EP.246 - JO BRAND

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin.

Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening.

I took my microphone and found some human folk.

Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke.

My name is Ad Buxton, I'm a man.

I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan.

Hey,

how you doing podcats?

Adam Buxton here, reporting to you from a crunchy farm track in Norfolk, UK, middle of May 2025.

It's a beautiful, breezy, sunny afternoon.

I'm here with my best dog friend Rosie, who's looking beautiful.

and perky today.

How you doing Rosie?

I've recently done a poo and now I am sniffing the hedgerow.

Later I'm gonna find a hot flagstone on the terrace and stretch out on it on my side.

Oh yeah.

Winning!

As Charlie Sheen used to say, remember Charlie Sheen?

Rebecca Black?

Good old days.

How are you doing podcasts?

I hope things are okay with you.

Thanks for coming back.

I'm hoping to see some of you on Monday as I speak, Monday the 19th of May.

I'll be doing a live event at the Union Chapel in Islington.

I'll be on stage talking with Catelyn Moran about my book, showing a few clips from the olden times, Adam and Joe stuff, maybe some radio head bits.

and signing books afterwards.

I hope some of you might be able to come along.

There are still tickets left.

There's a link in the description of today's podcast.

But let me tell you a bit about that podcast.

It's number 246, and it features a rambling conversation with British stand-up comedian, writer, and actor, Joe Brand.

Oh, look at that.

Gogleged right up ahead of us, hovering in the low air.

It is the techno bird.

Good to see the techno bird back again, isn't it, Rose?

Anyway, I got some Joe Brand facts for you.

Here they come.

Brand facts.

Josephine Grace Brand was born in 1957 in South London and grew up in Hastings on England's southeast coast.

She studied nursing and later social work and worked for 10 years as a psychiatric nurse, including a seven-year stint at South London's Maudsley Hospital, before changing course completely when she began performing stand-up in the 1980s.

In those early stand-up days, she chose the stage name The Sea Monster in response to frequent heckling about her appearance.

She quickly became a key figure in the UK alternative comedy scene, known for her dry, self-deprecating humour, super deadpan delivery, and feminist themes.

Her TV break came with appearances on stand-up showcases, Saturday Live on Channel 4, and Friday Night Live on ITV.

In 1993, she landed her own Channel 4 TV series, Through the Cake Hole, a mix of frequently surreal sketches and stand-up in front of a studio audience that ran for two series until 1996.

Some of Joe's acting jobs over the years have included the darkly satirical BBC4 sitcom Getting On, which first aired in 2009.

That show was set on the geriatric ward of a beleaguered NHS hospital and was directed by Peter Capaldi and co-starred Vicki Pepperdeen and Joanna Scanlon.

And Vicki and Joanna also wrote the show along with Joe.

Joe also starred in and co-wrote, along with writer, actor and comedian Morwenna Banks, the sitcom Damned about council employees in a children's services department, which ran for two series from 2016 on Channel 4.

As well as hosting the great British bake-off an extra slice since 2014, Jo has appeared regularly on panel shows like QI, Have I Got News for You?

And Would I Lie to You?

And of course, she appeared on Taskmaster in 2019.

My conversation with Jo was recorded face to face on a hot day in London earlier this month, May 2025.

And we talked about what the passing years have taught her, how she feels the COVID lockdowns affected her children and their generation.

How her own mum dealt with Joe's more wayward behavior when she was young.

How her experiences as a psychiatric nurse prepared her for sometimes violent confrontations with drunken audience members in comedy clubs.

And towards the end we swapped restaurant tales that, be warned, were heavily PP-centric.

It was very nice to get the chance to sit down and talk properly with Jo.

I've met her a couple of times.

We were on 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown one time I remember

and

it was one of my more difficult recordings I think for that show and it was lovely to have Jo there being very kind and supportive.

She liked a video that I'd done where I'd put subtitles on the theme from The Bridge.

the scandy crime drama.

That was a long time ago.

And I wanted her to come on the podcast then.

So I'm glad it's finally worked out.

I'll be back at the end for a bit more waffle, but right now with Joe Brand, here we go.

I was supposed to see you at latitude last year.

You were.

And what happened?

Did you get ill?

Yes, I did.

Are you okay?

Yeah, I'm fine.

I mean, how old am I now?

I'm 67 now.

And so life is starting to hand me all the little genetic messages from my parents are gradually kind of flying in.

So, you know, I feel envious of much older people, although they're probably all putting it on as well, who are out and about looking cheerful, looking fit, looking like life's wonderful.

I mean, maybe that really is true for them, and I hope it is.

But for me, it's more a wake up and ask myself, what's hurting today?

You know, and how many things do I have to have hurting to

take painkillers?

Shocking sort of person, really.

So, yeah, I actually think don't pretend your life's great when you're older, because for an awful lot of people, it's not, you know, it's grim.

Sure.

But what are the upsides to getting old?

If you had to find some, because this is what I'm thinking now that I'm in my mid-50s and I'm beginning to confront the realities of aging a little bit and getting some previews of how things might go and also seeing my parents die and all that kind of thing thinking about it a lot more I'm really I feel like okay I'm gonna tool up with some wisdom so that I can face the last section fully armed do you think that's possible yeah I do but my initial advice would be lower your expectations and I don't mean that in a bad way but that's that's how I've kind of lived my career, really.

Because I think the lower your expectations are, the happier you are with the vast percentage of outcomes.

So, what I've learned is that I'm much better at saying no than I used to be.

I used to just agree to every single benefit going because I felt obliged to kind of give something back.

Because having been a nurse and earned a pittance comparatively, I suppose I felt guilty about it.

So,

I've learned to not do three benefits a night anymore.

Have you got a new special technique for saying no?

Well, the main advice that I've taken on board is don't feel you've got to give a really intricate reason because that's how I always used to feel.

Because it was almost as though at the other end of the email, people sort of knew that I could do it really.

