Jo Brand Quotes

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. What could be funnier than a fat person trying to run a marathon?

Jo Brand

#4. I'm a Luddite with computers, and I'm slightly worried about being hacked as well.

Jo Brand

#5. There's lots of different feminist groups. It's not as straightforward as just looking like a plumber.

Jo Brand

#6. Television provokes strong opinions, and sometimes we try a bit too hard to appeal to everyone.

Jo Brand

#7. 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

#8. Even nice things don't make you happy when you're tired.

Jo Brand

#9. 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

#10. When you get to know someone, you find there's something nasty in their woodshed.

Jo Brand

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.

Jo Brand

#14. 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

#15. You look across the board at comedy quiz shows, and they are mainly hosted by men.

Jo Brand

#16. 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

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

Jo Brand

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. I just don't like travelling very much.

Jo Brand

#21. There are lots of people who believe that caricature of me the tabloids created, so they think they don't like me.

Jo Brand

#22. When you have children, your house smells very unpleasant all the time.

Jo Brand

#23. 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

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. 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

#27. 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

#28. 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

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. 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

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. It's very difficult to learn not to take nasty heckles personally.

Jo Brand

#35. I am a hip-hop artist, as you probably know. My hip-hop name is Big Smalls.

Jo Brand

#36. When I was a nurse my favourite assignment was the anorexic ward. I sometimes ate as many as seventeen dinners

Jo Brand

#37. 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

#38. I never ever take into consideration the consequences of my actions until it's too late.

Jo Brand

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

Jo Brand

#40. 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

#41. I'm a real Kentish maid, you know.

Jo Brand

#42. I think self-esteem is fluid. It's not a fixed state, and so some days are better than others.

Jo Brand

#43. 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

#44. Fat people are brilliant in bed. If I'm sitting on top of you, who's going to argue?

Jo Brand

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

Jo Brand

#46. I think it's really important to be kind, especially to people whose lives are grim - I try hard to cheer people up in as many ways as I can - if all else fails - I tell 'em a joke!

Jo Brand

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

Jo Brand

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

Jo Brand

#49. 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

#50. I went on the pill when I was 16, put on four stone ... so that proved to be a very effective contraceptive.

Jo Brand

#51. I think it's difficult, if you're a quite private person like I am, to write about your life very intimately.

Jo Brand

#52. 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

#53. 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

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

Jo Brand

#55. 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

#56. 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

#57. 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

#58. 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

#59. Does anyone really go into nursing intending to be apathetic, cold and removed from suffering? I find that very difficult to believe.

Jo Brand

#60. 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

#61. 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

#62. 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

#63. 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

#64. 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

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

Jo Brand

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

Jo Brand

#67. 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

#68. 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

#69. 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

#70. 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

#71. 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

#72. 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

#73. 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

#74. People can forgive each other.

Jo Brand

#75. 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

#76. 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

#77. I think some people ramp a side of themselves up for performance purposes.

Jo Brand

#78. I've been breastfeeding for two years. I could light the gas ring with my nipples.

Jo Brand

#79. 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

#80. It's got too much hard work slapping them and telling them to shut up.

Jo Brand

#81. 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

#82. 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

#83. 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

#84. Men are fantastic - as a concept.

Jo Brand

#85. There are 10-20 times more male comics than female comics; it's something to do with the social structure of society.

Jo Brand

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

Jo Brand

#87. One thing Christians do have in common is that they can't help coming across as smug.

Jo Brand

#88. 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

#89. 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

#90. 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

#91. 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

#92. Universities want to recruit the students that they believe will best represent the university while in school and beyond. Students with a robust social media presence and clearly defined personal brand stand to become only more influential.

Amy Jo Martin

#93. 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

#94. 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

#95. 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

#96. The comedian sticks as religiously to her theme as a dancer sticks to a diet.

Jo Brand

#97. British ferries have stopped transporting live animals to the Continent. This has made it very difficult for England fans to get to Away matches.

Jo Brand

#98. 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

#99. 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

#100. 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