Can't Stand Up for Sitting Down

by Jo Brand

  Having a baby is one of those times and I found it difficult that I got weird attention during that period. It is true (as I mention on stage) that someone did actually come into the labour suite while I was in the middle of things, as it were, and ask for my autograph. This is bad enough, but the fact that it was a doctor, to me made it even worse.

  I was once at our local hospital in the Outpatients Department waiting for an appointment. As usual I was in a corner, face in a magazine trying to be unobtrusive when a nurse — in her fifties, I would estimate — came and stood next to me, pointed down at my head and shouted, ‘Look everyone, it’s that comedian off the telly!’ God, I was so embarrassed I didn’t know what to do for the best. 1 smiled weakly and just hoped she’d piss off. However, she went and got a piece of paper and made a big show of getting my autograph. So much for patient confidentiality.

  I suppose when I’m out and about it is sensible to expect one or two people to recognise me and to be prepared and have my nice face on. Although we’re all the same and some days we don’t feel like putting a nice face on, I just have to work a bit harder.

  I do draw the line at some things and I was a bit pissed off when I had been at the local dry cleaner’s to discover that some silly cow of a journalist had been standing behind me and noted down all the items I’d handed in for cleaning. Her article appeared in the paper the next day Not only that, she’d taken the piss out of my clothes and remarked on how inappropriate they were for a woman of my age. I didn’t exactly hand in a gimp mask and a fur bikini so I don’t know what she was on about. Revenge is a dish best eaten cold they say and I’m sure our paths will cross at some point in the future and enable me to remonstrate in my own, very special way.

  The fundamental problem I think we have with the press is one of competing perspectives. Many people assume that the newspapers are there to report the actual news. In fact, this doesn’t seem to be true, because lots of newspapers are just comics for grown-ups and are there to entertain rather than inform. Also, each newspaper’s output is dictated, firstly by whoever the owner is, and secondly whoever the Editor is.

  I don’t think it even occurs to a lot of people how obsessionally selective different papers are about what is ‘the news’ and how they present it. So, one also finds a strong political perspective in papers, which is kind of hidden beneath the surface under the guise of faithful news reporting. And as most people tend to buy a paper which buoys up and expresses their views, they just end up reading what they want to hear.

  My interactions with the press can be categorised as:

  1. Unsolicited articles or papped photos.

  2. Prearranged interviews to promote particular projects.

  3. The vile, vomitous outpourings of self-regulated monsters. Oh, I beg your pardon, that’s not very objective of me. I mean, of course, TV critics.

  Let’s start with unsolicited articles that are beyond one’s control. This can be pretty frustrating and my approach is to ignore them. There’s nothing you can do about it, so why worry? On occasion, people I know will mention they have seen an article and then I am compelled to read it, because I have to know what’s in it. These tend only to be bad. Is there an element of schadenfreude in their action of informing me about a nasty article? Who knows? Freud would have us believe that much of what we do and our motives are fuelled by our unconscious, so I like to think that so-called friends don’t consciously relish my distress at great big slag-offs of my work and me.

  The slag-offs, it has to be said, were and are in the Daily Mail mostly apart from tabloid glee at occasional faux pas or me looking particularly bad. That is because I became, owing to the material I did and the way I dressed, a byword for unfeminine, bolshie, unwashed, man-hating, aggressive womanhood. Therefore, fairly frequently I would be held up as an example of what I shall call ‘What Not to Be’ — against the perfect Mail woman who was well-dressed, submissive, right-wing and domesticated.

  I once saw an article (yes, one that ‘a friend’ had told me about) in which someone — can’t remember who —was held up as a paragon of virtue for Mail readers in terms of her appearance, whereas they had found a picture of me looking like a right old scruffbag with the delightful accompanying caption: Jo Brand: Doesn’t care.