And I felt guilty about it, you know.

So now I just say, I'm really sorry, I can't do it.

Or, no, I'm sorry.

Whereas I used to sort of try and do this like massive long sort of string of excuses, you know.

Like, I would have done it if this and this and this hadn't happened.

Or, I think I'm

on ad infinitum.

And the fact is, they don't know.

You could be working somewhere else, your leg could have fallen off.

So,

I think just be concise.

Yeah, they just want a yes or no, don't they?

Yeah, they absolutely do.

Absolutely do.

I know, I've done the same thing.

It's like...

The thing is that I've done a lot of that material quite recently and I don't really have any new stuff and I'm just so worried that if there's people out there who are going to blog about it or something like that, then they'll feel shortchanged.

And yeah, all those, all those and more.

I know it's terrible, but you're right.

They just want to know yes or no.

And then they move on.

Yeah.

You know.

I'm reading your book at the moment, Born Lippy.

Oh, yes, that one.

That's your most recent one, isn't it?

It is, yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

2018.

That seems like another age now.

I know, it's a long time ago, isn't it?

We're talking seven years ago, and that's my most recent one.

Even though Trump was in office, so a lot of the seeds of our current reality were already in bloom.

Being malevolently so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But it does seem like a simpler time.

I guess because it's pre-COVID and pre-second Trump term.

yeah absolutely i think so i mean i don't know how covid was for you but it was fairly appalling for me uh not from my own point of view i mean i did have covid but it wasn't dreadful but um you know like my mum my mum died during covid and i couldn't go and see her so i think it's things like that that have just made people depressed on a more permanent level and so frustrated when you look back at decisions that were made about it at the time.

When did she die, if you don't mind me asking?

No, I don't mind at all.

She died

towards the end of it, so 2021.

Does that sound right?

Yeah, yeah.

I've got a terrible memory, by the way.

So, all the way through this, I'm going to be saying, what's the name of that guy who, you know, the one that was in that film?

Oh, what was that film called?

Yeah, and they were in it as well.

Oh, what, you know, so apologies in advance if I do that.

That's okay.

I've got Google here.

That's my whole life.

I'm just attached to Google.

Everything gets fact-checked because I'm...

Yeah, I mean, I wonder if that's a mistake, though, because it shuts down bits of your brain that would be thinking about it and trying to ramp up your memory.

That's what Frank Skinner says.

I remember him talking about it, and he was adamant that it was a mistake to Google things for that reason.

And I do worry about it, but sometimes, you know, you sat there and you're doing your breathing exercises and thinking, it'll come, it'll come, just relax, think about something else, it'll pop into your head.

And it doesn't.

You just think, no, that's been erased from the memory banks, and I need to Google the name of the particularly, you know, it's like the new wave of actors and singers and performers, and you know, all the people that I grew up with, I can remember all that stuff fine.

Me too, yeah, absolutely.

But you know, the guy, the one that looks a little bit like the other guy with the cheeks and the spiky hair, that you know,

so it's all that.

Yeah, my mum died in May of 2020, so quite soon after the first lockdown.

Gosh.

And it was around the time of the Dominic Cummings thing.

Yeah.

And she was insisting that she was fine when I was phoning her.

And I knew she was already going downhill a bit, but I didn't realize how much.

And every time I called her, she was down in Reading, I was in Norwich, she would say, I'm fine, I'm fine, you're worrying too much.

And I was thinking, I should pick her up.

But then all over the news, it's like Dominic Cummings is the world's biggest wanker for setting these rules and then breaking them himself.

Yeah, absolutely.

And everyone else is respecting them because you're told, like, only in emergencies should you break them.

And my mum was like, this is not an emergency.

But it was.

That's a very mum thing to do, though.

Right.

I mean, I think people gradually as we go on, they get more honest, but not all of us.

And they withhold things that they think are going to worry their family.

You know, it reminds me of like,

you know, that Monty Python sketch where the black knight, as it gets his arms and legs chopped off, and he's saying...

It's just a scratch.

Yeah, that's how I think of mums.

And, you know, grandmas before that, even more so.

So it's very difficult to pin them down.

Yeah.

But that was a surreal and nightmarish time in so many ways.

And especially if you were one of those people who had lost someone, it felt extra crazy didn't you find?

I did but I mean I had like

so many losses

like

I don't know over the last eight or nine years

my mum my dad both my brothers and I had three really good friends from university my best friends really and lost two of them as well and it just felt like why am I going around smiling I should just be be staying in and swigging a bottle of gin and abusing everyone but I just did because I couldn't think of anything else to do really so yeah it's a very dark time for a lot of people I think and those awful kind of pictures of people like waving through windows at their relative in trapped in some residential home for the elderly and all that oh god it was just just awful I think and I think that's really changed people a lot myself I really do.

Yeah.

A kind of collective trauma of that period.

How old were your because you've got two kids, right?

I have, yeah.

How old were they during COVID?

They were, hang on, when did COVID start?

It was sort of 20...

Early 2020.

That's right.

So one was 19 and one was 17.

Right.

So they were, yeah, in the thick of it, the same sort of age as my boys, a little little older.

And

how do you think it affected them?

Well, I think

the youngest one was doing A-levels at the time.

Yeah.

So not great because there is no similarity in my mind between going to school and doing exams and being with other people.

and just sitting at home on a Zoom or whatever it was.

I think it was impossible and it's really, I do think, and this is such a cliche, but it's damaged that generation

a lot.

In what way though?

Social skills, too much time on social media, on their own, in their rooms.

And I think the fallout of that in some ways is that some, I don't like to call them kids because that sounds patronising, but but a lot of them just carried that on because that's what they were used to and they can't now get off that track.

so i i feel in those ways you know huge explosion in poor mental health amongst that generation as well um and just very difficult all around

it doesn't help that so much of social media is about reminding you what everyone else is doing and so you've literally got an app like find my friends or whatever it's called where you can see where everyone is.

