Jo Brand I REMEMBER…

Bullish, ballsy and brilliantly funny, Jo Brand’s droll, self-effacing, brazen, often expletive-ridden style of comedy isn’t to everyone’s taste. Yet in a lifetime during which the 62-year-old south Londoner has endured bullying, unexpected motherhood and what amounts to almost an entire parallel existence as psychiatric nurse, Brand is surely entitled to speak as she finds… and so she does

I WAS BORN IN CLAPHAM, SOUTH LONDON. I had two brothers, Bill and Matt, and was positioned somewhat uncomfortably in the middle. We used to spend time playing around the Common. When I was still young we moved to Kent to a little village called St. Mary’s Platt, which is about eight miles from the metropolis that is Sevenoaks.

My mother was something of a frustrated housewife. She was very clever and could have gone on to have a career in something cerebral, but instead fell pregnant and spent the next decade bringing us lot up. That would explain the fact she was strict… or rather, she wanted things done in a proper way. My dad wasn’t as serious about life. He was a hard worker, yes, but went about things in a more casual way. Perhaps that’s where I got my laissez-faire attitude from.

THE FAMILY UNIT COMBINED TO MAKE ME WHO I AM. Being between two competitive boys accelerated a sense of wanting to stand on my own two feet, while as a group we were outgoing, ambitious and slightly un-PC, although well behaved—my mum wouldn’t have it any other way.

AS A KID I HATED SHOPPING. I would rather have been doing anything; I still would—it’s such a waste of time. I’ve very rarely had positive shopping experiences. They’re only entertaining when something unexpected happens, or when someone loses all sense of perspective.

I’m referencing there a trip to a shop in West Dulwich called The Dulwich Trader I made with Ruby Wax. I could not get her out of the place. She virtually bought the whole shop, she thought it was absolutely wonderful.

SCHOOL WAS LARGELY AN UNREMARKABLE EXPERIENCE FOR ME. There were the usual incidents that may or may not have shaped me into who I went on to become, but most of my later years were spent on the bloody school bus to Tunbridge Wells Grammar School.