Born Lippy: Jo Brand Mark Lawson Talks To...

This programme contains very strong language.

And now, one of the funniest women in Britain. Please welcome Jo Brand!

In the 1980s, after a decade working as a psychiatric nurse,

Jo Brand entered stand-up comedy, where she first stood out

for her gender and dimensions, both of which gave her much material.

I'm just going to start actually by moving the microphone stand

because you won't be able to see me otherwise, will you?

She was rapidly viewed as remarkable for her talent.

She was equally in demand as a host of TV shows,

including Jo Brand's Commercial Breakdown

and Jo Brand Through The Cakehole.

Serve with custard, ice cream and no friends

and garnish with bars of chocolate and a large pork pie.

And as a guest,

on panel shows including Brain Drain,

Have I Got News For You and QI.

I always thought testicles were the perfect environment

to test anti-ageing cream.

She challenged and matched the men who dominated the genre.

She drew on her nursing years for the dark medical comedy

Getting On, written with co-stars Vicky Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlon.

And between stand-up tours, she sat down to write three novels

and two memoirs, covering her early years in Look Back In Hunger

and her comedy career in Can't Stand Up For Sitting Down.

One of the quotes I underlined in Look Back In Hunger,

your first autobiography, is,

"I knew that I wanted to do stand-up,

"compete with men, and come out, if not ahead of them, at least equal."

I was fascinated by that.

Do you still see comedy as a competition with men?

I see everything as a competition with men, I'm afraid.

But I think that what that's about is the fact that

I am the middle child of three and I'm surrounded by brothers,

who really spent an awful lot of my early childhood just hitting me

or teasing me or tormenting me in some way.

And I suppose I developed this competitive element to me

because I knew how great it felt when I got my own back on them.

And so throughout our childhood, it just turned into a competition

and I suppose that's just carried on, really.

But each, as you know each, erm...

sort of phase of my life that I've gone onto, I've learned

a bit more about gender relations. I did Psychology

and Sociology at university. I read up a lot of stuff.

I read Germaine Greer when I was 12 or 13.

So I'm constantly adding to my fountain of knowledge.

And, erm...

You know, I don't think I'm kind of competitive

in a particularly aggressive way.

I know a lot of people would disagree with that.

But I certainly am very aware of the

problems that there are surrounding male and female equality, and it

means a lot to me to think about it and to try and change things.

But the fact that you went into comedy,

I mean, you would be particularly competitive with men

because it was, some people would say still is, so male dominated.

Yeah, I mean, I think the thing about comedy is,

what annoyed me about comedy was that people, and they still do say it

today, they either say women aren't funny, full stop...

-Someone said it on the radio just a few weeks ago.

-There you go.

-They still say it, yeah.

-Yeah. Or women aren't as funny as men.

So there's now a bit more of a grudging acceptance

that if we try really hard, we can be mildly funny,

but we're still not up there with the men, you know.

And I find that really irritating

cos I think that simply isn't true.

But I wondered about that, because that quote about wanting

to compete with men there,

there isn't equality in comedy, is there, in most people's eyes?

Well, there isn't equality of numbers.

And I think until there is, you know, we won't be competing

on a level playing field, so how will be able to tell?

But the other problem, of course, with comedy is that you have

so many different types of comedy that someone might say to you,

"Well, Eddie Izzard's not funny," and millions of people would

disagree with them because that's the sort of comedy they like.

Um... So, you know, I can really understand why a lot of men

don't like the sort of comedy I do

because it is gender-based

and it's taking the piss out of men.

And, you see, on the very rare occasions that

I do actually get a bloke in a room, on his own, it just seems to

good an opportunity to miss just to punch him in the bloody gob, frankly.

I'm not kind of attacking them as individuals per se. It's kind

of a very generalised sort of thing, but I find it very hard to explain

it to some men who are really angry with me about my attitude.

But don't you...? You enjoy that anger, don't you?

I enjoy winding people up, yeah.

Yeah, particularly blokes, I suppose, who have that attitude.

I mean, I know it's a very long time ago now, but if we take

someone like Garry Bushell, who actually, interestingly, he...

He, we should explain, was TV critic of The Sun

-and then The Daily Star, I think?

-That's right.

Initially, actually, liked what I did, because my first

appearance on TV, I think, was on The Wogan Show, and he said something

very positive about me and that my jokes were good, and blah, blah.

And then, I think, the next time I was on TV,

I did an anti-Thatcher joke,

and then he completely changed his tune

and started to attack me.

I mean, along with a huge raft of other women, it wasn't just me.

Um, eh...

But... So I kind of liked to have a go back at him

when I got an opportunity.

And you mention critics.

I was very struck at the beginning of one

of your DVDs, The Barely Live Tour.

Um... It's recorded in London and you say at the beginning,

"I don't often perform in London," at that stage,

"because of the critics." And I was interested that you admitted that.

It suggests that you were...you were sensitive about what they said

Well, yeah, I suppose.

I mean, wouldn't anybody be? You know, no-one...

But most people don't admit it, though, particularly in showbiz,

-do they?

-No.

But... And I think that's foolish,

because I think actually the more you kind of admit a certain

sort of vulnerability, the more human, hopefully,

you seem, really.

I mean, I know, I had this reputation at the beginning,

I was just this kind of foul-mouthed, man-hating

lesbian, because obviously, by definition,

I must be a lesbian if I'm having a go at men.

Um...um...