  On the whole I have managed to steer clear of ‘the paps’ who only appear on the great occasions in one’s life like marriages and births. I was followed around once when I was making Through the Cakehole. I’d been driving through South London on my way to a meeting in the centre of London when I became aware of a car behind me. I think for women drivers this can be a relatively frequent occurrence: you have to establish whether you are being followed and if so, take evasive action. In these cases I tend to turn off down side-streets and wiggle about a bit to see if the car behind stays with me.

  On that day when I thought I was being followed I did exactly that. I drove a rather circuitous route to my meeting and realised after ten minutes that matey was still with me. My competitive nature dictates I find it hard to let these people get the better of me, so as I pulled up outside the meeting-place I was ready to jump out of the car and leg it immediately and got in through the door of Channel X before he’d even got out of the car.

  When I came out with a couple of other people, matey was still there. He obviously had no idea I’d clocked him. We went into the pub opposite and sat by the window so I could see what he was doing. Sure enough, he got out of the car and started to head towards the pub. As he came in through the door, I exited through another, jumped in the car and drove off, giving him a wave as he ran out of the pub. I know this is a tiny incident and it means very little, but it used to give me a huge sense of achievement to escape. Pathetic really on my part.

  When I got engaged I was followed a bit and when I got married I kept it quiet so was not followed at all.

  However, when the Sun did find out I’d got married they allotted me a very charming headline on the front of the paper which read, Here Comes the Bride, All Fat and Wide! I can’t tell you how touched I was by that.

  I also had a couple of paps outside the house after I came home from the hospital with my first baby Apart from that, it seems paps are lazy Unless you are on the Madonna/Cheryl Cole/Wayne Rooney level of fame they don’t put themselves out, which is good. The only other time one tends to get papped is at restaurants where celebs go, or at awards ceremonies.

  I suppose my only pappation that I noticed was many years ago when I came out of The Ivy, a showbiz restaurant I try to avoid, and the photographer asked me to put my bag in front of my face. Charming! I sneered in his general direction and he begged, saying he hadn’t sold a picture for ages. Gullible twat that I am, I acquiesced and sure enough, in the News of the World the following Sunday there appeared a picture of me with my bag over my face and next to it a picture of Princess Diana with her bag over her face and the headline Which One of These is a Princess? Well, me, obviously.

  I’ve never moved in the showbiz/royalty social circle, maybe because I’m a republican. I’ve turned down the Royal Variety Performance on a number of occasions because I feel it’s hypocritical to call for the abolition of the monarchy and then go to a show and curtsey to Her Maj.

  I did, however, meet Diana once on The Clive James Show (I believe that she and Clive James were friends). When I got to the show there was a lot of whispering and barely controlled hysteria going on. One of the runners informed me, ‘We’ve got a very important guest coming down to watch the show.’

  ‘Who is it?’ I asked.

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ he replied.

  ‘Oh, go on,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ he replied. ‘It’s Princess Diana.’

  Blimey, he would have made a really crap spy.

  On the show we were doing an item about food with rude names in other languages. For example, I had some chewing gum called Spunk which a friend had sent me from Germany I brought it along with me to the show and did a joke a
bout spitting it out. (Yes, sorry, I know.)

  After the show had finished, we all ended up in the green room and were told we would be introduced to the Princess. Stephen Fry was there and began to instruct me in royal etiquette, showing me how to curtsey I maintained that I would not curtsey for a royal. He also remarked as she moved along the queue that he was dying for a wee. I wondered aloud why he didn’t just go. Apparently it’s not considered good manners to leave the room when royalty’s in. Better to wet yourself then.

  Diana reached me in the queue and I resisted a curtsey and just shook hands. She bent over towards me conspiratorially and said, ‘Loved your chewing-gum joke.’ We had a laugh about some of the names and she moved on. Her interest did seem genuinely natural and unforced. Poor cow, I felt sorry for her. I think it’s really hard to keep that smile on your face as endless individuals pass excitedly past you, come rain or shine. It requires a certain sort of personality and charm, and Diana certainly seemed to have it. And how ironic in a culture that worships beautiful women that old jug ears was secretly in love with someone not considered traditionally attractive. Good on her — us non-beauties are heartily sick of the endless droning on about women’s looks.