Talk about tweaking your

FOMO.

I tell you the thing that pisses me off the most is not being able to track your children without them knowing.

Yeah,

I'm sure if someone was able to do that,

I know ultimately it's fair not to be able to do that, but it would have been so useful.

I mean, it also made me feel really ashamed of the way that I treated my parents when I was that age.

In what way?

Well, because I was

I lied to them 97% of the time,

and they never had any idea where I was.

I was pretty hopeless at covering stuff up, so I got into trouble a lot.

You know, I used to get out of our, we lived in Hastings at the time, and I used to get out of our kind of garage window and go clubbing or whatever when everyone was asleep.

And then, of course, I'd do things like come back in pissed and fall out the window onto the roof of my dad's car and dent it, so it was impossible to cover up.

Lots of things like that.

Yeah,

left my purse in a pub once and thought, oh, this, you know, that's a grim old pub, it'll never come back.

And then Hell's Angel turns up at the door with my purse, and my mum answers the door.

So he said, I was in the pub called The Anchor in Hastings.

So not only has a Hell's Angel turned up, but he's told my mum where I was as well.

You know, and that kept happening to me.

Well, a friend and I,

we found out that if you, I don't think that exists anymore, you used to be able to get, get this, by the way, cigarettes for asthmatics.

How did that work?

Well, they had Benzedrine in them.

Whoa.

So

someone told us that if you make tea out of it,

you know, it's amazing.

So of course we did.

and I was fine and I went home and the friend went absolutely you know off the planet and tried to jump out of a second floor window and her mum just managed to stop her and of course in order to sort of

defend herself and also to put the blame elsewhere She said it was all my fault and I'd bought them and I'd told her what was in them and what would happen.

And so, of course, then her mum mum phones my mum and grasses me up and in fact it was a joint venture completely i understand why she did it but i would have been a hopeless criminal put it like that what does benzadrin do then well it's speedy you know so it's like speed but also it seemed for her to be slightly hallucinatory as well right and she's normally like a really quiet kind of quite bookish sort of girl and she just transformed into this kind of raging monster.

It was so weird.

Yeah, it was a bit scary actually.

I'm sure.

Were you ever a big drug fiend?

Not really.

I mean,

we were the generation that didn't have many exciting drugs, if that's how you want to categorise them.

So I never had access to anything much more than

mild, cannabis-y, grassy type things, and the occasional LSD tablet.

But the worst times for me were I had my drink spiked twice.

Oh no.

In a pub, and that was grim.

Spiked with what?

With LSD.

Oh my goodness.

I know.

When was that?

I was probably about 17 at the time.

So that would have been

about 75, 74.

Holy shit.

But that's so shocking that someone would do that to you.

I just can't believe that

people do that and they're so cavalier with this thing that is so potentially dangerous.

Well, absolutely.

I mean, if you combine it with someone's pathology, if you like, you have got no idea what's going to happen.

Exactly.

I've seen, yeah, I've had friends who've come completely off the rails just after one experience.

Well, as a mental health nurse, I worked on the drug unit for a bit.

Yeah, I saw that course.

Well, in fact, a friend of mine ended up at the Maudsley, which is where you worked, right?

That's right, yeah.

My friend was in his late teens when he had a bad experience, and

I mean, who knows what else was contributing to it, but he ended up being sectioned for a while.

With what they would call at the time, I don't know what they call it now, but a drug-induced psychosis, which is kind of not dissimilar to a paranoid psychosis like schizophrenia or

is that like bipolar?

Is that the same sort of thing?

No, bipolar is.

I think bipolar is really interesting because quite a lot of people say they're bipolar, but actually, I don't think they are.

They've got something that's called a cyclothymic personality, which means that they've got slightly narrower edges to their experience.

So, someone with bipolar disorder, which used to be called manic depressive psychosis, because you know, like a psychosis is losing touch with reality,

and you really did lose touch with reality.

You'd have massive highs.

That's the manic episodes.

Yeah, and appalling lows as well.

And sometimes, and I realise what I'm saying here is probably not very acceptable, but some things that people did when they were very high,

I think sounded amazing.

Do you know what I mean?

I mean, we had one person that we saw who was brought in by the police, and he'd gone to a multi-story car park, and he jumped from roof to roof of all the cars on one floor and just dented them completely-the whole lot.

I don't know, like 40-50 cars, and he'd had a whale of a time, you know.

And you might think, What are you talking about?

But that's those things like that can be, I think, be great when you're in them.

But the damage that you cause is kind of appalling.

I don't mean physical damage, I mean, you know,

worrying your family beyond belief,

all those sorts of things.

So yeah, it was difficult really.

Yeah.

And

there's so many people that you come across now who

it's like they've slipped through the cracks a little bit.

So people who are functional, you know, they're not violent or anything like that, but they're people that you come across socially or in the street or whatever who are obviously in trouble and probably off their meds or whatever.

but they're not so bad that they need to be taken into care but they're just living in the middle somewhere i know in this sort of no-man's land, it's terrible.

I do have friends who still work in the area, but obviously, I'm not in touch with it every day.

But certainly, to me, at the time when I was nursing, one of the huge problems was taking the drugs that you were prescribed for something like schizophrenia over a long time

and it completely changing you into someone who was bland and unemotional and everything just flattened out on loads of weight, and just, yeah, absolutely flat.

And it was,

you kind of thought, almost, is that worse?

But I mean, I don't know.

I used to think about things like that all the time.

But the drugs have got so much better now, is what I hear.

They have, they have.

Like they're tuning things.

Yeah, they're fine-tuning everything all the time.

And if you think when I was doing that, that was in 1978, and that is such a long time ago.

It wasn't quite as bad as One Flow of the Cuckoo's nose.

Yeah, yeah.

Now I remember the drug that my friend was given was largactyl.

Yeah, well that that's that's the standard that we used to give at the time and I don't know they must still give it because I don't know when was your friend ill?

