by Jo Brand
At one point Karren and I were leaning against the wall surveying all this wealth, unaware that she was leaning on a huge Gilbert and George original.
‘Excuse me, can you get off my painting,’ said a voice. There stood Gilbert … or George — I’ve no idea.
Suffice to say that the women’s team won the fundraising by hundreds of thousands of pounds. Girl power! I am being ironic here, since that particular call to action has done more to destroy true feminist principles than the combined work of John McCririck and Margaret Thatcher.
My most recent foray into Comic Relief-ness was being persuaded to dress up as Britney Spears and do a silly dance for Let’s Dance for Comic Relief I was given the choice of three performers to emulate, Kylie Minogue, Beyoncé and Britney Spears. It wasn’t a difficult decision to make since, much as I recognise their talent, I prefer Britney out of the three. I feel sorry for Britters — she has had a rough ride from the press and struggles with maintaining a balance in the amoral, evil world that being a pop star can be. However, I liked the song, ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ although I thought the video pandered to the worst male, slightly paedophilic view some men hold of schoolgirls. Thus I felt it was ripe for a piss-take. I like dancing and I don’t mind looking like a twat for charity.
I had roughly a week or so of training with a lovely woman called Steph who patiently repeated my steps for me in various dance studios in London. She was a good laugh, and we also had a good laugh doing it, which is very important. This was overseen by Richard, the boss of the teachers, and his well-placed raised eyebrow on occasions told me all I needed to know about my dancing skills.
Eventually I was ready to train with the other dancers, who put me to shame by learning the steps in what seemed to be about twenty seconds. I was slightly trepidatious of what they would think of me, as the svelte and (what had seemed to me) slightly haughty attitude of dancers wasn’t really something that appealed to me. I needn’t have worried; they were all friendly and helpful. I felt for the poor sods who had to pick me up at one point and move me from one part of the floor to another. When I actually put the costume on for the first time, I roared with laughter because I looked so bloody ridiculous, but it all added to the surrealism of the occasion that was looming.
So I had good fun — right up until the night of the show, when I realised just how uncomfortable my Britney Spears costume was going to be. Once sewn into it I couldn’t have a wee, and if you are doing live telly nerves dictate that you want to go to the lay approximately every twelve seconds. As I had two hours to wait until the show started, I seriously considered just letting myself go in the costume — not really an option for the poor dancers who had to lift me up though.
On the day we did a camera rehearsal in the afternoon and then waited for the show itself to happen. It was hosted by Claudia Winkleman, a terrifying powerhouse of a woman who never seems to be below 11 on her energy clock. But she is up for a laugh, as is her co-host Steve Jones, and I had to be on my guard because it was a live show and I have a terrible tendency to shoot my mouth off and say rude things.
I had assumed, owing to my pretty poor Britney impersonation, that I would not get through the first round and had organised a weekend away with the family When I got through to the final, having been picked by the judges as the third finalist I thought, Oh, I’m not going to be able to go away We did, but I had to drive up from Canterbury on the day and was away for hours.
The final was good fun because as usual I had invested no energy in hoping I would win. Everyone knew it would be Robert Webb who had done a scarily accurate performance of ‘What a Feeling’ from the musical Flashdance. Paddy McGuinness and Keith Lemon also stood a good chance. I was there to enjoy myself and try to remain continent.
On the night, poor Lisa Maxwell from The Bill had a dodgy tummy so between us we were worried that the finale of the show might be a little more than people had bargained for.
As I predicted, the victory of Robert Webb was a foregone conclusion. But my daughters loved it and had a good laugh, and at least they thought I should have won.
Power-boat Hell
Occasionally you offer to do something for charity and when you get there, you wonder if you were completely insane to agree to it. One such event was a power-boat racing day down in Portsmouth which I had been asked to do by Jeremy Clarkson’s wife, Francie. Jeremy Clarkson and I do not see eye to eye on a huge number of areas and I find myself occasionally referring to him in my stand-up as shorthand for someone who is a Little Englander and who jealously seems to guard the ‘British’ way of life and is constantly having a pop at other European nations. As someone who is acutely aware to some extent of how it feels to be an outsider through working in mental health, having German family and being in comedy I find this very unpalatable.
This is not, however, the reason to date that I have not bombed round the circuit in ‘a reasonably priced car’ on Top Gear. The main thing stopping me is that, having had two brothers, I am enormously competitive, and fear that if I ever stepped into that aforementioned vehicle, I would probably kill myself in the process. So I have declined so far, but am sure I will be tempted soon. Jeremy Clarkson is unfailingly polite and friendly in real life, and I cannot fault him socially He and his mates on Top Gear love a bit of risk, as was evidenced by Richard Hammond’s spectacular stunt in a cart-wheeling car on Top Gear a while ago. And this day was no exception.
One of the reasons I’d said I would do this event was because my friend Jayne, who sorts out all my charity requests and fanmail for me, has a son who is a huge fan of the show, so I went down there with him and her to give him an opportunity to have a look at the stars in person.
