by Jo Brand
Candide
Now who would have thought that an eighteenth-century satire by Voltaire could have been turned into a successful musical? Well, not me for a start-off, but I was persuaded to see it because it had such stunning reviews, and it is an understatement to say that I was not disappointed. Beautifully and imaginatively staged, it starred that giant of the theatre Simon Russell Beale, whom you may never have heard of because he so rarely gets his gob on the telly.
I won’t bother to go into the plot of Candide, because you might decide to drop off, but suffice it to say that the songs were sing-along-y brilliant, it was funny, moving, interesting, enlightening and sharp as a knife — and as soon as it finished I wanted to see it all through again and again.
I met Simon Russell Beale in the corridor of the National Theatre once and I nearly fainted, because of being in touching distance of such genius. And then he said to me he was a fan of mine, and I’m not being a falsely modest nana here but I was struck dumb, so Simon, I’m an even bigger fan of yours.
As You Like It
Shakespeare’s a difficult one because you do him at school and most English teachers only manage to instil in you a hopeless antipathy towards his plays, causing you to shy away from them in the future, because most of the time you have absolutely no idea what the bloody hell the characters are going on about.
However, once in a while you see something which underlines Shakespeare’s genius, and this was the case with As You Like It at the National Theatre, once again starring the incomparable Simon Russell Beale. It was funny (which is no mean feat with a Shakespearean comedy), I understood it, and lapses into my own mind, in which I compiled a shopping list, or tried to remember all the Doctor Whos in order, were rare.
The same happened some years ago when I went to see Dustin Hoffman in The Merchant of Venice. God bless him, Dustin’s accent wandered round America and Europe for quite a while until it settled in Italy. but Geraldine James, who played Portia, was amazing. I particularly noticed that she did the ‘quality of mercy speech with a feeling and emphasis I had never heard before, and which put the whole thing into the most easily understandable context. Because it is a speech that drama students regularly trot out with all the emotion of a tranquillised slug, to hear it done proper by a proper grown-up actress was an absolute joy.
Art
This play by Yasmin Reza is a wonder. It’s very funny and it gave comics such as Jack Dee and Frank Skinner an opportunity to get a foot in the door of West End theatre. The play concerns three friends, one of whom buys a very expensive painting which is basically just a white canvas, and the feelings thrown up by the attitudes of the three main characters is the basis of the drama. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? It’s a masterpiece though, and if you get a chance …
Now, you may think, having heard me describe my three favourite hobbies (accompanied by the fourth i.e. scoffing), that I indulge only in high-falutin’ middle-class pursuits. In which case I should tell you that I love Big Brother and all reality shows, I read celeb mags to wash my brain and give me respite from having to think too much, and I am addicted to a stupid game on my mobile called Bubble Boom Challenge which I surreptitiously play in boring meetings in the vain hope that people will think I’m sending a very, very important text. Since I learned to play the organ I try and keep that up, but I am like a ten year old: I never practise apart from the day before I have a lesson and I deliberately choose things to play that are very easy. so I am not challenged in any way.
I have always been interested in politics and I owe this to my parents who, I am sure I have already mentioned, met at a Young Socialists’ event and constantly talked politics at home. In fact, in 1993 my mum stood as the Labour candidate in the Ludlow local elections. Given that Ludlow is one of the strongest bastions of Tory supremacy, she was never going to get anywhere, but we were all really proud of her. I have never voted anything except Labour, and so I suppose it was inevitable that I would get stuck into politics as a comic.
I missed out on the Red Wedge stuff, because it coincided with the very early part of my comedy career and I was not considered high-profile enough, I suppose, to be asked to do stuff. If you don’t know what Red Wedge was, it was a sort of loose music and comedy collective involving such characters as Billy Bragg, Ben Elton, Madness, Phill Jupitus and the like. It was set up to try and prevent Margaret Thatcher winning another election in 1985, but sadly didn’t manage it, and its members eventually drifted apart some five years later.
I never got involved in local politics, although I was a member of the Labour Party, because I found political meetings on that level rather difficult to cope with due to the structure and bureaucracy. It seemed to me that phrases like ‘Subsection B part 14’ were designed to make you go bonkers and so I supported from the sidelines rather than getting stuck in.
However, as my career moved on a bit I began to receive calls asking me to support the Labour Party in various ways.
The first event I remember being involved in was a party at Brown’s in Central London (not Gordon, a restaurant), which was a fundraiser for the Labour Party. Michael Foot, my hero, was there as were Gordon Brown and Neil Kinnock. I had written a comedy version of The Red Flag. This was the Labour Party’s anthem for many decades, but apparently played down during the Blair years.
My comedy version started with the line: ‘Neil Kinnock’s hair is deepest red, though most of it’s not on his head,’ and finished with a line about Gordon Brown’s hair looking a bit shit. (Yes, not the cutting edge of political satire, I’ll admit.) I was aware while singing it that Gordon Brown had come into the room just as I got to the line about his hair. It flashed through my mind to drop it, as I didn’t want to offend him, but it’s hard to find a whole new line to end a song instantly so I carried on and he didn’t seem to mind. And also, the poor sod’s had far worse abuse since then.