Late 80s.

Oh right so it would have been it would have been you do you know why it's called largactyl?

No.

Because it has a large action.

No.

Which means that it acts on so many parts of your your nervous system or whatever it is and that that's one of the problems with it because you get terrible side effects from largactyl which are nothing to do with making you better my friend said the nickname that the nurses used for the drug was the liquid kosh yeah

yeah I know that's unfortunate isn't it do you um Has anyone ever suggested to you that you come back in some sort of role and

get involved with improving mental health services and things like that, because you know, you obviously had so much experience, and also you would think that you have kind of an interesting perspective on it, given who you are and what your personality is, and your sense of humor, and all those things I would think would be really valuable qualities to have in that kind of environment.

Yeah, I mean, I've been asked in a sort of tangential way.

I mean, not to sort of go back and work within it but to spread awareness if you like or to support charities which you know are trying to improve things for people.

And I think everything's changed beyond recognition really and there's a very new approach which I think has come in in the last five or so years to particularly psychosis and not labelling people because I don't think that's very helpful in a way.

To label people.

Yeah, because everyone's different.

You know, we had a set kind of list of symptoms, and if you ticked three boxes, you were that illness.

And there's so much subtle interaction between what's going on in your head and who you are as a person that that's quite

too broad brush, really.

Sure.

But it does seem like people are keener than ever to label themselves or to get some sort of diagnosis.

You know,

I know so many people who have said, I finally got my ADHD diagnosis and this is explained so much.

Or autism, you know, I finally got

a diagnosis that included me being on the autism spectrum.

And most of the people I know who've said that are relieved.

It's like...

It's like they've got an explanation for how their personality works.

Do you know what I mean?

I do know what you mean, but

I think people sort of forget in a way that it's a spectrum.

So they forget there are going to be people on the very edge of it who have, let's say, a mild version for want of a better phrase, who function pretty normally, you know, without having to have medication.

And it's also sort of dribbled over into sort of common parlance, you know.

I mean, like when people say, oh, I'm so OCD,

that sort of thing, I don't think it's at all helpful because what it means is that people that

have serious issues with OCD are kind of lumped in.

And so the first reaction of other people to go, oh, do you arrange all your books in colour or alphabetical order, you know?

And it's about so much more than that up at the other end.

So it's difficult, really.

I find that difficult because it's expanded outwards and it seems to be expanding to the extent that we'll all have something soon.

Sure.

Have you ever thought of yourself in those terms?

Have you ever thought, like, here's what I've got, I need to tackle this?

Well, I found it sort of hard to ignore in the sense that I recognize in my dad that he was probably,

you know, he suffered from depression, but I think he was probably on the autistic spectrum.

Right, okay.

And that part of him was to do with him.

I say that, I mean, I'm quite similar to him in a way, saying the most appalling, truthful things without any filter to people.

And so I do recognise that, but I think you can't just say that that's what someone's done and therefore they must be, you know.

I think again, it's a very, very, very long spectrum.

And he was on it somewhere, but I wouldn't like to sort of, with hindsight, try and work out what that was.

The difference is, do you make a career out of it?

If you can find a way of monetizing, saying the worst things you can to people.

Well, you're looking at me.

I'm kind of in a way.

I have.

Yeah, of course.

But that's what I mean.

Like, I wonder if a lot of people's kind of psychological kinks and hang-ups and peculiarities

sometimes...

Obviously, if it's very extreme, that's a different thing.

But if it's the kind of thing that we're talking about the way that most people are, most people are pretty weird.

They absolutely are.

Yes, you're right.

Everyone's got strange kinks and curiosities about themselves that they've accumulated over the years.

And often it's a question of reframing them somehow.

And if you are able to reframe them and find a good use for them, then often that's job done, really.

I mean, if you look at a lot of the so-called geniuses of the world,

indeed, they're clearly people who are

dealing with a lot of strange things.

And have very different social skills from the rest of us.

I mean, I always think with me, and I don't know what you're like when you're performing, but I'm not really like I am performing in real life.

Yeah.

That's such a well-worn, tedious phrase, but it's kind of a bit of me that does that.

I can say things on stage I wouldn't dream of saying to people, you know, when I'm not on stage.

But that's very useful because I think when I started, people were sort of doing that.

I can't believe she just said that.

And I was kind of doing it as well, thinking, God, did I just say that?

And I wouldn't dream of saying that sort of thing normally.

But I suppose in some ways, you know, when I started, I kind of thought there are so few women.

I have kind of not to care about how I come across, you know, and I wasn't.

well, I never have been like traditionally a looker, shall we say.

So that was the initial thing that people picked up on.

Because when you walk on the the stage as a comic, all they've got to go with before you open your mouth is how you look.

And so, you would immediately get either some abusive comment or a sort of appreciative one from men in the audience, however drunk or not that they were.

And so, I felt, I mean, a lot of people that I worked with at the beginning would just kind of try to ignore it or do some sort of rather sweet put-down, which might not work a lot of the time.

And I thought, I'm going straight for the eyes, you know, I'm going to get them and I'm going to show them that I don't give a shit.

And it kind of really worked at the beginning because the Comedy Saw Late show, if you're on last there,

you go on at 20 past two in the morning.

And on a Friday night, they're either unconscious or they're sort of a bit homicidal.

So, you know, you have to be prepared for that.

And

I just thought, I'm going to say what I like and sort the damage out later.

But you used to drink a lot more in those days, right?

Yeah, I did.

But I mean, I don't really drink at all now.

Um,

and my attitude towards drink is: what's the point unless you get absolutely smashed and behave really badly?

Now, obviously, at the age of 67, that's a little bit more difficult.

So, I really enjoyed the years from kind of 18 to sort of 25, 30 when I was younger, and everyone was doing it, you know.

When you were out on stage, I mean, you were slightly anesthetized by alcohol, but you were still affected by criticism, right?