The point of the day was to raise money for a children’s hospice called Helen and Douglas House, and the way this was achieved was to get big companies to sponsor a power-boat which would take part in races round the harbour. Each company had sent a couple of gung-ho young men who were to have a crack at driving a boat. In order to attract them, a bevy of celebs had been invited and each boat had two blokes, an instructor and a celebrity in it. Other celebs attending that day that I can remember were Jimmy Carr, Brian Conley and Jane Moore, who is a well-known Sun columnist.
Many photos were taken and then eventually we climbed aboard a power-boat. The two men were very excited, one more than the other, and he asked if he could go first. We all concurred and he got into the driving seat. The sea seemed slightly choppy and I began to wonder when my breakfast would reappear.
Our instructor was a very sweet, mild-mannered woman and she gave us a quick run-through: some instructions emphasising the safety aspects, then it was time to set off.
Our slightly over-keen driver had obviously decided to go for it big-time, and before we knew it, he had floored the accelerator and we set off at a terrifying speed which threw us all back in our seats. Our instructor looked a bit perturbed by this burst of enthusiasm and warned against further acceleration. But our intrepid driver was away with the fairies, her voice was very quiet and he chose either not to hear her, or ignored her. His companion, who was in the seat beside me, looked positively green. The boat at one point tipped dangerously to one side and my elbow grazed the water. We all had life-jackets on and I began to visualise falling out and banging my head on the boat as I went, then sinking to the bottom of Portsmouth Harbour. We then looked as if we were going to do a somersault and my companion turned to me and shouted, ‘We’re all going to die!’ At that point he and I joined in with the instructor and shouted various helpful technical suggestions like, ‘For fuck’s sake, slow down!’
It sort of worked and he did a bit. By that time, thank the Lord, his ‘go’ was over and he slowed the boat to a halt and jumped out of the seat, declaring, ‘That was brilliant!’ and let his companion into the driving seat. The latter drove like a Sunday school teacher on major tranquillisers, as did I when I got my opportunity I think we came last but I didn’t give a toss about that, I
was just glad not to have drowned.
When we arrived on shore again, I discovered that all the celebs who had kids had felt similarly to me and had seen their lives flash before their eyes, whereas the young, single and carefree types like Jimmy Carr announced it to be one of the best days of their lives.
So, my involvement with charity events has led to snogging, singing, sailing, running, dancing and kicking the arses of some quite annoying blokes. It’s been bloody brilliant.
Over the years I have been offered the opportunity to front some advertising campaigns, either in person or as a voiceover. I can’t imagine what on earth I’ve got that might persuade people to buy a product, but who knows how the minds of advertising execs work? At the risk of sounding ‘holier than thou’ there are many reasons why I will never do ads.
First of all, the words of George Orwell, the Uber-leftie author of 1984 and Animal Farm, often resound in my head. He said that advertising is ‘the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket’ and I can’t help but agree with him.
Our system needs to advertise things to sell them (obviously) and if there is not a market for certain products, they will create one. For example, many products have appeared on the market recently aimed at very specific age groups of children, and once some products are spotted by children because of ads, a huge demand is created. Even worse, children feel that they are not a fully paid-up member of their peer group unless they own that particular product. I don’t like this. It puts pressure on parents and kids and is not fair.
Also, many electronic products now have built-in obsolescence so that they have to be replaced every few years, and advertisers have to make it sound as if you’re getting something new for your money when in fact your old whatever-it-is would probably do just as well. The world of fashion is a really good case in point. Each season a whole new raft of clothes appears on the catwalks, some of them utterly bloody ridiculous, but some stupid arses go ahead and buy them because they think they must —although I have to admit I have never seen anyone wearing any of the more wacky designs that make them look like a bush on legs or a zombie with liver disease.
One of the other main reasons I don’t do ads is because once you spout support of a company for money they sort of own you, and should you ever have occasion to slag them off, or any of their products, you simply cannot do this. I know it is a small thing, but to me as a comic, it’s very important not to be owned by anyone and to be able to say what I like when I like and wherever I like.
Having said all this, I wouldn’t criticise people who do choose to do ads, because that’s up to them as an individual — and it’s hardly killing your grandmother, is it? Perhaps those who said they would never do ads and then did them are slightly more culpable, and I find it completely puzzling that some comics would slag off others for doing an ad when they themselves do advertising voiceovers. Is it any different if people can’t see your face?
I don’t think so.
If you find my little sermon dull, please have a look on youtube.com at Bill Hicks’s rant about advertising. He puts it much better than I could.
One of the times I would love to be invisible is at festivals. There’s nothing I like better than to wander round just drinking in the fantastic atmosphere, looking at the bonkers stalls and lying in a tent listening to snoring, giggling, shouting, laughing, singing and the general festival hubbub.
I went to Glastonbury a couple of times in the eighties, one time boiling hot and full of pissed pink people and the other time absolutely swamped in mud, but very manageable if you’re off your face.