But I think it... The problem with the way that

you as a performer can be interpreted by the tabloids,

tabloids or by critics or whatever, it's so one-dimensional.

And these days everyone is a critic or able to be so

because of Twitter and online stuff.

People have to make a decision on that.

Do you look at the stuff that's out there about you?

No, I don't look at the stuff that's out there about me

because I feel, why would you want to make yourself miserable?

You know, I have the sort of effect on people,

it's either very positive or very negative.

I tend not to get a mild kind of "Oh, she's all right" type reaction.

So I knew that there'd be a lot of really unpleasant stuff

on Twitter, and I think it's been borne out, really, how

much misogyny women on Twitter get by recent events.

But as you well know, you've written about...

One of the great gender divides is appearance, because whereas

some male comedians... Greg Davis for example, he does self-mocking

stuff about his appearance, most men don't on the whole.

You... From very early on, you always did do that.

That didn't just start when I started doing stand-up,

that had...that had been a modus operandi for many,

many years for me, and I think it is for many women who aren't

kind of traditionally beautiful or...or attractive.

But I kind of thought, with my stand-up, I should just clear that

out of the way and go, "Yes, I know I'm fat. Here's a very funny joke,

"hopefully, about me being fat.

"Let's move on and talk about something else,"

almost as a way of kind of sweeping that out of the way.

I would like to take a pill that would make me six stone,

then I could eat my way back up to ten.

What a bloody brilliant weekend that would be, wouldn't it?

And other things that struck me in the first autobiography,

Look Back In Hunger, is you give only a few lines to the decision to

go into comedy, which retrospectively,

has been quite a huge decision.

You say, "My mother knew that I fancied working in the Arts,

"and by that time, I had considered comedy."

But you don't really describe how you got to that decision.

To do comedy?

That's cos I never think very profoundly about anything.

I'm the sort of person that I do make decisions without thinking

about them properly. And I didn't... I always just thought in a very

surface way, "I'd love to have a go at comedy," and that was

for no other reason other than I think the world is a bit of a shit

place and that having a laugh is a good thing to lift you out of that.

So, in a very generalised way,

I come from a family that likes having a laugh.

You know, we had lots of sort of family jokes.

My older brother is really a funny person.

And they used to play tricks on me.

And April Fool's was always a very important day of the year.

So I just... I like laughing and I like making people laugh.

Looking at your childhood, there's another quote that leapt

out from the book. "In order to become a comic, I had to create

"my own emotional disturbance rather than have it imposed upon me,"

which is about those people who have suffered in childhood and

they, politically and religiously, and turn it into comedy.

That's an admission of a basically happy childhood.

Yes, absolutely. Yes, it was, really.

Probably up until about the age of ten, I would say,

and then it all kind of... It went a bit wrong. And the reason it

went a bit wrong, really, was because of my dad's

mental health, deteriorating at sort of round about when I was that age.

Until then, he was just... You just thought he was a bit...

He was grumpy and angry a lot of the time.

Yeah, he had a sort of hair-trigger temper, really,

all throughout my childhood so, erm...

But I think things got worse.

I think, obviously, my mum knew about it

right from the kick-off, but it's the sort of thing that you

wouldn't discuss with children because they're not really, you know,

mature enough to deal with it. So it was never discussed at all, really.

And there's a sketch of your mother as well in the autobiography,

Joyce, who was a social worker.

You describe her as a pre-feminist, by which I think you mean

that she was clever, strong, feisty, but didn't have as much

chance to fulfil herself as women of later generations might have done.

No, well, interestingly, and she recently told me this, she was

offered a place at Oxford University and chose to marry my dad instead.

So I think that was a very hard decision for her to make, really.

She was pretty young at the time, I think she was 17, 18.

Um...

But she...she was always kind of very feisty and, I mean, I think

women in the '50s were

so much more straight jacketed, you know.

She's got a lovely of photo of her with all her friends,

all arranged in a line. And they've all got exactly the same hair,

exactly the same shaped dresses and exactly the same shoes on

and it's really hard to tell them apart.

And I think in those days, women were expected to be much more

conformist than they are now.

There are some quite savage lines about your parents,

-particularly your mother...

-Really?

-Yes, in some of the stand-up stuff.

But they've been to the shows, presumably, have they?

Not really. I mean, my mum came to see me in Brighton at the Dome.

And when the compere said...

She took some Valium cos she was really scared that

someone would be horrible to me and then when the compere said,

"Please welcome Jo Brand," she ran out and didn't come back in.

I think she just couldn't have stood it

if someone had heckled me. I think that's what it was about.

Your childhood really divides between two counties,

very different, Kent and Sussex.

Something happened at your comprehensive school in Kent

which makes it amazing to me you ever became a performer,

which is the violin incident.

Yeah, well, at primary school, I was learning the violin,

and I was doing OK. And I understand that what happened was that

when I moved to the comprehensive school,

they spoke to my violin teacher and said

they wanted to encourage more kids to play the violin at the secondary

school. So without telling me, he arranged for me,

on a day I thought I was just coming in for a lesson at school,

so I had my violin with me,

to play in front of everybody at assembly in the morning

to somehow try and demonstrate,

"Look, here's a little girl who's just started here

"and she can do it, so you could all in theory learn to play the violin."

But, I mean, as you can imagine, I was like 11 years old

and there was this huge comprehensive,

I don't know, 1,000 pupils

sort of up to the age of kind of 17 or 18,

mixed schools, so there were boys as well, me on stage kind of sawing

desperately away, sounding awful, and then just making a series of

prrtt type noises, you know, taking the piss, kind of humiliating me.