You, it's not like you didn't think about it at all.

I mean, you did notice when people were cruel or said unkind things, and it did hurt to a degree, right?

Yeah, I mean, it was just like you know, all the blokes that have ever shouted at you out of a van just all concertina into one night, really.

And I, I, what I used to do is I used to try and preempt it by having a sort of spectrum of put-downs.

And I would start with kind of like quite nice and whimsical, you know, and then I would go through to nuclear if I had to, with about five stops in between.

And that really helped me because it was kind of a bit like having armour and different layers of armour so that you knew if you got to layer seven, then you might just as well go home because you haven't got anything else apart from physically assaulting them.

I'm just trying to remember.

No, I don't think I ever did that.

I had that done to me on a couple of occasions, but you know, drunk people are just so unpredictable.

You were assaulted yourself.

I was, yes.

By members of an audience.

Yes.

I had, well, I had one where someone walked up on stage and grabbed my collar and then put their fist back as if they were going to punch me.

Holy shit, what had you said?

Well, it was all so quick.

And someone that was with them just grabbed their fist before they managed to gather any strength behind it.

I think also when I was a nurse, because of the area that I worked in,

I got attacked a few times.

And so nothing in comedy was ever as bad as the sort of assaults that you might get as a nurse because I think being

really psychologically disturbed is actually far more deep and kind of potentially damaging than being drunk in some ways.

So I always thought, well, I can just run away if I want, you know, but sometimes I just wanted to stay and wind them up.

And that's terrible, really, but I enjoyed it, you know.

I heard you say though that you would kind of bluff confidence in order to deal with some of those confrontational situations when you were a nurse.

So if someone came at you with a machete as they did once,

then rather than show any fear, you'd kind of try and go the other way and be super calm.

Yes, I mean,

when I was a nurse, my boss for a long time was an absolutely brilliant guy, and he went on to become a psychotherapist.

It's a lovely Welsh guy.

And he always used to say, and I remember this really, really well.

He said that if someone comes at you and they're very angry, what you have to do is you have to lower your status in relation to them immediately.

Because if you try and up your status and face off to them, that's just going to make things worse for them because they'll see it as having to best you, if you like.

And so I just used to treat people respectfully and calmly.

And on the whole, that helped.

That diffuses the confrontation.

And I've seen nurses do the opposite of that.

And that really doesn't help if you do that.

As in, they just

get very loud and upset.

Well,

there was one nurse who someone came in and said, I must be seen now.

And she said, sit down and wait your turn.

and I'm afraid got her face punched oh no yeah

you know and I'm not saying it's her fault sure sure but it's a risk you take if you start playing the kind of authority card yeah you know and I never did that so

yeah yeah because now I'm sort of imagining the scene in the comedy club that you just described.

If it had been filmed for social media now, which it almost certainly would be, the outcome that everybody would be wanting is for the comic to go absolutely ballistic and get exact some kind of revenge or give a speech about like, how dare you, and you know what I mean, to give some satisfactory conclusion to the confrontation.

But the reality is, and correct me if I'm wrong, that actually those confrontations are never satisfying.

As you say, you just have to kind of allow them to defuse.

Yeah, I think, you know, the major factor in a lot of these confrontations is always alcohol.

Right.

And the problem with that is that shifts you into a different universe, if you like.

You cannot talk to someone who's really, really, really pissed and expect to get a kind of reasonable response.

So there's absolutely no point, depending on just how drunk they are, in sort of upping the confrontation because, you know, there are certain that's a certain level of being drunk that you reach where you actually really don't care what you do.

And that was, that's always a fear, I think, because you don't know.

Is someone going to pull a knife out?

Are they, you know, they're going to headbutt me?

What are they going to do?

So, I mean, in a way, my nurse training was really useful for me because I could judge those confrontations

with a lot of sort of experience and knowledge behind me, I suppose.

I didn't always get it right, but, you know.

I mean, do you remember how you felt after you were attacked on stage that time

yeah well I always do this thing of minimizing everything you know so

I kind of felt shaken up for I don't know

half a minute and then I just oh well moving on yeah I know I always do that it's very annoying for everyone that knows me

yeah

But then again,

that was my mum's fault, to be honest.

It's not a fault.

It's very useful.

That was her technique.

yeah her her technique was I think she came from a family that suppressed everything

so we didn't really know anything about her background when we were kids and she would she would let things out in dribs and drabs until finally

only a couple of years before she died I said to her

what actually what did go on and she couldn't tell me but she just wrote it down for me wrote about her early childhood and sent me a few pages.

And that kind of filled in the gaps a bit.

What was that like reading that?

Did it answer a lot of questions?

I'd like it to have been a bit more comprehensive, but it was about her early childhood and being taken back to Ireland after her parents had split up.

Her mum went back to Ireland and took her and her brother.

So then her father came over to Ireland and sort of

kidnapped her back, but left her brother there.

So it was all very strange, really.

And

I think that from that point onwards, she just suppressed everything, or she learnt how to, because she couldn't deal with it, you know, as a kind of very young child, really.

Yeah.

Wow, that's amazing that you were able to have that conversation with her and that she was able to write that stuff down.

It was.

I was amazed when she agreed to it.

Yeah,

so that's great that you did that.

That's a regret that I have about my mum.

I've said before, I tried to sit down with my mum and have a similar conversation and ask her all the questions I'd always had.

Because she sounds a lot like yours in some way.

Didn't know much about her background and definitely had that

best not talk about it philosophy.

Sorry.

That was my watch.

I touched it and it said something.

I don't know what it was.

It was the oversharing alarm.

Sorry.

But what happened then?

And what was your mum's response?

I think she was a bit baffled by me wanting to know.

So she brushed off a lot of it.

But when I did sit down and have the conversation with her, it was when I was writing my first memoir.

And so I was fact-checking a lot of stuff about my dad who had died a few years before.