  Prearranged interviews with newspapers, or interviews on telly or radio interviews are a necessary evil to promote whatever one’s current project is. There are obviously a handful of iconic cult figures who never grant interviews and who don’t seem to give a shit whether the public buy what they have to offer or not. I very much admire these people, but I do not emulate them because we have a family to support and a mortgage to pay.

  Over the years I have tried to steer clear of the papers I don’t like very much, but in the good old, bad old days it wasn’t like that. I thought I had to do everything. I once did a photo-shoot for Cosmopolitan which went with an accompanying little piece about ‘up-and-coming comic’, etc etc. The article itself was pretty harmless, but the photo session was excruciating and involved me having to squat on a high stool for about forty minutes looking like I was enjoying it. After about five minutes I couldn’t feel my feet and was desperate to say ‘Fuck this, I’m off.’ However, at that point, I didn’t realise I could actually say no to things, and the residual well of politeness, which I had had poured onto my grey-matter as a child, prevented me.

  An interview with the Daily Mail was similarly painful. It was quite early on, when I didn’t understand that their editorial line on me was as an unacceptable, probably lesbian nightmare. Following a pretty friendly interview, the ensuing article ripped me apart. It taught me a valuable lesson though, and at that point I became much more wary of the way various journalists would portray me.

  In reality what it comes down to in interviews is what the journalist thinks of you as a person and the line they have been instructed to take editorially So, it doesn’t matter how polite, how entertaining, how solicitous you are, if they have decided to be horrible to you, horrible they will be.

  Added to this, over the years I have read so much sneering journalism about celebrities’ houses that I will never let a journalist set foot in my house unless I have a contract killer waiting in the cupboard to finish them off. And believe you me, that thought has crossed my mind more than once.

  The critic is a strange animal. To assume that your opinion is more valuable than anyone else’s surely makes you a bit of a big-headed twat. And this opinion has been borne out on more occasions than I care to remember. Again, it comes down to the paper’s editorial line, coupled with the critic’s personal opinion of you. I know for a fact that I have done gigs which I absolutely stormed and the audience loved, and have consequently been completely rubbished by a critic as if I died on my arse. And the more vile and personal a critic is about you, the more the readers of those august organs like the Sun and the Mail enjoy it.

  There is no such thing as an objective critic. They unavoidably bring their personality prejudices and taste to their pieces of work, regardless of what an audience thinks or what the ratings say This can work positively in some cases, such as if a comedian is doing horrible racist or misogynist material and the critic is offended, but on the whole, randomness seems a big weapon in their arsenal. You don’t know if they were in a bad mood when they watched you, had just had a row with their partner, don’t like fat women, don’t like left-wingers. It’s impossible to fathom.

  And there’s no defence. Letters to papers berating critics or journalists inevitably look whining and pathetic. I’m not saying all negative criticism is bad, it can be constructive and help you change direction, but when it’s a tirade of personal abuse, that’s different.

  I got it with both barrels from the critics very early on and became slightly obsessed with it. Of course I don’t want to give him any more publicity than he deserves, which is none, but a certain critic in the Sun took against me quite early on and directed a stream of abuse about my appearance at Sun readers. The only way I could counter this was in my act, by saying that he wasn’t exactly an oil painting himself — unless there was an oil painting called Constipated Warthog Licking Piss Off a Toilet Seat. Well, it made me feel better.

  Another critic, who works for the Evening Standard and who is considered a bit of a wit, although much of his copy is crap, once remarked that I should be sent to Saudi Arabia where they know how to deal with extra pounds of ugly flesh. However, I do derive a great deal of satisfaction from the fact that his comedy career amounted to nothing after a couple of crappy series on telly.

  I know I’m making it sound as if all journalists are psychopaths, and that’s not true. There are some good ‘uns — it’s just I’ve never met any.

  Thanks, dear reader for allowing me to cathart.