It was...it was awful, really.

I was so embarrassed.

And to the extent that I went home

that day and I just said to my mum,

"I don't want to do the violin anymore,"

and I gave it up because I was so angry

with that guy for doing that,

springing it on me like that.

Because if he'd asked me, I would've said no,

because it would've just been so traumatic.

So, yeah, it was awful, really awful.

Although despite the violin incident, you learned to play

the organ for a TV programme.

I did. I learned to play the organ

and ended up playing in front of, I think, 8,000 people at

the Albert Hall, with my mum there,

which was like another added horror.

Why did you put yourself through that?

Well, because, actually, to be quite honest,

I really wanted to learn to play the organ, because I think it's...

I think actually it all stemmed from...

Not from church, but from Monty Python.

When Terry Jones used to sit there with no clothes on. And it just...

I just used to think it was a hilarious

kind of comedy instrument, really.

And it sounds amazing.

And it's so... It's so massive and glorious.

I auditioned for drama school when I left university and

the first audition was so humiliating I cancelled all

the others. And it was at Mountview Theatre School and we had to mime

playing an instrument so everyone else is kind of going like that with

a flute or, you know, with a recorder,

so I mimed playing the organ.

And then they said, "Now, can you fold up your instruments?"

So they were like this

and there's me, like, 20 minutes later, you know, like this.

And...and I think...

And they were just all pissing themselves laughing,

the people who auditioned us.

And I think, actually, that's when I started thinking,

"Yeah, I've got to do comedy, really."

I thought I'd do the Cosmo quiz,

though, because I like those quizzes and I think they really do

tell you quite a lot about yourself, don't they?

This particular quiz was called Are You A Fat Old Bastard?

And surprisingly enough...

I got top marks.

1986, first comedy gig at the Soho Club.

Now first gigs are often very difficult, but yours was, wasn't it?

It was.

It was such a weird combination of things like that because first

of all, it was in a nightclub, which is a very bad venue for comedy.

It's very low ceiling and alcoves everywhere

so people couldn't see properly.

It was actually a benefit. So there was that.

Secondly, all the acts that were on before me died on their arse,

so how I thought I could go on at midnight

and do any better, I don't know.

And they were actually very experienced comics,

like Johnny Immaterial. I don't know if you remember him.

Who I loved, actually, and he was a really funny guy.

But the audience just looked at him like he was, you know,

a complete nana.

And so I went on at midnight, by which time I'd had about six or

seven pints of lager, and I was so drunk I could hardly stand up,

really, so how I thought I was gonna deliver my jokes...

So there was all that going on and then I got on stage

and there were two comics at the back who were very well known

on the circuit at the time. And as soon as I got on stage,

one of them just started chanting, "Fuck off you fat cow," at me.

And he didn't just say it once, he just chanted it over and over

again all through my act,

which, as you can imagine, was abbreviated because of his chanting.

And I think I probably got off stage after about

a minute and a half, two minutes.

Because it's impossible to try

and do anything with someone just chanting continuously.

And then some of the audience got pissed off

and they were going, "Shut up, give her a chance,"

you know, until it was just chaos, really, and just pointless, really.

And in the book on stand-up comedy, you say,

"Much of my early comedy was designed to shock people."

-I mean, that was a deliberate decision.

-It was, yeah.

Because I felt at the time there were

so few women around

that I had to do something

to make them go...

"Oh, do you remember that woman that was on the other night

"that said that really awful thing about the Church or whatever it was?"

So, yeah, that was deliberate, really, and lots of swearing, too.

And also lots of stuff about women's bodily functions,

which no-one likes listening to.

Well, I was going to say because there are people now

who claim that you only make jokes

about menstruation, whereas in fact it's quite a small part of the act.

I had one joke about menstruation in my entire first set.

Was it the shocking one?

It was the one about euphemisms for periods.

Yes, go on, well let's...

The BBC duty office and lawyers will go on to...

will cancel all leave. Do this joke.

Right, well, I said, you know,

people are very embarrassed about periods so you hear

a lot of euphemisms for periods like,

"I've got the painters and decorators in,"

or "Arsenal are playing at home."

Whereas I prefer the one, "I've got a vast amount of blood

"squirting out of my cunt, vicar."

And what sort of reaction did it get the first time you did it?

Well, I always used to finish on it.

So that if I had to get a cab, I could.

Um... Oh, total shock, really. Yeah.

Just people would just not believe I'd said it, really,

which is great, you know.

And I think actually they would...they would talk about it.

So, you know, that thing that it doesn't matter what they're

saying, at least if they're talking about you, they've noticed you,

kind of cliche, I think, is true to a certain extent.

But that didn't mean that I could just surf on that for my whole

career, but I had to have some jokes that were funny as well.

But, you know, it helped doing that sort of material, I think.

And do you still write jokes very carefully?

I do... I do a mixture.

I wrote...I write some jokes very carefully

because I think they need to be overwritten to make them funny.

If they're jokes with kind of some sort of word play or jokes

where you're exaggerating something, or jokes where you want to use...

deliberately use sort of loads of very unusual adjectives

or something like that.

But also I... If you did that, it would drive you mad, you know,

and you'd only have, like, five minutes of new material every

two years or whatever.

So I write routines as well that are much looser

and kind of based on reality.

