Jo Brand Quotes - Page 5

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.'

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.'

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.

People can forgive each other.

I look like Julian Clary on steroids.

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.

I think a lot of women are incredibly tough and they're just really admirable. Especially the way that, given what they've got, they just manage to carry on.

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.

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 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.

I know there are certain men that hate women or don't like women, and in order to make women feel small, they tend to isolate them when they bully them. And women are often humiliated by it and feel they can't do anything about it. So my advice to women would be: there's always support around for those sorts of things and if you feel you're isolated in any way, or being bullied, you must talk to someone about it.

There's something people do to you when they bully you that makes you feel like you're on your own. But don't keep things inside, it's really damaging if you do.

I tried to eat better too, but when you're on tour you literally just eat some hideous pork pie on the motorway on the way to a show. It's a really unhealthy lifestyle: you're up late, drinking loads of coffee to stay awake, drinking loads of alcohol because you're socialising with people.

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.

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.

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.

I think it's so easy when you have children just to turn your focus inward on your family and because, when they're young, you don't sleep very much, you're walking around like a zombie most of the time anyway. It's a really important part of my life to have good friends, you have to work quite hard to keep the relationships going but it's worth it.

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.

On the whole, you can have a private life and be famous. But when milestones happen in your life like having children or getting married, privacy goes out of the window.

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.

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.

I'm a real Kentish maid, you know.

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.

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.

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?