype women – the old dragon or the dolly bird – but on the whole we’ve moved away from that.”
― Jo Brand
“With proper acting, I don’t know what I would play – I got sent a script for a play, and it said in the notes that my proposed character was ‘hideously fat and ugly’. That made my day. I mean, I do know I am no oil painting.”
― Jo Brand
“If I am totally honest, I would have to say that ‘Allo ‘Allo!’ was not my cup of tea, even though lots of people loved it. For that reason, I find comedy fascinating. There is a huge difference between what people find funny.”
― Jo Brand
“Television provokes strong opinions, and sometimes we try a bit too hard to appeal to everyone.”
― Jo Brand
“I read that book ‘Fat is a Feminist Issue’, got a bit desperate halfway through and ate it.”
― Jo Brand
“The funny thing is, I don’t actually think of myself as fat at all. I don’t think I am. Not really.”
― Jo Brand
“How do you conduct an intimate relationship where no one ever loses it? Where no one ever lashes out, where no one ever smacks anyone in the mouth?”
― Jo Brand
“I never think, ‘Where am I going to be in a year’s time?’ That seems to be a sure way of missing the fact that you might be quite happy now.”
― Jo Brand
“A lot of people do that kind of nostalgia stuff believing that they were very happy in their teenage years, but that’s probably just an illusion.”
― Jo Brand
“I think there’s a danger that we’re moving towards a state where the people we are expected to admire are almost not human anymore, and I don’t like that. I prefer it when someone looks like a nice person, and you think, ‘I could have a laugh with them in the pub.’”
― Jo Brand
“I cannot abide anyone treating another human being like a piece of dirt, whatever the context.”
― Jo Brand
“I’ve no interest in fashion, shoes, handbags, or sweaty shopping.”
― Jo Brand
“I’ve never been a fan of euphemism.”
― Jo Brand
“My dad’s a very sensitive man, but as the archetypal rebellious teenager, I didn’t realise that.”
― Jo Brand
“Once you get labelled, people expect you to behave within the very narrow confines of that label.”
― Jo Brand
“I’m a terrible sort of non-fussy eater, really. I don’t like posh food very much, and the more ingredients something’s got in it, the less I tend to like it.”
― Jo Brand
“My mum and my husband are from Irish backgrounds, so we have a lot of potatoes. Chips, mashed, boiled, new potatoes, I love them all. Even the slightly wonky ones like Duchess potatoes that go up in a little spiral.”
― Jo Brand
“My mum is bright, ambitious, well read, political and very bolshie: when my dad was conscripted into the Army and posted to Libya, she convinced some general to let her go with him. I don’t know how she managed it.”
― Jo Brand
“I’ve never trained as an actor. I’ve always thought I’m not a good actor. I’ve been told I’m not a good actor by a lot of people.”
― Jo Brand
“I think actors go along a continuum from Simon Callow down to kind of Ross Kemp, and I like to think of myself as the Ross Kemp of comedy. He’s very good in ‘East Enders’ because he plays a version of himself. I think I can play a version of myself – that’s about all I can do.”
― Jo Brand
“It wasn’t a conscious effort to have kids later. It was just the way life goes.”
― Jo Brand
“Men are fantastic – as a concept.”
― Jo Brand
“I used to get nervous about three weeks before a gig… now I’ve managed to condense it down to a manageable ten minutes.”
― Jo Brand
“I tend to think the world is a bit of a miserable place, so anyone who can add to people’s optimistic, cheerful side is doing a good job, which is what I hope I’m doing.”
― Jo Brand
“I used to do bell ringing in Benenden church. It was really good fun, actually. My best friend’s dad was the local vicar, and so it was expected as her best friend that I would go to church every Sunday with her.”
― Jo Brand
“School was great. There were no boys there, which didn’t really bother me at the time because I had two brothers, so I was quite pleased not to spend any more time with boys.”
― Jo Brand
“I’m a real Kentish maid, you know.”