Every so often there are these rows about where the line

is in comedy, and whether there should be taboos.

Do you...do you have a line in your head that you won't cross?

Well, um,

I do...I do have a line, but it's not that I won't cross it,

it's just that I would never dream of doing jokes

that are racist, for example.

Um... I just wouldn't.

Because, we tell this story carefully

and stress that you were not, you accidentally were thought

to have made a racist joke early in your career, yeah.

Yeah, that was a very bizarre set of circumstances as well.

I was working in Bradford on a Sunday night doing a benefit.

And at the same time that we were working there,

The Sooty Show had been on,

but wasn't on on Sundays because that's when the theatres closed.

And all The Sooty Show paraphernalia was in the dressing room nearest

to the stage so that, I think it was Matthew Corbett at the time,

could access the stage easily.

So that was the set up. So we got to the theatre,

I was on with a comic called Jeff Greene and some other comedians.

And when I got there, the manager said to me,

this friend of mine who's a Zimbabwean, he's a singer,

can he do a couple of songs at the beginning of the show?

So I said, "Of course." And so I was announcing the acts from back stage.

So this Zimbabwean guy did a couple of songs.

We were in a dressing room right down in the basement

because The Sooty Show people were in the nearest dressing rooms

to the stage, and it was locked, we couldn't get in there.

So I heard this guy finish on the public address system.

And so I went running up to the stage to announce him off

and get the next act on. Because it was such a long way,

I was really out of breath running up the stairs,

so I thought, "I need a joke to explain why I'm breathless."

So on the mic I said, "I'm really sorry that I'm so breathless

"and I can't speak properly, I've had to run miles up to the stage

"cos that fucking Sooty's got the best dressing room."

Um... Tumbleweed.

At which point, I realised they thought I meant the Zimbabwean

-singer that was on stage, and that I was calling him...

-Wow.

-I know.

Because I actually... it didn't really occur to me,

and I remember saying to Jeff Greene,

"Why aren't they laughing? I thought that was a really funny line."

And he went, "Because they don't think you mean Sooty the puppet."

Cos they hadn't realised that The Sooty Show was on.

So that's, that...

Although, as football managers say, to take the positives,

it's impressive that a Bradford audience at that time...

-Absolutely.

-..wouldn't laugh at what they thought was a racist joke.

Absolutely, I totally agree with you.

And the weird thing was, afterwards there was a...

So I remember I was doing Top Of The Pops with Mark Lamarr

and Roy Chubby Brown had a number one, I think,

and he came up to me and went,

"Oh, I thought your Sooty joke was hilarious."

You know, so there was a bit of that went on afterwards, yes.

And for anyone writing a PhD on taboos in comedy, you have a great

example of this which relates to the Jennifer Lynch film Boxing...

-Helena.

-Boxing Helena, yeah.

Which I think is fascinating because it shows where...

what an audience will and won't take.

It was a film about a woman who'd had her arms and legs

chopped off and she was being kept in a box.

And so I would describe this and say to the audience,

"God that must have been weird, you know, just having no arms

"and legs and being in a box. What about when she had her period,

"wouldn't that have made, like, a terrible mess all over the box?"

And they would go, "Ohhhh,"

like that, as if I'd said something, like, really disgusting.

And then I would say, "Well what are you like, you didn't mind

"the fact that she'd had her arms and legs chopped off and she was put in

"a box, you're just going "Ugh" about periods, what's the matter with you?"

But I think that was actually a very, you know,

interesting point to make cos I do think our sensitivities

are very skewed sometimes, you know.

And it always...it worked every time.

I never had a situation where

they kind of went "Ugh" at the arms and legs,

they just kind of accepted that, "Oh, yeah your arms and legs off,

"yeah, yeah. Periods, oh." You know? It was really fascinating.

Absolutely, and one of the questions of being a stand-up is dealing

with hecklers, and you refer in one of the books to

having your ascending collection of prepared put-downs.

I do, yeah.

I think it's important to have put downs for a start-off

because it's a bit like going on with a shield, you know.

It kind of protects you, if you like.

Because I think, like particularly with women,

men think they're going to say something unpleasant about them

and that women will just fold and, "Oh, my God, I can't cope," you know.

So to be able to come back with something that puts them down,

I think, is really important, you know.

I mean, I have heard some absolutely vile heckles,

not just towards me, but towards lots of other women comics.

Can you say...what's the worst?

Well, I was at a student gig and this... There was a rugby club in...

My fave!

And one of them just shouted out

"If you don't shut up, I'm going to shove a table leg up your cunt!"

You know? So that's the sort of, like, misogynist heckling

that women get on occasion.

But how do you feel or how do you react

when you get that kind of stuff?

Well, actually, weirdly, when I got that table leg one,

I was slightly hormonal, so actually I started crying.

It was very early on, I think

I'd been doing comedy for about seven or eight months,

and I was a bit PMT-ish,

and a little bit kind of anxious,

and they were a very difficult audience,

it was lunchtime, you know, and people get far more drunk

at lunchtime when they drink than they do in the evening.

Really, really drunk.

They were a bit sort of like touchy grabby as well.

And the whole thing was just really unpleasant, and then

he said that and I just... I actually didn't cry onstage, I just walked

off at that point. And then when I got in the dressing room, I cried.

But actually, funnily enough, that is the only time I've ever cried

when I've had a bad gig, so that's not a bad average.

And how many prepared put-downs do you have ready?

Well, I probably got about six or seven, you know.

