Jo Brand

Jo Brand
Jo Brand at the BBC Magazines Awards for Excellence
Birth name	Josephine Grace Brand
Born	(1957-07-23) 23 July 1957 London, United Kingdom
Medium	Stand-up, television, film
Nationality	British
Years active	1986–present
Genres	Observational comedy
Subject(s)	Marriage, Politics
Spouse	Bernie Bourke (1997–present)
Notable works and roles	Getting On

Josephine Grace "Jo" Brand (born 23 July 1957) is a BAFTA winning English comedian, writer, and actress. Commencing her entertainment career with a move from psychiatric nursing to the alternative comedy stand-up scene and early performances on Saturday Live, she went on to appear on The Brain Drain, Channel 4's Jo Brand Through the Cakehole, Getting On and various television appearances including as a regular guest on QI. In 2003, she was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.

Early life

Jo Brand was born 23 July 1957 in Wandsworth, London. Her mother was a social worker and her father a structural engineer. Brand is the middle of three children, with two brothers. When she was about four, the family moved to the village of St Mary's Platt near Sevenoaks in Kent, and a year later to Benenden. Brand was educated at St Mary's Platt Primary School, Benenden Village Primary School, Tunbridge Wells Girls' Grammar School until the age of 16,Hastings High School for Girls and Bexhill College. After work in a pub, for Barnardo's and as a nursing assistant in a residential unit for adults with learning difficulties she took a joint social science degree with a Registered Mental Nurse qualification at Brunel University. She then worked as a psychiatric nurse for ten years, at the South London Bethlem, Cefn Coed Hospital in Swansea and Maudsley Hospital in South London.

Comedy career

Brand was persuaded by agent Malcolm Hardee to begin a career in stand-up comedy, where she acquired the stage name "The Sea Monster". She was part of the British alternative comedy movement, working in London alternative comedy clubs, and appearing initially on the Saturday Live television show.

At her first gig she faced "an audience from hell" and, waiting to perform last, drank seven pints of lager. She thus faced her first live audience with a bursting bladder. As she ascended the stage, a male heckler started shouting, "Fuck off, you fat cow" and kept up the abuse until her performance finished. There was no applause.

Brand's early style involved her delivering jokes in a bored monotone, one line at a time, with pauses in between. It drew heavily from pop culture and the media, with many jokes containing references to well-known celebrities and public figures. With her Doc Marten boots, her large size, and her short hair, her image remained the same for most of the 1980s and 1990s. Her appearance and material led to false rumours that she was a lesbian.

Jo Brand in 1994 in Belfast

In 1993 she became a resident panellist, along with Tony Hawks, on BBC monologue show The Brain Drain. Her transition into mainstream television continued when she obtained her own series on Channel 4, Jo Brand Through the Cakehole, co-written with comedy writer Jim Miller, who was already her main stand-up writer. She has had several solo television series, and presented shows such as Jo Brand's Commercial Breakdown. She had a cameo appearance in the 1994 episode of Absolutely Fabulous, "New Best Friend", and also appeared on Star Spell, a spin off from Hard Spell in 2004. Her television success continued with guest appearances on shows such as Have I Got News for You and QI, to the extent where she became the most frequently appearing guest on the latter, appearing in a total of 29 episodes. As a fan of Countdown, she achieved an ambition when she was invited to appear in the show's "Dictionary Corner" as the celebrity guest. She later became a friend of the host, Richard Whiteley, and after his death in 2005 attended his memorial service at York Minster. She has since appeared on Countdown several more times.

In 2007, Brand narrated Laughter & Tears: The Les Dawson Story, a documentary tribute to Les Dawson, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 2 in October 2007.

Brand took part in the first celebrity version of Comic Relief does Fame Academy. In 2007, she appeared as a celebrity contestant on Comic Relief Does The Apprentice, again to raise money for Comic Relief. In 2009 she participated in Let's Dance for Comic Relief, another Comic Relief fundraiser, dancing as Britney Spears, reaching the final. She has more recently been a judge on the show.

Brand appeared as a judge in the BBC2 series The Speaker in April 2009. She offered advice, along with John Amaechi and Jeremy Stockwell, in the eight-part series charting the search for "Britain's Best Young Speaker".

Brand co-wrote and starred in the BBC Four sitcom Getting On alongside Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine, for which she won the 2011 Best TV Comedy Actress BAFTA award. The series was directed by Peter Capaldi and is a gritty and realistic satire on the current state of the NHS, set in a geriatric ward.

In 2010, Brand took part in Channel 4's Comedy Gala, a benefit show held in aid of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, filmed live at the O2 Arena in London on 30 March.

In 2011, Brand presented Jo Brand's Big Splash, a television programme where she performs a stand-up routine and visits people with a love of water. Big Splash is produced by Brand's production company, What Larks! Productions.