― Jo Brand
“When you cry, you don’t look very attractive; you look snotty and blotchy. People seem to manage to cry quite prettily these days, and to me, that smacks of not being very genuine.”
― Jo Brand
“The problem with comedy audiences – it’s like the Coliseum – when they see someone struggling, they don’t feel altruistic towards them. They feel slightly repulsed by it.”
― Jo Brand
“There’s lots of different feminist groups. It’s not as straightforward as just looking like a plumber.”
― Jo Brand
“When you have children, your house smells very unpleasant all the time.”
― Jo Brand
“My personal opinion is that you can’t be racist towards white people. You can be prejudiced about them, but being prejudiced isn’t an illegal act, whereas being racist can be.”
― Jo Brand
“Madness isn’t altogether a bad thing in comedy.”
― Jo Brand
“My mum taught me to knit when I was a child, and I turn to it, for some weird reason, when I’m feeling depressed.”
― Jo Brand
“Let’s face it: I am not a professional runner.”
― Jo Brand
“I think it’s difficult, if you’re a quite private person like I am, to write about your life very intimately.”
― Jo Brand
“I’m not really a churchy person, although I do think Jesus was a good bloke.”
― Jo Brand
“If you’re a fat person – and especially if you’re a woman – at all stages of your life you’ll get abuse for it, so you have to work out a way of dealing with it. The best way is to be humorous about it – that defuses any tension.”
― Jo Brand
“I don’t like doing stand-up, because I don’t like standing up.”
― Jo Brand
“The comedian sticks as religiously to her theme as a dancer sticks to a diet.”
― Jo Brand
“The way to a man’s heart is through his hanky pocket with a breadknife.”
― Jo Brand
“I’ve always been criticised for how filthy my material is. Victoria Wood said to me once, ‘I wish I was a bit ruder, like you,’ and I said, ‘Well, I wish I was a bit cleaner, like you.’”
― Jo Brand
“I never ever take into consideration the consequences of my actions until it’s too late.”
― Jo Brand
“As a comic and as a nurse, it’s important to look calm on the surface when you’re absolutely crapping yourself inside. So, if someone is waving a machete at you, which has happened to me when I was a nurse, it’s important to make that person feel that you’re in control.”
― Jo Brand
“I used to get a lot of people saying ‘Oh, you are such a lucky granny.’ But the fact of the matter is you can be a grandma at 35 these days.”
― Jo Brand
“Most of us manage the fateful things that happen in our lives the best we can, certainly not to a Stalin-like 20-year plan.”
― Jo Brand
“I often tell audiences at the start of my shows that I’m not gay because I’ve got petitions from lesbian groups saying ‘Can you tell people you’re heterosexual because you’re giving us a bad name.’”
― Jo Brand
“People are so different in reality from the picture created of them on TV. So it’s all a creation; everything is made up.”
― Jo Brand
“Punk allowed women to stop looking feminine. Oh, the relief.”
― Jo Brand
“In the end, punk inevitably burned itself out and acted as a bridge across which the New Romantics could sashay in their chiffon and glossy hair.”
― Jo Brand
“It is unrealistic to expect an entire profession to be completely good. There are bound to be some individuals who are stressed, who are unkind, who are a bit rubbish at their job, who are in the wrong career.”
― Jo Brand
“I have seen good nurses and bad nurses. They existed along a continuum: from hard-working, kind and competent people, to office-hugging, bone-idle types, to apathetic, disengaged automatons.”
― Jo Brand
“A good culture in a hospital can absorb and manage a few bad nurses, but once the culture becomes bad in itself, bad nursing practice is much harder to hide.”
― Jo Brand
“Christians have always been fodder for comedians who have tended to portray them as anoraks – slightly clammy, beatifically smiley dullards with barely a personality between them.”
― Jo Brand
“One thing lots of Christians do have in common is that they can’t help coming across as smug. This winds lots of people up, particularly because famous Christians pronounce on the life of the poor from their very lovely affluent homes filled with their very lovely families and attractive pets.”
