Jo Brand Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.'

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.

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.

I think I'd concentrate on young women - particularly girls at school - and I would try and build into school curriculums much more education about relationships and how girls (and boys) can handle them: stuff about consent and that sort of thing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Wild men are so enormously attractive.

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

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.

My ex-boyfriend can round last night, which was weird because I didn't know he was in a coma.

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!

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I'm a real Kentish maid, you know.

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

The way to a man's heart is through his hanky pocket with a breadknife.

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.

Privatisation splits hospital services into increasingly small packages.

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.

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

Men are fantastic - as a concept.

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.

Having done a normal job for 10 years, as a psychiatric nurse dealing with emergencies, I know what terrible, hopeless lives some people have. So in many ways, it's great to be able to wield the financial power that I can, and do gigs, fundraisers or give money. I feel lucky I can help out.

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.