So I didn't really, I wasn't focusing that much on her own own life it was more about her marriage with my dad and actually what i really regret was that i never sat down with her and said like tell me all about your parents and where you grew up and what was your family like and where do you think you know your personality how did it develop in certain ways and how does it inform the way you are now and the way you brought us up and all those things i mean i don't know if she would have had satisfactory answers for those questions.

I think a lot of those questions, she would slightly roll her eyes and go, like, yes, I'm well acquainted with the eye-rolling thing with my mum, again, you know.

And I think the thing is, you have to question whether that's the way that's easier for her.

Yeah.

How she would have felt if she had told you all the things you'd asked, and if she would have felt

panicky, or, you know, why did I do that?

When she was so used to...

Because people hid things from their children like that.

I mean, these days it's the opposite, isn't it?

I mean, you can get books that children can give you, and it's like a diary, but it asks you specific questions about your life, and you sort of fill it in so that they've got it and they've answered

all these questions that my mum would never have answered in a million years, you know.

Exactly right.

Yeah, my mum would have gone through that book and just put N slash A or

no comment or whatever

for every answer but i do think it's a good idea in principle and i do often say to people like if you are able to

then do sit down with your parents and and have that conversation if you can and i do think that they will probably

especially if they're from a certain generation they will probably roll their eyes a little bit and go well why why do you need to know or they'll resist but if you can if you can have it even a little bit you won't regret it i don't think unless some incredibly dark secret pops out.

But then, I mean, that's that's a wider philosophical question.

Is it better to know all this stuff, or is it better just to keep pushing on?

That's what my mum probably would have thought.

Like,

everyone's trying to figure out some system.

And

why is burying your head in the sand and just plowing on until the bitter end that much worse

than

finding everything out and getting all the answers and all the truth.

Absolutely.

And I mean, I'm fairly firmly on the side of burying your head in the sand myself.

Still, you know, I think it's difficult to be truthful.

And everyone draws the line in a different place, don't they?

Like, I'm sure some parents would be

telling their kids how many sexual partners they'd had or whatever, which I couldn't even have dared to ask my mum, to be honest, when I was younger.

So times are changing and I think with social media, for example,

people's expectations just rise all the time about,

you know, I almost think one day someone's going to actually have to physically turn themselves inside out to show people everything about them.

Yeah.

You know, because there are tiny steps, then huge leaps in the direction of revealing everything about yourself.

And I

personally don't think that that's that's very wise, but you know, I'm not that generation, so

yes, I know.

Well, obviously, I'm caught somewhere in between because

so much of my career has been me talking to other people and talking about myself and revealing details of my life and being quite open

as far as possible, like keeping some things back when it's, you know, like I don't give out my pin numbers.

But where possible, I want to be open.

It feels like that's part of the effort to connect with people and communicate with people.

But obviously, you can go too far.

It must be weird sometimes, I think, for my children because they will be overwhelmed by a wealth of information about me.

You know, they'll be.

So there might be a reverse.

Exactly.

I wish he hadn't said so much.

Yeah.

Oh, I just think that they won't be aware of it.

That's what I'm thinking.

I just think there's so much of it.

They can't possibly keep up with all the things I've said.

How old are your children?

My daughter is 16, the boys are 20 and 22.

So, do they listen to your staff?

Sometimes my eldest son does, which slightly unsettles me.

And I don't know if he's listening to it currently, but there was a time when he would say, Oh, yeah, and he'd refer to a recent episode.

And then I was like, Whoa, I don't know if that's good.

Yeah.

No, I feel the same, you know.

And I'm glad to say that I don't, they've never said it outright, but I think that, generationally speaking, they don't really like my comedy, and I kind of don't blame them because comedy is so different these days.

They're hardly going to say, oh, my favourite comic's my mum.

Do you know what I mean?

It's like, you know, it's embarrassing.

But you must, do you make them laugh at home, though?

I, yeah, I would say I do.

I mean, they make me laugh as well, but it's not in the way that I would make an audience laugh because my comedy has always been kind of limiting in some ways because I'm very much a one-liner merchant and I say stuff succinctly and I know you know I'm a man-hater

that's the sort of shorthand for what I am and

on stage

yes well absolutely and in real life I don't tell anyone anyway

yeah but no not in real life but you know there are it's all to do with the the sort of zeitgeist isn't it It's not acceptable for me to go on stage now and say, God, I hate men, or you know, a comedy version of it,

because that's not fair and it probably isn't fair, but it certainly seemed to have an impact for me, if you like.

And as a comic, you want to have impact as much as you want to get laughs.

And because we were so few and far between, us women comics, I didn't care whether men liked it or not.

I just wanted to give women a laugh about something that they would recognize.

Because male comedy in those days, I'm not saying it wasn't great because there were some brilliant comics, you know.

But in those days, you had sort of one-liner merchants, you had surreal comics, these were all men, but women comics weren't anything, they were just women, you know.

That was their

style, that was their act, absolutely,

and so that's changed beyond recognition, which I'm I I think is great.

No, definitely.

I kind of also think, you know, from those days, that

I always tried to make it funny before it was a point, if you know what I mean.

Because I think if you make a point first and then you try and be funny with it, you're just doing a political speech.

You're not doing comedy.

So if I wanted to say something, but I couldn't make it funny, I just wouldn't bother to say it, really.

Yes.

Can I ask you a question?

Sure.

You don't have to answer.

Do you like my act?

Yeah.

You don't have to say yes, because

I feel like I said to you earlier,

it's aimed much more specifically at women.

Yeah.

Why do you ask that question?

I'm just interested.

Oh, yeah.

I don't think you don't like it.

I've kind of got no idea.

But I'm just interested.

I remember watching through the cake hole

and really laughing,

but also getting vibes like, yeah, I don't think she would like me.

Well, you're wrong there because I do, I really like you.

And I mean, now

that sounds weird now, does it?

Yeah, isn't it?

Isn't it stained?