And I have sort of nice, whimsical ones at the beginning.

So, can we have the top and bottom of the scale?

Well, let's say that the nice ones would be something like...

They're not that nice, but they're not...

Like if someone goes, "Oh, you're fat," you know,

I would go, "Yeah, well, I deliberately keep my weight up

"so a tosser like you doesn't fancy me."

That's kind of quite nice, friendly, you know.

And my nuclear one, I'm afraid,

and if this doesn't get them, then I have to go home, is...

Because what you tend to get at comedy clubs is sometimes you get

really drunk people that just can't shut up cause they're very drunk.

And I would say,

"If you don't shut up, I'm going to sit on your face,"

and then I would say, "No actually, I can't be bothered

"cos I haven't got my period at the moment."

And if that didn't shut them up, "Goodnight."

-How often have you had to use that one?

-Loads of times.

-Really?

-Yeah.

-I mean it does work, does it?

-Yes.

It works very well, surprisingly.

But in what way? It just shuts them up or they leave or...?

It shuts them up, and the reason it shuts them up is

cos they can't believe that a woman's been prepared to

say something so horrible, that is sort of along the lines

of the kind of thing men say to women, do you know what I mean?

I accept it's absolutely horrible and revolting,

but it's kind of matching horror for horror in a way, you know.

And you, I think you would, well, you might not be,

you wouldn't be surprised probably by how awful audience

members can be sometimes, you know.

I did a gig in Belfast years ago at one of the universities,

I can't remember which one it was.

But I went onstage and I didn't do any material at all.

I just had half an hour of mainly, well all blokes just abusing me

in an ever more threatening way. And it's so, it's so weird.

I mean, I shouldn't have stayed on,

but sometimes I'm just in the mood for it.

And it's a bit sort of masochistic, I suppose, in some ways.

So what did you do, just answer them back for half an hour?

Yeah, I just parried the blows. And I did what teachers used to do

when I was a kid, which is, you single out the ringleader

and you try and make them have a complete personality breakdown.

While everyone else is watching.

It doesn't always work, but it does sometimes.

And have you ever, you talk about terrible gigs like the one

in Belfast, have you ever lost your confidence as a comic?

I thought you were going to say have you ever lost your cool.

-And I have.

-Well no, we'll ask that next. Confidence first.

Have I ever lost my confidence? Yeah, definitely.

I mean I think, you know, it's such a cliche but

people in comedy occasionally say, you know,

you're only as good as your last gig. But actually, it is true.

And if you have a really bad one, you do feel not as if

you know my career's over, but you feel miserable

until you've done another one...

that's OK, really.

Yeah, I've had loads of really awful ones.

And have you ever lost your cool?

I've lost my temper and just started shouting abuse,

which is not a very good thing to do.

Because as soon as you lose your cool, they've won, really.

I have also...

Well, actually it was that someone got me

round the throat once by my clothes, and so I hit them.

Which is not a good thing to do either.

No, you could end up in court but you didn't for that.

No, no.

But I think, actually, this guy who did it to me,

he was really drunk, and I think his friends realised that, you know,

that he was...that he started it, if you like.

And there was one at Loughborough as well where,

weirdly, one of the security guards -

who did appear to be a bit of a psychopath -

started heckling me with quite kind of gynaecological threats,

as if he was a part-time serial killer.

And I lost my cool.

I went and got a bottle and I was going to bottle him.

Probably not a great idea.

And on that occasion, Mark Lamarr stopped me and made me be sensible.

Some comedians in the past, they've been nervous of TV

because it uses up material so fast and so on.

But I think for your generation,

I mean, really you had to be on TV, didn't you?

I think so, yes. It's gone in generations really.

Certainly when I started doing TV, it did put bums on seats.

But these days, it kind of puts bums on seats in arenas

if you're really popular, you know,

and you can do these massive 12,000-seater tours.

So, it seems to be coming ever more important in a way.

CROWD APPLAUD

It is I, John Sergeant.

LAUGHTER

Hello.

I was very interested on the DVD of the highlights of

Jo Brand - Through The Cakehole.

There's a little note from you saying all the sketches

you've left out because they weren't good enough.

And in fact, I think there are only eight on the DVD.

Was that ironic or was that very tough quality control?

Very tough quality control, I think.

I think the weird thing about TV is you know...

like, comedians are kind of desperate to get on TV.

And let's talk about if you do a series which is sketch shows.

You kind of chip away at them and chip away at them,

and eventually they go, yes, you can have a six part series

and we're going to film it in three months' time.

And you suddenly go, oh, my God, you know?

I've got to write 15, 20, however many sketches per show.

And the quality inevitably suffers.

You cannot write top quality sketches in that short amount of time,

I don't think.

And produce six episodes

which are all of the same consistent quality.

I just don't think you can.

So kind of looking back at some of the stuff that I did,

I am a kind of a bit embarrassed by it

because I know that it was something that was done too quickly.

Do you sometimes just know that something is a very good idea...

Because male prostitute is one of my favourite ones,

where there's a woman who has hired this male prostitute

but she wants him to behave exactly as her husband does sexually.

Right, on top or underneath?

I wonder if you could actually just put this stained vest on for me.

LAUGHTER

And if you could sort of cough in a kind of pleghmy sort of way.

Well, see, it's the only way I can get turned on. It's like my Colin.

And also perhaps you could fart a couple of times.

Presumably there's some times when you have the idea

and you just know that is funny?

