Jo Brand Quotes & Sayings

God, what a depressing day that was and what an irony that Britain's first female prime minister had to be Margaret Thatcher. She was the woman who asked, 'What has feminism ever done for me?' Well, dear, if you need to ask that question then you're obviously not very bright — 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've been breastfeeding for two years. I could light the gas ring with my nipples. — 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

I must be an anorexic because an anorexic looks in the mirror and sees a fat person. — 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

Having children is fab. They keep me young and make me get up in the morning. — 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

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

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

It's very difficult to learn not to take nasty heckles personally. — Jo Brand

I like to read my diary occasionally to remind myself what a miserable, alienated old sod I used to be. — 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 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

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

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

I took my husband to the hospital yesterday to have 17 stitches out - that'll teach him to buy me a sewing kit for my birthday. — Jo Brand

I just don't like travelling very much. — Jo Brand

I'm not really a churchy person, although I do think Jesus was a good bloke. — 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

Birthdays are nature's way of telling you to eat more cake. — 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

I don't hold any candle for drama versus comedy. — 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

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

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 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

I've never been a fan of euphemism. — 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

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

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

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

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

Wild men are so enormously attractive. — 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

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

To me, a politician's job is to listen to constituents' problems and try to sort them out. — Jo Brand

An overweight guy went to the doctor who advised him to try a keep fit DVD. But the guy said he couldn't be bothered. "Well" suggested the doctor, "try something that leaves you a little short of breath." So the buy took up smoking. — 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 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 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 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

My dad's a very sensitive man, but as the archetypal rebellious teenager, I didn't realise that. — 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

Whatever situation you are in, that is what is normal for you. — 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

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

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

I did try when I wasn't doing the singing to do as much comedy as I could because I thought with Comic Relief you are duty bound to anyway. — Jo Brand

The big bad monster wasn't green and hiding under the bed, it wore tasteless floral prints, bright scarlet lipstick and sat in the kitchen smoking and saying 'bollocks' alot. — 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 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

People can forgive each other. — 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

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 think there's a far more general audience now because I've done more populist stuff on telly. — 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

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

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

You look across the board at comedy quiz shows, and they are mainly hosted by men. — Jo Brand

When I was a nurse I never had much money, and I was still happy then. — Jo Brand

Once you get labelled, people expect you to behave within the very narrow confines of that label. — Jo Brand

You know it's time for a New Year's resolution to lose weight when you step on a talking scale and it says, One at a time, please. — 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

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

I don't like doing stand-up, because I don't like standing up. — 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

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

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

If you want to get a pet for your child, I suggest a chicken so that when they get bored of it after a couple of days at least you can have a nice roast dinner. — Jo Brand

Being Christian towards poor people means trying to improve their lives and give them back some self-respect. — 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 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

I like to shock people. — 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

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

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 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

Inside every fat person there's a thin person looking to get out - They've just eaten them — 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

What could be funnier than a fat person trying to run a marathon? — 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

Everything becomes magnified at night. Sounds travel in a different way, it's dark, and everything seems far more spooky. — Jo Brand

It's actually very hard when you're settled in one place to completely uproot yourself and go. — Jo Brand

I read that book 'Fat is a Feminist Issue', got a bit desperate halfway through and ate it. — Jo Brand

I'm a real Kentish maid, you know. — 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

It wasn't a conscious effort to have kids later. It was just the way life goes. — 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 look like Julian Clary on steroids. — 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

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

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

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

When I was at school you got an overall general education on many things, even just basic facts. — 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

Men are fantastic - as a concept. — 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 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