You asked a direct question.

Whoa.

Yeah, I know.

I am sorry about that.

I know, but.

It's the question that no one ever asks.

Do you actually like my stuff?

I know, but it's hard, isn't it?

It is because you sort of think, like, well, I want to give an honest answer here.

And I honestly, I honestly, really would much more you know I'm not saying you haven't made an honest answer but it's very hard and I don't it's so odd when you talk to other comics isn't it because there are comics that I really like

comics that I love comics that I don't like so much and if they asked me that question I wouldn't know what to say because I think everyone has their own style of comedy they like.

I don't know, was it Paddy Considine you were talking to or someone who it might not even have been you to be honest, I'm sorry about my memory, but they were saying they like comedians like Jack and Romesh because they're so grumpy,

which is also kind of what I like as well, really.

But I also loved John Hegley, Johnny Immaterial, you know,

John Cooper Clark, all those people, Hattie Hayridge.

I don't know if you know her.

Sure, yeah.

Yeah.

So it's weird, you know, that you just kind of have your preferences.

And it's not anything about the person, is it?

Because I don't think my act really represents me 100% at all.

But because I kind of curated it so carefully in a way to be appealing to a certain sort of woman, yeah, yeah, because I'm a certain sort of woman, and I'm a sort of woman who can't be asked with clothes, with makeup, with fillers, with you know, I hate fashion, and I just want to just be free to to just slob around and not bother quite honestly.

I mean you say that you I think you look good though.

You've got a good look you've always had that and that combined with the confidence and the funniness adds up to an attractive person.

That's all an attractive person is isn't it?

I remember really liking

well I like people who put themselves down to a degree.

Like the thing is you can go too far with that so that you feel sorry for the person because you think like, oh,

they're struggling or they feel that they have to say that in order to deflect criticism.

But I did like it.

I thought it was funny when you would put yourself down.

I wrote down a line from through the cake hole because I was watching that the other day.

It was a sketch about doing DIY.

Oh yeah.

And you say it's important when you're doing DIY that you wear something old that can get dirty.

or perhaps you might prefer like me to just look like a pile of cack all the time

the thing about through the cake hole was it was like the first series I'd done and it was like such good fun and I think we got away with a lot quite honestly but it is one of my happiest memories and it was well

You do this sometimes, you just think, pinch yourself, woman.

Five years ago, you were a nurse, and look, what's going on?

It was so weird.

But and when people kind of agree to do things or you ask them to be in things, I'm still kind of this sounds like false modesty now, so I won't go on about it.

But I'm surprised when people say yes,

I know, I know it's weird, low self-esteem.

Yeah, that's the thing, is it?

I mean, I definitely have a problem with that myself as well.

Maybe that's what I respond to to a certain degree in your stuff, but it's very appealing because if that's part of what you're dealing with, then you deal with it in a very different way than I ever would be able to.

So your thing was always to go out and look as if you couldn't give a fuck.

And so, and I think probably that's what would antagonize and threaten a lot of audience members, right?

Especially if they were a bit pissed.

Yeah, big time.

And so they would have a strong reaction against you if they weren't on board with you rather than, I mean, generally, the spectrum of responses is much milder with my kind of stuff.

So, well, that's because you come across as a lovely person, and I don't think I do when I'm doing comedy.

And you know, you just experiment with things.

Do you remember the Tunnel Club?

Yeah.

Yeah, well, that was hideous because audiences would randomly decide who to hate.

It had nothing to do with how good or bad the person was.

And I remember going on there one night and just getting a wall of of abuse from these very kind of pissed middle-aged blokes about my appearance and just standing there and facing off to them without saying a word.

And it was like a game of what you call it.

Chicken.

Yes, that's right.

Just stood there and looked at them.

Who's going to get bored first?

Yeah, like a Wild West standoff.

It was.

And they got bored first and quietened down.

And I really felt, God, that was a good win, you know, because totally unexpected.

Yeah, I don't think I would be able to do that.

I think I would run away.

And I would.

But that's because you're a nice person.

Well, there's a thin line between being nice and being just sort of ingratiating for the sake of peace.

Do you know what I mean?

That's like.

Well, yeah, yeah, I do in a way.

But yeah, it's again, it's that sort of subtle sort of shades of it, isn't it?

Yeah.

I don't think you've ever been ingratiating in your life.

Thank you so much, Joker.

And

that was very Dickensian.

I took a trip, took a trip down the river of time.

I packed some things for my trip down the river of time.

I packed some things for my trip down the river of time.

I took a camping chair and a fancy camera so I could sit and take pictures from my chair off the river of time.

Off the river of time.

Time, time, time, time.

I also made sure I had my laptop there so I could use my photo manipulation software and tweak the river of time.

Time, time, time, time.

Oh,

the river of time.

You be you,

the river of time.

Ooh, la la la,

it's long and covered in slime.

Now, the first job I ever got was when I was 18.

I'd just left school and I went and worked as a bus boy in the Chicago Pizza Pie factory in Hanover Square, central London.

And one of the waitresses or servers, if you prefer, was called Julia.

Wow.

She was very glamorous.

I thought she was super cool.

And she was always talking about her friend who was a comedian.

and she said yeah she calls herself the sea monster yeah and uh she's amazing she was always going on about that is she she was your pal right yeah we were at school together oh yeah at tambridge wells grammar school for girls uh so i've known her since i was like 13 12 or 13 and um

She's absolutely great, you know, and I think like she's an example of women all being tarred with the same brush in the old days, you know.

She's unique, she's incredibly bright, really, really funny.

I think when you're a stand-up comic, you look around and you realize that most people are funnier than you are.

But it's just translating it onto the stage that a lot of people just can't face doing, and I don't blame them really.

But yeah, I mean, I'm still in touch with her.

Are you?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Oh, well, I'll give her my best.

Of course, I will.

Yeah.

I really liked her so much.

And she was good, fun.