Yeah, and it, it does work like that and also with jokes.

You just know a joke is going to really storm it.

You can just, you can just feel it before you do it, you know.

And the thing is actually,

that doesn't happen as often as you want it to.

And a lot of what you do end up doing is...

let's say slightly above average padding, if we're honest.

And that's why, you know, a lot of sketch shows don't last

for very long, because it's so easy to run out of ideas quite quickly.

And I mean, the thing I kind of found, I had to

sort of pretend that it wasn't my sketch show, because it just

felt too much responsibility to me, that all this money is being spent,

all these people are being employed at your behest, you know.

And so, if it fails, then you're responsible for that.

Right, let's get the safety routine over with.

There are two exits at the front.

They're ours.

And one at the back.

That one's yours.

A line of lights will guide you to the exit

and a line of urine will guide you to the bogs.

LAUGHTER

Commercial Breakdown is a curious thing...

Way-hay, Commercial Breakdown.

We wouldn't normally expect you to be in the same list as

Jasper Carrot and Jim Davidson, but you were sandwiched between them.

-Was I really?

-You were, yeah.

How uncomfortable.

HE LAUGHS

To be honest, I - and I hate to hear myself saying this -

sometimes I do things because I think they'll be easy.

There we are, I've said it.

I was interested in that, though that's why you've done

so much guest and so much guest host stuff,

because it's that, it's not entirely down to you?

That's right. That's right.

Because it doesn't give me a massive sense of satisfaction

for my own personal little show to be a success.

If I go on TV and people say, "Oh, I saw her on that

"and she was very funny," that's enough for me, really.

And actually... I know people think I'm a weirdo,

but I don't really care about winning prizes either.

I'd much rather people just thought I was funny

than I won a prize for something, you know.

I don't know if you've read any of the books or

seen any of the many documentaries about Morecambe And Wise,

but that's an interesting case where just the pressure they were under.

I mean, everyone says that once they'd finish one Christmas show,

they literally started worrying about next year's.

-Oh, yeah.

-And could they make it the same way.

And to have it all resting on you is a huge,

huge weight in comedy, isn't it?

I think it is really, you know.

And if I...

That's not much of a life to me,

to immediately start worrying about the next thing you've got to do.

I think that that's, that's stressful

and it's not enjoyable, you know.

And you may say yes, but look they're on the telly,

everybody loved them, you know,

everyone laughed uproariously at them and they loved Eric Morecambe,

and so on. But if you're not happy

or you're anxious or you're stressed about it,

what good is that success to you really, because you don't enjoy it.

You know, and I know a lot of comics that spend their lives

being pissed off about the thing that's just happened,

or the thing that's just about to happen.

And they get to where they wanted to get

and then they realise it's not

quite as great as they thought it would be before they got there.

And I would much rather I was kind of doing what I like,

feeling relaxed about it and enjoying it,

rather than feeling stressed all the time about

whether something's going to work, really.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Good evening. Welcome to Have I Got News For You.

I'm Jo Brand.

In the news this week...

In the gardens at Balmoral, there are suspicions

that the sculptor may have run off with the cash as the queen unveils

a statue of her favourite corgi.

Olympic news...

And in East London,

cycling officials test out the new system to discourage false starts.

LAUGHTER

Which, for you, are the best and worst panel shows to do?

Erm...

I love doing Have I Got News For You, but only

since I've been hosting it, really.

Because the thing is, being a host gives you natural,

natural authority and as a panellist, you don't have that, really.

And Ian and Paul have been on it for so long

that they're just so comfortable with the way that it runs.

It's quite hard as a guest,

particularly if you've never done it before,

to break their patter, if you like.

To, you know, intervene.

And it's very hard as a comic if you say something

and it just falls completely flat.

And the audience just look at you like you're a piece of crap.

It doesn't encourage you to keep going, you know.

And that's why sometimes you'll watch a show like that

and a guest will hardly say anything for the first ten minutes.

And I can really understand how that happens.

I like doing QI.

The reason I liked doing QI is because Alan Davis is a very

good mate of mine, so it's kind of like semi-socialising for me.

I feel kind of more comfortable that someone I know very well is there.

Jo, what would you say is in fact the main

difference between men and women?

Is that men are really great and women are really shit?

LAUGHTER

-Oh now, Jo.

-Sorry that's the wrong way round.

LAUGHTER

I think it's that men are rubbish at multi-tasking

and women are very good at it.

LAUGHTER

And on the male/female balance in comedy business,

Danny Cohen, the BBC Director of television said recently that

every panel show, comedy panel or current affairs panel

must have at least one woman on it in future.

Do you think those sort of quotas matter or have any effect?

I... SHE SIGHS

I think it's a very difficult one

because I think all panel shows are different.

He's lumping them all in together, or maybe he's not,

but they do get lumped in together.

And actually, some are much easier to do than others

because some are much more democratic,

some are much more welcoming.

For example, if you take Mock The Week,

I've done Mock The Week with male performers who absolutely hated it

because they are mild mannered, sweet, polite people

who don't like elbowing their way into other people's jokes -

which is what you have to do on that show.

So again, it's a far more complex problem, I think.

And just adding a woman into the mix, it might work but I would say

you should add two in because then they can support each other.

And feel a bit more comfortable there's another woman there.

I think the problem with Mock The Week is there's too many panellists.

There's three comics on each panel and they don't

ever have anyone on, that's not a comic.

So, you know, all comics are quite competitive by their nature,

they have to be in a way.

