Words matter. These are the best Jo Brand Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I’m a Luddite with computers, and I’m slightly worried about being hacked as well.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When you have children, your house smells very unpleasant all the time.
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.
I’m sure some cynical people would point to that as the main reason for doing it for a lot of people.
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.
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.
I cannot abide anyone treating another human being like a piece of dirt, whatever the context.
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.’
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
The way to a man’s heart is through his hanky pocket with a breadknife.
Once you get labelled, people expect you to behave within the very narrow confines of that label.
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.
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.
I don’t hold any candle for drama versus comedy.
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.
I used to get nervous about three weeks before a gig… now I’ve managed to condense it down to a manageable ten minutes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Each generation has a backlash against the generation before.
Television provokes strong opinions, and sometimes we try a bit too hard to appeal to everyone.
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.
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.
Anything is good if it’s made of chocolate.
Everything becomes magnified at night. Sounds travel in a different way, it’s dark, and everything seems far more spooky.
To me, a politician’s job is to listen to constituents’ problems and try to sort them out.
I don’t like doing stand-up, because I don’t like standing up.
Men are fantastic – as a concept.
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.
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 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.
There are lots of people who believe that caricature of me the tabloids created, so they think they don’t like me.
Let’s face it: I am not a professional runner.
When I was a nurse I never had much money, and I was still happy then.
The funny thing is, I don’t actually think of myself as fat at all. I don’t think I am. Not really.
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.
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.
It’s actually very hard when you’re settled in one place to completely uproot yourself and go.
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.
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.
Being Christian towards poor people means trying to improve their lives and give them back some self-respect.
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.
I am a hip-hop artist, as you probably know. My hip-hop name is Big Smalls.
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.
Does anyone really go into nursing intending to be apathetic, cold and removed from suffering? I find that very difficult to believe.
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.
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.
I must be an anorexic because an anorexic looks in the mirror and sees a fat person.
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.
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.
Having children is fab. They keep me young and make me get up in the morning.
Even nice things don’t make you happy when you’re tired.
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