When Jo Brand came to London she studied then practiced as a psychiatric nurse. This part of her life always features heavily in her stand up routines. She came onto our television screens in the ‘90s on the Saturday Live show and then in her own series Through The Cakehole. Jo Brand came onto the scene at the time comedy was having a shake up; variety and the mothering law jokes were on the way out and jokes about real life told in the comedy club were in. Comedy evolved from this era into what we see and hear now. She was and is one of the pioneers of comedy and an icon for women. She is one of the most memorable British female comics ever.
Her new book and autobiography ‘look back in hunger’ was published on the 1st October 2009. With a sharp eye for the absurd and in her own unique voice she tells her story for the first time: What possessed her to become a professional comedian in the cut-throat world of stand-up comedy after ten years as a psychiatric nurse? How did she deal with late night drunken audiences? Raised in middle class comfort, she left home in her teens to live with someone entirely inappropriate. Her parents were aghast at her behaviour and attempted to rein in her excesses, finally giving up when she demonstrated that she was not headed for the life of a nun. From her early years growing up in a small south coast town with two brothers who toughened her up, to emerging on stage as ‘The Sea Monster’, Jo Brand tells it like it is with wit, candour and a wonderful sense that life can be ridiculous but there’s always a funny side.
In a recent interview with Jo Brand, The Guardian reports Jo Brand’s autobiography begins with an incident most people would be shaken by even if they had just dreamed it: “she is standing in front of a half-inattentive, half-abusive drunken crowd when a man at the back begins screaming death threats and misogyny. Brand attempts some jokes, some putdowns, but none of it works – he just keeps going. Eventually she walks off, and has to be talked out of beating him over the head with one of the several bottles of Pils she’s imbibed before the show, for courage”. Look Back in Hunger, Jo Brands autobiography is a yarn characterised by a mortal fear of being earnest; of scaring the comedy audience horses with more than two sentences of anything too dark or thoughtful.
The following is a small extract from her book published by Headline and as featured in the Guardian:
The day dad burned my clothes
My friends and I decided we’d like to go out. Someone suggested Last Tango in Paris, the sexy, shocking Marlon Brando vehicle with some very rude scenes in it. I knew my parents would never agree, so I had to concoct an alibi. I told them I was going to see a friend to study. They looked suspicious but accepted my story, and it was at this point I made a cardinal error. I forgot to tell Jane, the friend in question, that she was my alibi.
Off I went to the pictures with seven teenage boys of varying scruffiness. Alcohol and dope were hidden in rucksacks and we all sat in the darkness, feeling deliciously out of touch with reality as the ribald Parisian tale unfolded in front of us.
It seems to be my lot in life to be unlucky at moments of extreme deception, because after I had left, Jane phoned my house to see what I was doing, having forgotten I said I was going to the cinema. On being questioned by my mum she let slip where I was and who with.
I came out of the cinema, giggling and joking, to find both my mum and dad sitting in the car right in front of us, looking extraordinarily unhappy, to put it mildly. Knowing how scary my dad could be, I felt like legging it up the road and never coming back. But he grabbed me. There were some half-hearted attempts on behalf of my escorts to prevent me being hauled off, but they were no match for my dad, who could comfortably be described as incandescent at that point. His glowering anger was too much for any semi-stoned hippy. They melted away……
To find out what happens when her parents get her home and other stories from her life get the book, out now.
The Guardian, Only Thin Peopls Ask Me That, Aida Edemariam, 26/009/09
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