But also you've got Dara as their host

and he's a stand-up as well.

So, you know, that's seven comics competing.

It's too much really, I think.

And I think that's the problem with it.

You mentioned earlier accepting some stuff because it's easy,

but would that apply to the talent show judging,

The Speaker and Splash?

Well, I think I accepted Splash because...

not just because it was easy, but because I do like to venture in to

arenas that I'm not terribly used to.

And I'm certainly not used to early evening ITV family shows.

So that is a bit of a challenge to me, not to do swearing,

not to be rude and just to kind of come across in a different way.

And what I liked about it, yes, was the lack of responsibility

to some extent, although because I was sandwiched between two serious

judges, I knew that I had to do jokes and that they had to be funny.

So I did have some responsibility, but it's a responsibility

that I'm used to, so I was kind of happy to take that on.

It was just hugely enjoyable. I love doing it.

But also as a judge, it seemed to me,

you set out to be constructive, not to be the cruel one.

Yeah, I...

I think I was hopefully constructive

and I don't particularly like being...

-Simon Cowell.

-No.

No, that's right. I don't like being Simon Cowell. I don't...

I have a huge ambivalence towards those shows

like the X Factor and particularly Britain's Got Talent because

I think they wheel people on who have mental health problems,

for people to laugh at, you know.

I feel very angry about that, really.

So, you know, it's easy for all of us

to take the piss out of someone who thinks they can sing

when they can't, you know.

And I think that's very cruel. So...

But I'm interested in, you have the professional expertise

and lots of people say this, but when you watch those kind

of shows, you do think that person is genuinely mentally ill?

Well, I mean the whole field of mental illness

is kind of quite complex in a way, because you, you know,

as well as people actually having a mental health issue

like say schizophrenia or depression,

there are lots of other different shades of mental health problems.

So someone might have a personality disorder,

they might have something called a schizoaffective disorder,

you know, it's all, there are shades and shades of it, but sadly...

Delusions as well presumably,

which clearly some people have on those shows, don't they?

Absolutely, but you know sometimes delusions can be a symptom

of some schizophrenia or someone can just be delusional,

but not necessarily be a symptom of mental illness

about a talent that they might have.

And I think in some ways that's equally sad.

And I don't really understand why their families can't tell them

the truth, or are they so socially isolated

they haven't got family and friends to tell them the truth?

But I think that's actually more and more a feature of society really,

is holding people up to ridicule for one reason or another.

And Splash got hammered by the critics, as you may know.

-Yes, it did.

-Did that upset you?

No, mainly because I don't know what they said

because I didn't read it, but also...

I'm kind of a bit used to being hammered by my critics.

You know, and in fact, if I get a nice review,

it's always a pleasant surprise.

No, I didn't mind at all.

Are there any shows that you won't appear on?

Erm...

Oh, I don't know. No, I don't think so.

You've never said no to a show?

No, that's terrible, isn't it?

HE LAUGHS

I'm such a tart!

But my thing is say yes to everything and then if it's awful

don't do it again. Try everything.

Although you say in one of the books that your agent tells you the truth.

She comes to everything and she tells you

whether it was good or not?

Yeah, my agent and my husband.

I think there are some stars that are so big that it's very

hard for people to say that they're a bit rubbish.

-You have named Madonna in this context.

-Right, what did I say?

-You said, when you...

-She's too big for people to tell her...

-When you get to the level of Madonna...

-Oh, I see.

-..people just say you're great.

-You're great. Yeah.

Well, I think that's true.

And I think that's bad luck on Madonna, you know,

because we all need someone to tell us.

I'd be quite happy to tell her, but she's never asked me.

No, but you see, Madonna needs your husband and your agent.

-That's the answer.

-She's welcome to them!

HE LAUGHS No, I'm joking.

A great artistic endeavour, I think, Getting On, which must be one of the

most satisfying things that you've done, isn't it?

Yes, it is. I mean, it's...it's...

it was a real team effort, Getting On. From a lot of people.

From Jo and Vicki, who I have to say...

We should just explain, because you wrote and co-starred

with Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan.

That's right, and they wrote it as well.

And they did a huge amount of donkey work because

it sort of transpired, again, it was one of those things where we

pitched it and they went, "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know...

"Oh, yeah, all right. But can we have it in two months?"

And I was chock-a-block, and so they ended up having to do

most of the research, going to speak to Unison, all that sort of thing.

So, I mean, they are hugely responsible for the

brilliance of the scripts.

And, of course, great in it as well.

So Unison, the health union?

Yes, because we consulted about...

Because we all thought it was very important that it was very accurate

and very up to date.

I told you, you can't operate it by yourself.

She was going to do a shit in the bath.

Better a shit in the bath than a stitch in the chin.

Well, thank you, Confucius.

Look, what are you going to put on the critical incident form?

Shall I say that Pippa distracted me?

Yeah, definitely.

Why don't we say that Hilary should have gotten the hoist mended.

We had to use all the hoists, didn't we, because we had fulfil...

That's right.

Because all the patients, they had complaints about them stinking.

Look, I mean, it's definitely Hilary's responsibility.

He's your boyfriend, why can't you go and butter him up,

or whatever it is he likes, and get us off the hook?

He does owe me...

£13.70. So...

Yeah, OK. If I get the timing right, I think

he might not take any further action.

We're getting on brilliantly at the moment.

-He tried to grope me outside the MDT this morning.