She played the Demon Dinner Lady in the 2011 British live-action 3D family comedy film Horrid Henry: The Movie. Jo provided a voiceover for the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre's 2011 Pantomime Aladdin.

Other work

In 2003, she was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy. In 2004, Brand appeared in a special episode of What Not to Wear, where fashion gurus Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine gave her a makeover. In March 2006, Jo appeared on Parkinson with Daniel Day-Lewis and Jane Fonda. Brand is known to be a big fan of Crystal Palace Football Club, and has sponsored the match ball for games in the past.

Brand appeared on the 25 March 2007 episode of Play It Again where she was required to learn how to play the organ in just four months. This was in preparation to perform Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor for an audience of 8,000 people at London's Royal Albert Hall on the second largest pipe organ in the United Kingdom. In order to practise her performance, she played at a church wedding, and accompanied dancers at Blackpool Tower. Prior to this, her only experiences with musical instruments had been childhood piano and violin lessons.

Books

Brand has written a number of commercially successful books:

• A Load of Old Balls: Men in History (London: Simon & Schuster, 1994). ISBN 0-671-71385-X
• A Load of Old Ball Crunchers: Women in History (London: Simon & Schuster, 1996). ISBN 0-684-81695-4
• Mental (with Helen Griffin. HTV Sherman Plays series. Cardiff: Drama Association of Wales, 1996). ISBN 1-898740-41-0
• Sorting Out Billy (novel. London: Review, 2004). ISBN 0-7553-2336-X
• It's Different for Girls (novel. London: Headline Review, 2005). ISBN 0-7553-2229-0
• The More You Ignore Me (novel. London: Headline Review, 2009). ISBN 0-7553-2231-2
• Look Back in Hunger. The Autobiography (London: Headline Review, 2009). ISBN 0-7553-5525-3
• Can't Stand Up For Sitting Down. The Autobiography – Part 2 (London: Headline Review, 2010). ISBN 978-0-7553-5526-6

Sorting Out Billy and The More You Ignore Me deal with socially dysfunctional behaviour and draw on her experience in psychiatric nursing. It's Different for Girls looks at growing up in a one-horse seaside town.

Personal life

Jo Brand at Bonkers Fest 2007

Brand married Bernie Bourke, a psychiatric nurse, in 1997 in Shropshire. She has two daughters, Maisie and Eliza.

Brand delivered a guest lecture on the subject of psychiatric nursing for the University of Derby Psychology Society in 1997 in return for a donation to Derby Rape Crisis. Also in 1997 she opened, at Lambeth Hospital in South London, the first major exhibition of The Adamson Collection since the death of Edward Adamson, the pioneer of Art Therapy, in 1996.

On July 17, 2007, Brand was awarded an honorary doctorate for her former work as a psychiatric nurse from the University of Glamorgan. Professor Donna Mead, Dean of the School of Health, Sport and Science at the University of Glamorgan who read Brand up for the award commented, “Jo incorporates much of her experience working in the field of mental health into her current work as a comedian. This has increased awareness of the work done by nurses in the mental health field. She has also used her experiences of working with individuals with conditions such as Alzheimer’s to promote awareness of and raise funds for the Alzheimer’s Society.”

In February 2009, Brand was among a group of British entertainers who wrote an open letter to The Times of London in support of the Bahá'í leaders then on trial in Iran.

She is a supporter of the charity ActionAid and has taken part in fundraising events for the organisation.

Politics

Brand is a staunch supporter of the Labour Party. She was still a contributor to and supporter of the party in 2010. She is a patron of International Animal Rescue and the Prader-Willi Syndrome Association, as well as the National Self Harm Network, otherwise known as NSHN, and London Nightline. She is the president of The Ectopic Pregnancy Trust. Brand introduced and spoke at the celebration of Michael Foot's life at the Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, on 8 November 2010. She is also a republican. In January 2012 she gave the Annual South Shields annual lecture at Harton Technology College alongside the MP for the town, David Miliband.

Awards and nominations

• British Comedy Award 1992: Top comedy club performer
• British Comedy Award 1995: Best stand-up comic
• British Comedy Award 2010: Best female TV comic
• BAFTA 2011: Best Female Performance in a Comedy Role.
• British Comedy Award 2012: Best female TV comic

Stand-up DVDs

• Barely Live (24 November 2003)

External links

• Jo Brand at IMDb
• Jo Brand: Me? Singing? I couldn't get arrested? Interview by Jasper Rees, The Telegraph, 30 January 2008.
• Keep on running: Jo Brand Interview by Tarquin Cooper, The Telegraph, 9 April 2005.
• Article about Brand's career for TV show The Speaker, BBC website
• BBC Interview by Matt Stadlen – Five Minutes With: Jo Brand (2009–08–14)