I did many benefits for the Labour Party over the years and supported them in any way I could. I wasn’t too happy when New Labour got in, but one has to be realistic about these things. Old Labour was completely unelectable and had not been in power for years, and politics was turning into a game that was all about image rather than principles and policies. Sizeable numbers of the electorate, as we know, are not really interested in the cut and thrust of politics and base their judgements on selfish local issues, so I suppose Blair in some ways was a necessary evil.
Margaret Thatcher was someone I find it difficult to say anything positive about. Her time as Prime Minister was particularly depressing because it was such a huge thing that she was our first woman Prime Minister and as a woman I really wanted to be proud.
But I found her totally impossible to understand as a person. She seemed humourless, inflexible in her thinking, schoolmistressy, cold and old-fashioned. I think some of the really telling things she said over the years marked her out as someone who was a representative of a culture that encouraged people to be just out for themselves — and this goes some way to explaining why a new type of alternative comedy developed. Here are some key phrases of hers:
‘There is no such thing as society’
Well, what a bloody ridiculous thing to say. You cannot avoid the fact that there are interconnections between groups of people that constitute some sort of loose grouping we call society. I think this was more wishful thinking than anything else on Margaret Thatcher’s part. This was an attempt to reframe the political landscape and to encourage people to stand on their own two feet without the safety net that I consider a truly democratic society should provide for its citizens. Therefore, she was interested in the state being pared back to the minimum, and those who struggled with poverty, unemployment, disability, mental health problems, single motherhood or just an inability to fit in, could either sort themselves out or pull themselves together or whatever the pointless instruction was.
In order to do this paring back, I think that Margaret Thatcher had to shift her perspective on people with
problems and view them as somehow feckless, responsible for their situation or in some way criminal. I am not denying that there are always going to be those who misuse the funds the state provides for people in trouble, but does that mean that all those who are deserving of some help in difficult times should be denied that help because some scumbags abuse the system?
Coupled with that, there are plenty of very wealthy people who prove themselves equally dishonest and grasping, and who eschew their responsibilities as far as tax is concerned by hiding their money in foreign bank accounts or creating dodgy companies to hide their true wealth. We also know, following the uncovering of the recent expenses scandal amongst MPs, that there is a percentage of people in every walk of life who will take advantage of what is on offer and illegally claim money that they do not deserve.
I must admit, when the whole expenses scandal came to light, it really depressed me, particularly in the case of Labour MPs. I cling on to a belief that Labour MPs are the true representatives of the working classes, and to find out that they also had their snouts in the trough was extremely galling. That’s not to say that the Conservatives and Lib Dems who cheated on their expenses are not culpable either. But I’m afraid I think very little of rich Tories anyway and I expect them to be mean-spirited and grasping; after all, that’s how rich people get rich, isn’t it — by making sure that their own money is closely guarded and very little of it goes towards paying their staff extra or to benefit those less well-off than themselves.
What it really comes down to is your attitude towards people and how you see the rest of the world. If you expect the human race all to be selfish, out-for-themselves undeserving types, then that shapes the way you want your government to deal with them, by allowing you to hang on to as much of your own wealth as you can. This is why every time a Labour government looked like getting into power in the eighties and nineties, there was always a handful of rich celebrities who said they were going to leave the country. Never did, though, did they?
Not all wealthy people are tight-fisted misers though, to give them their due. Bill Gates, for example, seems to be single-handedly tackling the malaria problem in Africa with his money. and this harks back to the days of the Victorian philanthropists who used their money to benefit society (Hello, Margaret Thatcher), rather than just themselves and their families.
‘What Has Feminism Ever Done For Me?’
Blimey, what a question. Where do you start? Well, first of all, if it hadn’t been for the Suffragettes who were early feminists, Margaret Thatcher wouldn’t even have had the vote or been able to get into Parliament. That courageous group of women put themselves through hell in order to win rights for women. It is ironic that had women not had the vote, the Labour Party would apparently have got in at almost every election in the last century. Mmm, a dilemma for left-wing women all over the country.
And feminists in the sixties allowed women to be freed up to work, use childcare and pursue their careers, rather than the no-choice scenario of staying at home and looking after their families which had been their lot for the preceding centuries. One might argue that feminism has just created the conditions for women to work twice as hard as before, by not only doing the bulk of the work domestically but also taking on work outside the home as well, but that is another issue.
I do think that women are in some ways the worst enemies of feminism, especially in the twenty-first century. Most young women have been scared off by the cartoon image of a feminist as a ball-breaking harridan who hates men, and it’s going to be difficult to rid ourselves of the image that the right-wing press has tried so hard to create.
‘The Lady’s Not for Turning’
‘You turn if you want to; the lady’s not for turning.’ Margaret Thatcher’s famous play on words is lifted from the title of the play The Lady’s Not for Burning by Christopher Fry. It was a response to calls from people to do a political U-turn and was seen by many as a positive character trait that she dug her heels in and forged ahead regardless. Ironically. she didn’t know the play or understand the pun. Of course the speech had been written for her by someone else, so how would she know?