-God, I feel sick.

OK. Deep down he is nuts about me.

He's certainly nuts.

You'd done a bit of geriatric nursing, hadn't you?

Yeah, but in the 1980s.

And although the process of it is not that different these days,

the structure of the NHS and the whole tiers of management

are totally different. So, we kind of needed to know all that.

But the drudgery and, you know, miserability, if that's a word,

which it's not, of it all were exactly the same really, yeah.

And the writing of it, you wrote it the three of you,

you were physically there together?

No, what we did at the beginning was,

they wrote together and then sent me the scripts

and I layered stuff on top or moved stuff around or whatever it was.

Until series three, when we each wrote two episodes.

I mean, they did want us to do more,

and I think the door is still open if we want to.

But Jo and Vicki have gone off to do a series about dog walkers,

I hate animals.

The dedication of Look Back In Hunger, the first memoir,

is "To anyone out there who hasn't done what they want to do yet"

which I was very struck by.

It's hard to imagine other lives, but did you ever think about

if you'd have stayed being a psychiatric nurse,

whether you could or would've been happy?

I do think about that a lot.

And I think that I would've been happy.

I don't think it would've been particularly because I was

a psychiatric nurse, it would've been because I'm quite a happy person.

I like people, I get on with people

and I think I could pretty much do anything

and be fairly contented.

And I always think if my career fell apart and I, you know,

I lost all my money, how would I feel?

I'd feel all right really because I'd find something else to do.

You know, I've done ridiculously awful jobs, like menial jobs,

I've worked in a TB hospital clearing up poo,

I've been a nurse, you know,

I've done everything that most people would not want to do.

And I would be happy to do any of that. It wouldn't bother me.

You have been quoted as saying that whereas some women

and indeed some men, they want to be parents,

that's what they want, they imagine that happening,

that it wasn't something you'd craved.

No, I don't...

I have friends, for example, who used to say to me,

"I want a husband," right.

And I would go, well it's not like going to a shop

and getting a settee.

It is a kind of developing situation, so you might get a husband

and then after six months, they might have an affair with someone.

Or they might not like you any more, or you might be bored by them.

You know, you can't just want things for the sake of some fantasy

image in your head that you think sounds great.

Now, after puberty you left the oral phase.

Ooh, sounds fruity. What's the oral phase?

This is when the mouth is the chief organ of pleasurable experience.

Don't think I ever left that phase.

LAUGHTER

You then entered the genital phase.

In the genital phase, the mouth is...the mouth is...

no longer important.

Not as far as he's concerned.

LAUGHTER

And soon, of course, you'll be entering the anal phase.

Oh, dream on, matey.

LAUGHTER

Two books of memoirs, which are striking for the fact that

you say almost nothing about your husband and children.

Was that deliberate?

Yeah, that is deliberate.

Because I think if you're a so-called celebrity,

the part of the world in which you can live in comfortably and privately

shrinks ever inwards, really.

Until it gets to your house, shall we say.

And that's why for example, I don't...

I don't tend to like doing interviews for tabloids.

I don't really... I don't do Twitter,

I don't do Facebook or anything like that.

It may well be because I'm an elderly woman and I'm a bit

of a luddite, but also it's because I just feel I want somewhere in

my life I can go that's private, that I don't have to talk about, really.

Do you keep your family away from showbiz?

Well, my, I, you know...

I believe that old showbiz adage, which is

there's no such thing as a free lunch.

And so, that, to me, involves situations where, you know,

sometimes I get some really amazing invitations.

Like would I like to go down the Thames

on a dragon boat with my children?

And my children would love that, you know,

and then go to the premier of some Disney film after they've

stuffed themselves with E numbers on a dragon boat.

HE CHUCKLES

But the problem to me, with that is that you've got to pay them back

for their favour. And what that means is

me and my kids appearing in photos for OK Magazine.

Now a lot of people go, "Well, what's the problem with that?"

Why do you care that your kids are on show

to anyone that wants to look at them?

Well, because I do care, because I don't want everyone

to look at my kids and sort of look at my family group,

or to look at my house and where I sit down and watch TV or where I eat.

Because I just think, well why is that anyone's business except mine?

And I just simply don't understand the leap

from privacy to throwing the whole lot open.

I don't understand the people that do that and why they do it

and why they think it's all right.

And particularly, people that actually,

like the Kardashians or people that do reality shows

like the Osbournes, you know, they may argue that they're doing

a kind of version of their reality and it's not really what it's like.

But to me, once the cameras are rolling you are doing a version of

you because everybody forgets that the cameras are there eventually.

And everybody is themselves, I think.

So far, as we've discussed in this interview, it's been stand-up,

TV, books, is that how you would see it going in the future,

a combination of those things?

Yeah, I mean my favourite is stand-up really,

and I'd be perfectly happy just to tour round small theatres

for the rest of my time as an employed person.

But, you know...

I never had a kind of five year plan, or a ten year plan or whatever.

I just assessed stuff as and when it came along, really.

And that's kind of what I've always done and I think

A, if you're a woman, and B, if you've got a family,

that's the only way you can do it, really.

Because I think pursuing a comedy career to the

exclusion of everything else, which is what some comics do,

which sadly means the exclusion of their family as well,

is it doesn't lead to a satisfying existence, really.

So I tend to put the family first

and, if the comedy stuff fits in, great.

But if it doesn't then I wouldn't do it.

-Jo Brand, thank you very much.

-Thank you very much.

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