  Newspaper Columns: The Endless Search for an Original Thought

  When your profile enters the public domain, people start to want to know your opinion on things, and opinion is a huge part of what newspapers and newspaper columnists do.

  In the nineties, when I was asked whether I wanted to write a column for the Independent, I was somewhat wary since, because of their very nature, newspaper columns just seem to be a long list of celebrity character assassinations.

  There was, of course, the late Lynda Lee-Potter in the Mail who made it her stock in trade to be absolutely vile, mainly about other women’s looks, and I didn’t want to end up doing that as I think the majority of women get enough disdain in the pages of the tabloids without me joining in. Lynda, who died in 2004, was forever immortalised in Private Eye as Glenda Slagg, and I always used to think the spoof column in that brilliant satirical magazine was so well-observed. Perhaps her most shameful hour was when she set to work on the glorious Mo Mowlam, the late Labour politician, describing her as looking like a Geordie trucker. This is the kind of abuse I’d expect from a yob on the street who is ill-educated and misogynistic, but to see it in print written by another woman made my blood boil. So I made a supreme effort not to have a go at the appearance of women and concentrate, for example, on their political views rather than how they looked, while generally promoting commonsense all round.

  It’s easier said than done, having to drag up opinions on a regular basis. Some weeks I would sit and look at my computer screen, empty and sad, and think to myself, What the feck do I think about anything this week? I would pray for interesting things to happen to me so I could talk about them.

  For a period of time, Janet Street Porter was Editor of the Independent and I found her fierceness very entertaining because underneath I think she’s a decent person.

  But one week, after a call from Janet, I foolishly agreed to give a plug to some charity thing Elton John was doing (they are good friends) even though I felt uncomfortable about it.

  Rightly so, a little piece about it appeared in Private Eye under the heading of Brown-nosing. I felt suitably admonished. Eventually my column was syndicated to the Daily Mirror and suitably tabloided up for Mirror readers. I found that quite difficult to look at. I eventually resig
ned from the Mirror after what I considered to be a racist front page, and hoped Piers Morgan’s career would head downhill. Well, that hasn’t happened, has it?

  As one’s star rises so, it seems, does one’s currency in the world of ‘corporate entertainment’. This covers anything that pertains to professions and businesses providing entertainment or awards for their employees. Traditionally these companies have a fair bit of money to throw about, so they pay extremely well on a sliding scale depending on how popular/famous you are.

  I quite like doing corporates, not necessarily for the obvious pecuniary reasons, but because they tend to be arenas which stretch your comedy skills. Once people know who you are and come to see you specifically there is a sense that the danger element has melted away That’s not to say that you don’t have to make ‘em laugh — you do —but there is the cushion of the audience always being fans.

  On the whole, corporate event organisers tend not to tell their audience which entertainer they will see, until said entertainer is announced onto the stage. And I can tell you that on many occasions I have tripped onto the stage accompanied by an audible sigh of despair from the audience when they realise it is me and not Jimmy Carr/Jim Davidson/Michael McIntyre or whoever it was they wanted.

  Over the years I have taken part in corporates as diverse as the Mother and Baby Awards (heavy security when I did it, as apparently the year before, a fight had broken out between two tables), the Heating and Ventilation Awards, the British Association of Air Conditioning Engineers and quite a few media/advertising awards.

  Obviously, many of these awards or dinners contain an audience who are not my natural constituency and therefore I have had to work my proverbial bollocks off. It’s a bit like starting at the bottom of a big black pit, looking up at the audience and trying to claw your way out.

  At the Heating and Ventilation Awards, I was faced with an audience composed mainly of middle-aged men in suits. I had managed to get hold of a copy of their trade magazine, unsurprisingly called Heating and Ventilation Monthly/Weekly … whatever it was. They looked at me with suspicion as I came on. I started by waving a copy of the magazine at them and stated, ‘This magazine is the bollocks!’ It was a risky strategy which could have gone horribly wrong and I was lucky that it worked. A big laugh went round the room, thank God, and I was halfway up out of my deep, dark pit.