In my opinion, politics is about endless compromise and the ability to see the other person’s point of view. Margaret Thatcher was the Queen of Rigidity and in my book that is not a very attractive quality.
My main problem with Margaret Thatcher, apart from her being a dyed-in-the-wool Conservative, was the fact that she appeared to have no sense of humour. There were a number of occasions when she was called upon to do jokes in her speeches, and it was patently obvious that she didn’t really know what she was saying. Famously, in one speech when she was supposed to say. As Moses said, keep taking the tablets,’ I think she substituted the word ‘pills’, thus indicating that the joke that was staring her in the face had completely passed her by.
One of my favourite (reported) stories comes from when she was visiting a factory, and while moving through a group of young lads, remarked to one of them, ‘That’s an enormous tool you’ve got.’ Much sniggering ensued … to Thatcher’s complete bafflement.
Tony Blair
I was not one of the bright young things who paraded round Downing Street at one of Tony Blair’s famous parties when he got into power. Britpop was at its height and they allowed the famously unpredictable Gallagher brothers in, among others. I was still plugging away in the background, doing benefits and rather unacceptably later on supporting Ken Livingstone when he was chucked out of the Party to stand as an Independent for Mayor of London.
However, as time went on, I was called upon to go to various events and say a few words in support of the Party. I remember being at a rally in Hove just before the 2005 election, as the seat there was under threat, and found myself seated next to David Blunkett whom I had not seen for many years. In fact, the last time I had encountered him was at a MIND benefit up in Scarborough, at which we were both due to speak. We were in a room having a coffee and I was surreptitiously smoking in the corner, in the days when smoking was allowed in the corners of hotel rooms. David, of course, is blind — and he shouted to the whole room, ‘Who is smoking in this room? I do not like it!’
So, I was forced to sidle up to him and admit my guilt. Didn’t get us off on a great footing: the teenager versus the grown-up.
In Hove though, we were matier and he seemed to have forgotten the smoking incident even if I hadn’t. I was sandwiched between David Blunkett and Cherie Blair. Tony Blair came along the row, shaking hands and saying hello, and he gave me a kiss, with the words, ‘Thanks so much for everything you’re doing for us, Jo.’
I thought back to my schooldays, recalling how a few teachers in exasperation had told me I wouldn’t amount to very much, and wished I could have had a photo taken to send to every one of those teachers, accompanied by the sound effect of a big raspberry. Just for the record, the Labour Party scraped in at Hove, so it might have done a minuscule bit of good.
Over the past few years leading up to the most recent election (2010) I have done more for the Labour Party than ever before, and have had to console myself with the fact that Labour lost less badly than they could have done. There have been a couple of Labour women’s dinners that I have compered, and it has been very satisfying to perform to a room of left-wing women.
There is still a great lack of women in politics and I think it’s important to do all we can to encourage women to go into this life, hard as it is. It is very important that our politicians reflect society as a whole and at the moment, gender-wise and race-wise, we can hardly say that they do.
The question arises then about whether you should artificially increase the number of women in Parliament by having women-only short-lists, when you are looking for a candidate to stand for the election. I am uneasy about doing this, but cannot think of a more effective way to up the proportion of women MPs.
Some years ago, I did a couple of events for something called Emily’s List. This is an organisatio
n that started up in America to support women candidates financially who were attempting to achieve a career in politics. The word Emily is an acronym for Early Money Is Like Yeast (it grows). Geddit? Sorry, America, but there is something quite yucky about that.
I hosted a dinner to raise money and found myself sitting on a table with some real Labour Party luminaries. I was sat next to Betty Boothroyd, who at the time was Speaker of the House of Commons. I half expected her, because that is the image I had of her, to start a singsong or give people great big comradely bear hugs. Interestingly though, I found her very reserved and quite difficult to talk to. Clare Short, on the other hand, said to me something like, ‘I hope you’re going to give them some shit.’
Barbara Castle was by that time in her eighties, yet she gave the most articulate, rousing and entertaining speech I had heard for years. She had always been a heroine of mine, and it is such a relief to meet one of your heroines and find them to be everything you hoped they would be.
Eventually, I was asked to an evening for Labour Party celebs to meet Tony Blair at a hotel near Downing Street.
There too were Helen Worth (Gail from Corrie), Anthony Minghella, Steve Cram and Melvyn Bragg among others.
I find these events a strange mix of fascinating and rather uncomfortable, and they make me want to ask, ‘Why are we here?’
Tony Blair was only allotted so much time as he glided round saying hello and being charming to each of us. I found myself thinking, I must say something politically astute that he is a) impressed by and b) decides will become Labour Party policy. And then of course, as he got round to me, I just ended up saying, ‘Oh hello, that’s a nice tie,’ or something similar.
I think that Tony Blair was probably the first child of the media-led politics generation. He was very astute and media-savvy, looked good in front of the camera, never seemed ruffled and always said the right thing. And that counts for a lot these days. Shallow though it may be, it seems to be what impresses the punters.