Since then I have performed at Glastonbury, Reading and Latitude (apparently nicknamed ‘Latte-tude’ because it is so middle class).
I think the secret, if you stay overnight at festivals, as you know you’re not going to get a decent night’s sleep, is to self-medicate, which I normally do with alcohol.
Although you feel shit in the morning, at least unconsciousness has been much easier to achieve. Glastonbury is the only festival I’ve actually stayed at, however; all the others I’ve either come home from or have gone straight on to somewhere else afterwards.
Reading always happens in the middle of the Edinburgh Festival so that’s the closest I’ve ever got to feeling like a mega-star: being flown down to Reading and then back up the same day to continue doing my shows. I suppose if you are on the road a lot you get used to things like a bed, a kettle and a telly, and these days, a hangover lasts a hell of a lot longer than it used to when I was a sprightly young thing in my thirties.
When people clock you, it’s a totally different experience at a festival. At Latitude I felt like the Pied Piper because when I went for a wander I was followed round by autograph-hunting children and eventually had to give up and go and hide. My experience of Reading made me think that they could just as well put a cardboard cut-out on stage as the heaving, sweaty delirious audience don’t really seem to care what’s on stage. And good luck to ‘em, that’s what music festivals are for.
Literary festivals like Hay and Cheltenham are a different kettle of fish altogether. More subdued and with an older, middle-class punter, they are altogether a more genteel affair. The green room at Hay is a veritable cornucopia of literary bedazzlement. It seems so weird to sit amidst Jeremy Paxman, Alan Bennett, Gore Vidal and Terry Jones. I tend to promote books at literary festivals and of course the stakes aren’t as high as they are with stand-up so it’s a real pleasure because I don’t get the usual accompanying butterflies.
Again, I tend not to stay at Hay as my mum lives quite near by so I go to her place and she comes with me to whatever sort of show I’m doing. At the moment I alternate every year between doing a Q and A about my latest book and performing stand-up. It’s quite strange having your own mum in the audience and I suppose to some extent it could be quite limiting. But I have to keep remembering that my mum is in her seventies and I am in my fifties and she won’t get up and tell me I’m not allowed out for a week if I swear.
I love driving, and during one tour with my tour manager John, after one particularly long and hair-raising journey from Devon across to Surrey when we were late and John did rather too much driving in the middle of the road to get us there in time, we mooted the idea of having a crack at rally driving. On our travels, we had met a lovely guy called Gary whose son worked at a rally school so we arranged to go down there and have a go.
It was really exciting being given permission to put your foot down on a muddy track that wound round sharp corners and up over bumps, and I was bitten by the bug almost immediately.
Things moved on apace and we found ourselves with our own rally car (a used Peugeot, cheap and little). I had also managed to get Channel Four to agree to us making a documentary about getting my international licence which would lead up to the Rally of Great Britain.
We tried a few rally race days and I suppose we were unusual, because we both wanted to have a go at the driving, rather than one of us always being the navigator and the other always driving. Navigating is a stressful job in a different way; you have a very detailed set of instructions in front of you describing the exact layout of the course. Bends are divided into different categories so that in theory you can tell your driving partner how much he has to slow down, but we weren’t very good at it and much of the time whoever was navigating was slightly behind the driver and would shout out, ‘Sharp bend coming up!’ just as we were going round it, or veering off the road.
Our first rally was on a race-track down in Sussex. By this time we had been kitted out in rally-driving suits which I have to tell you are not the most flattering outfits even if you look like a twig, which I don’t; you feel as if you are in your own personal sauna. Add to this a helmet with an inbuilt microphone ‘cause you can’t hear a bloody thing once the helmet’s on and the total effect is claustrophobic. And that’s before you even get in the bleeding car.
Once you’re in the car, it gets worse. You are strapped in with a four-w
ay seat belt and surrounded by the internal cage-like structure of the car, which is designed to stop you being killed if the car rolls. Quite useful, then.
However, it does mean you feel trapped once you’re in there; your movements are severely restricted and if you want to go for a piss, forget it. As a woman you have to peel the whole bloody thing down to your ankles. Once, however, I was so desperate, I legged it off into the woods at the start of a rally took a quick look round to make sure I was alone, did the business and then as I was hauling it all up, realised I was being observed from some distance away by a large group of spectators — there to watch the rally not me having a wee.
One very special feature of the rallies that we took part in was an excess of mooning. Word had gone out at some of the rallies that I was competing and on more than one occasion I would round a corner, concentrating like mad, to be presented with a delightful bare white arse that obviously hadn’t seen the sun since its nappy was left off. Once there was even a row of about five. This brightened up my rallies and I almost began to expect it after a while.
It has to be said that John and I were pretty shit rally drivers and even worse navigators. Although we enjoyed it, we were glorious amateurs really and nowhere near the class of the professionals. As the training rallies went on, we started to get a better feel for it, although we got lost quite a lot and grew used to driving up to ramblers and walkers and asking, ‘Have you seen a lot of rally cars go past?’ If they hadn’t we knew we were well off-piste.