― Jo Brand
“I can honestly say I’ve never sold any arms to a repressive foreign regime while reassuring everyone at home that the weapons will be used for nice things.”
― Jo Brand
“As the Tories know, the problem with setting yourself up as a shining example for others to follow is that when you get caught out, that proverbial substance really hits the fan.”
― Jo Brand
“My father was an engineer and my mother was a social worker, and they met as young socialists. That probably tells you everything you need to know about my attitude to money – I’ve never really been bothered about it.”
― Jo Brand
“When I was a nurse I never had much money, and I was still happy then.”
― Jo Brand
“I’m a Luddite with computers, and I’m slightly worried about being hacked as well.”
― Jo Brand
“I love everything about books. I love the content, the way they look and even the lovely way they smell. I think a book collection says something about you as a person, and certainly my books are something I’d want to pass on for future generations.”
― Jo Brand
“Anybody who has had the pleasure of reading an article about themselves in the press knows that, on the whole, there is a huge amount of inaccuracy, value judgment and the use of a crowbar to insert editorial bias that reflects the current political leaning of that particular paper.”
― Jo Brand
“Managers of hospitals over the years have been increasingly recruited from outside the health service, and although their experience of running a supermarket chain might allow them to balance the books, it does not mean they have any insight into how a ward should be managed and patients best served.”
― Jo Brand
“Privatisation splits hospital services into increasingly small packages.”
― Jo Brand
“Regular panelists on shows can be terrifying. They own that space, and many guest comics suspect they are favoured in the edit, while their own hilarious jokes end up being ejected into the ether.”
― Jo Brand
“Suffice to say, many women find their first appearance on a comedy panel show to be their last. Second chances seem to be given less often to the female of the species.”
― Jo Brand
“Some men are deeply likable but have attitudes I don’t like. Does that mean I should completely dismiss them? It’s like saying: if someone votes Tory can you like them? And, yes, I can. I have friends who vote Tory, and I’m appalled, but that’s not to say they’re not great people in so many other ways. We have a tendency to oversimplify things.”
― Jo Brand
“When I was at school you got an overall general education on many things, even just basic facts.”
― Jo Brand
“I have such admiration for single mothers. I simply don’t comprehend how you’d cope with that intensity, the lack of breaks, ever, on your own.”
― Jo Brand
“I believe that if your brain has to get to grips with complicated words, then you won’t get Alzheimer’s. I’m sure it’s not true, but I do believe it.”
― Jo Brand
“I thought I was funny as a kid. I used to play tricks on my brothers – I’d tie a two-shilling piece to a bit of cotton, then pull it away as they went to grab it.”
― Jo Brand
“It’s very difficult to learn not to take nasty heckles personally.”
― Jo Brand
“I was always being called upon to be an honorary boy alongside my brothers. I don’t think I’d be a comic now if it hadn’t been for that.”
― Jo Brand
“No one I know is actually so rude as to tell me I’ve become duller since having children. But I’m sure they think it.”
― Jo Brand
“I’ve always liked to think I could do anything I wished as well as – if not better than – a man. But I wasn’t very good at rally driving.”
― Jo Brand
“Not many women will go out on a limb to make themselves really unattractive and unfeminine so you can get the laughs, but it’s a great thing to do in my book.”
― Jo Brand
“Everyone in comedy thinks if you go to the U.S. you become a global star but, unfortunately, I’ve always been a bit anti-American – so I never did.”
― Jo Brand
“I pay a bit more than lip-service to health: I don’t eat chips or pre-prepared food, and it might be a comedy sacrilege to admit I do like vegetables, fruit and salad and stuff.”
― Jo Brand
“I buy smoked mackerel in a vain attempt at being healthy. I do actually really like it, and you don’t have to cook it, which is handy.”
― Jo Brand
“What could be funnier than a fat person trying to run a marathon?”
― Jo Brand
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