Quotes from Jo Brand

With proper acting, I don't know what I would play - I got sent a script for a play, and it said in the notes that my proposed character was 'hideously fat and ugly'. That made my day. I mean, I do know I am no oil painting.

When I got married, the Sun ran the headline: 'Here comes the bride, all fat and wide.' Luckily, it was a few days after the wedding - but it was still hideous to read at a great romantic moment.

I think the key attributes for a good speaker are someone that's articulate and someone that puts a fair amount of humour into what they do.

My mum and my husband are from Irish backgrounds, so we have a lot of potatoes. Chips, mashed, boiled, new potatoes, I love them all. Even the slightly wonky ones like Duchess potatoes that go up in a little spiral.

Privatisation splits hospital services into increasingly small packages.

My mum taught me to knit when I was a child, and I turn to it, for some weird reason, when I'm feeling depressed.

Once you get labelled, people expect you to behave within the very narrow confines of that label.

It's very difficult to learn not to take nasty heckles personally.

When you get to know someone, you find there's something nasty in their woodshed.

Everything becomes magnified at night. Sounds travel in a different way, it's dark, and everything seems far more spooky.

I don't like doing stand-up, because I don't like standing up.

One of the guys that used to run it - for some reason I've no idea why he used to call me the Sea Monster and I was just looking around for a name and thought that'll do. That lasted for a couple of years probably.

Everyone in comedy thinks if you go to the U.S. you become a global star but, unfortunately, I've always been a bit anti-American - so I never did.

I suspect most politicians feel overwhelmed because people's lives are a real struggle, full of unhappiness, and you would probably feel powerless to do anything about it.

My mum always felt that women deserved as much as men, and should have as much power, so I suppose I opted to go into a very male-dominated arena to try and prove that.

Punk allowed women to stop looking feminine. Oh, the relief.

Occasionally, some sitcoms still stereotype women - the old dragon or the dolly bird - but on the whole we've moved away from that.

I've seen a lot of women give up after they've had three or four bad gigs in a row. It's very difficult to learn not to take nasty heckles personally.

Even when I wasn't overweight I was never one of those girls or women who wanted to look nice. I always thought it wasn't important.

I think a lot of women are incredibly tough and they're just really admirable. Especially the way that, given what they've got, they just manage to carry on.

Suffice to say, many women find their first appearance on a comedy panel show to be their last. Second chances seem to be given less often to the female of the species.

There are comics who treat women fairly appallingly. But I can be great friends with them because I don't tend to do that ticking of boxes: it can make life too simplistic.

Not many women will go out on a limb to make themselves really unattractive and unfeminine so you can get the laughs, but it's a great thing to do in my book.

I think self-esteem is fluid. It's not a fixed state, and so some days are better than others.