Quotes from Jo Brand

A good culture in a hospital can absorb and manage a few bad nurses, but once the culture becomes bad in itself, bad nursing practice is much harder to hide.

There are problems with nursing - such as the issue of nurses all having to do degrees these days. But that doesn't mean to say the entire infrastructure of nursing is falling about and that it is populated by unfeeling psychopaths, which is, frankly, the implication sometimes.

It is unrealistic to expect an entire profession to be completely good. There are bound to be some individuals who are stressed, who are unkind, who are a bit rubbish at their job, who are in the wrong career.

And I also felt that no one in an audience could abuse me worse than the sort of abuse I had had at work as a psychiatric nurse.

I have seen good nurses and bad nurses. They existed along a continuum: from hard-working, kind and competent people, to office-hugging, bone-idle types, to apathetic, disengaged automatons.

Jeremy Clarkson is rather charming, but I can't stomach his public persona. I don't like his casual racism and casual misogyny.

I went on the pill when I was 16, put on four stone... so that proved to be a very effective contraceptive.

There's lots of different feminist groups. It's not as straightforward as just looking like a plumber.

I used to get a lot of people saying 'Oh, you are such a lucky granny.' But the fact of the matter is you can be a grandma at 35 these days.

It's inevitable that if you do okay on something like that you don't just annoy people, that it will make a difference because it seemed like such a lot of people so, yes I would have to say that it has done.

I'm too nervous to eat before I go onstage, and I'll usually eat out after the performance or when I get home at midnight.

I like to read my diary occasionally to remind myself what a miserable, alienated old sod I used to be.

I have a utilitarian approach to dressing; as long as I quite like it and it covers me up, I don't care what it is.

I buy smoked mackerel in a vain attempt at being healthy. I do actually really like it, and you don't have to cook it, which is handy.

I do say no to lots of things, actually! I know it doesn't look like it. But I have a tendency to a) be rubbish at saying no, and b) be pushed by some kind of Protestant work ethic.

It's got too much hard work slapping them and telling them to shut up.

Work motivates me. I love what I do and I'm a positive person, I've always liked what I've done as a job - however grim it was.

I'd love to live in Kent but it's all a question of work.

Television provokes strong opinions, and sometimes we try a bit too hard to appeal to everyone.

I wouldn't say I was organised at all. I just have to prioritise. Is it more important for them to be organised, or to have their dinner, do you know what I mean?

Most of us manage the fateful things that happen in our lives the best we can, certainly not to a Stalin-like 20-year plan.

I don't know really, it doesn't feel like it has changed to me but I think to have to move with the times. Try out different areas and not get stuck in 1978.

I took my husband to the hospital yesterday to have 17 stitches out - that'll teach him to buy me a sewing kit for my birthday.

I think actors go along a continuum from Simon Callow down to kind of Ross Kemp, and I like to think of myself as the Ross Kemp of comedy. He's very good in 'East Enders' because he plays a version of himself. I think I can play a version of myself - that's about all I can do.