I've faced the hecklers for 40 years.. but it's nothing to what you get on the wards

Comic Jo on learning to tackle abuse

- SANJEETA BAINS

One thing comic Jo Brand has mastered in 40 years of dealing with hecklers, body shamers and bullies is the art of the barbed putdown.

So when it comes to career highlights, it is not playing capacity crowds or big TV specials that make her most proud. It is a chance encounter with one particular fan.

She says: "A woman in her early 80s came up to me in central London. She said, 'I saw you many, many years ago and I remembered all your best putdowns.

"I've used them so many times with people that have been rude to me or shouted at me and they've just been brilliant, so thank you."

Jo developed her thick skin and sharp tongue long before she joined the stand-up circuit as a plus-size woman in a very male world.

It was her 10 years as a psychiatric nurse, first at Cefn Coed Hospital in Swansea and then Maudsley Hospital, south London, that really gave her the skills to bring down the bullies.

Jo, 66, says: "I've had [criticism] for nearly 40 years. I've been spat at, had drinks thrown at me. But having been a nurse on locked wards, I was used to getting some much better abuse, to be honest with you. Much more imaginative and much more cutting, you know?