Yeah, she was very funny.

I remember she came in one day and

one of her eyes was all half closed up and all red.

They're like, whoa, what happened to you?

And she basically said that she's like, oh, yeah, it was my boyfriend.

And they'd had a, it was a sex accident.

It was some misdirected facial action.

And so she explained this to me, but I didn't really understand what she meant.

At that point, I had no clue that that was on the table as an option for intimacy.

And so I just couldn't get my head around it.

I was like, and you let him?

But yeah, she was great.

I have such fond memories of her.

That was a really formative time in my life working in that restaurant.

But you worked in a restaurant as well, though, right?

Yes, I've done a few places, yeah.

Worked in a few restaurants.

Rather than military service, people should have to work in a restaurant for a few years in their youth.

I think it's the best thing I ever did.

And it's so valuable to just as far as getting on with people.

Yeah, absolutely.

So many different people that you're working with on the staff, so many different people as customers, so many different kind of points of conflict and tension that you deal with every day.

Yeah, customers can be absolutely appalling, can't they?

And obviously, my instinct would have been to give as good as I got, but obviously you're immediately prevented from doing that because of your relationship with the customer, who's always right, or some version of that.

I found that pretty hard, really.

Did you ever do anything extreme to get your revenge on a customer?

Did I put anything in anyone's food?

I don't think I did.

I've heard stories about people that did, that someone working in the kitchen of a restaurant, I'm not going to say where it is because I get in trouble, but they pissed in their soup.

Oh,

I know.

And there's, I don't know, there's a story in Train Spotting, the book, which wasn't included in the film, bizarrely.

Well, I can imagine why it wasn't really.

Even in that really weird, violent film, it wasn't acceptable.

Which was that a woman took out her tempex and wiped it on someone's food before she sent it off to their table.

And

no, I don't think I never did anything like that.

No.

I worked with people who did things like that.

I do remember a guy, at least claiming to have weed in someone's champagne,

a very obnoxious suit who came in and was kind of barking demands.

He was like, fill up my glass, top it up.

You've only given me half a glass here.

And so he said, all right then, and popped into the storeroom, weed in it, came out, handed it to the guy, took a sip, and the guy went,

This is too warm.

Don't you know anything about champagne?

I don't think customers realize quite what a risk they take when they're rude to the staff.

Yeah, because the staff have so much opportunity to include something unpleasant in their next course, don't they?

I mean, we can probably wrap up now that we've wandered into the pee-pee zone.

Sorry, and I even hit the period

zone, which again, I think is something that was never mentioned in the late 70s by anybody.

But I realise I've managed to crowbar some stuff about periods and when I've had reviews in the past saying, all she does is talk about periods.

Oh yeah, I think Jeremy Clarkson said that to me once, but yeah, there we go.

So sorry about that.

Well, he'll be happy.

Jeremy's he listens regularly.

I wouldn't want to disappoint him.

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Continue.

Hey, welcome back, Podcats.

That was Jo Brand talking to me there.

I was really grateful to Jo for making the time to come along and waffle with me.

It was very nice to have the opportunity to do so.

And I really recommend her books.

which are really funny but also filled with

good wisdom and practical advice for navigating life.

I'm not going to waffle too much today.

I've got to get back and

carry on my prep for Monday's live event with Catelyn Moran at the Union Chapel.

I hope some of you can make it.

I'm going to try and dig out one or two clips, maybe some behind-the-scenes nuggets from Adam and Joe show days.

My book comes out this week.

Thank you very much if you have pre-ordered it because it makes me look important and powerful and at the end of the day what's more important than that eh dog legs lying on the sofa I think oh yeah I forgot

but I've been enjoying appearing on other people's podcasts recently some of them are out already I think the episode of David O'Doherty and Max Rushton's what did you do yesterday podcast is out

and I'm also going to be appearing on Russell Howard's Five Brilliant Things.

Recorded that this week, that was fun.

And Harry Hill's Are We There Yet?

Which I'm sure many of you know already, but you should check out definitely if you're a comedy fan.

I love Harry Hill.

I also recorded a conversation for Catherine Ryan's show, What's My Age Again?

podcast show, but they filmed that one.

And I was on QI Elf Dan Schreiber's podcast, We Can Be Weirdos,

talking about...

Well, we started off talking quite a bit about Zainwind.

I don't know if that'll make the edit, though.

We were comparing notes on the

considerable emotional impact of Blackstar,

what it meant to us.

And I immediately got emotional,

you know, right at the top.

But we also talked about strange phenomena,

psychedelic entities.

I did some massively ill-informed waffling, trying to recall half-remembered facts

about things I'd once sort of misunderstood when I was 14.

I think they're going to need quite a few elves to fact-check that one.

But I also talked about the process of writing in a bit more depth and detail with John Rand and Tom Turner.

They're the hosts of the Failing Writers podcast.

They describe themselves as success-starved word wranglers stumbling towards their shared ambition to become proper writers.

And so the podcast they do is all about writing.

And that's what I talked to them about.

But it was a good fun conversation with them both.

Very nice guys.

Good people, nice people.

I've put a link to their podcast in amongst the other links.

in today's episode down in the description you'll find a link that takes you to my website where you'll find a picture of myself and Joe Brand and

other related odds and sods as well as related links for all my previous podcast episodes and

guest photos on a lot of those etc.

It's a great time on the Adam Buxton website.

Okay that's pretty much it for today.

Thank you once again to Joe Brand.

Thank you to Seamus Murphy Mitchell.

for his invaluable production support and additional conversation editing on this episode.

Thanks, Seamus.

Thanks to Helen Green.

She does the artwork for the podcast.

Thanks to everyone at ACAST who works so hard, liaising with the sponsors for my podcast.

Much appreciated.

But thanks, most of all, to you.

I just think you're a bit, well, you're just a bit better than the average podcast listener.

I wonder how you'd feel about a hug.

Come here.

Hey.

Good to see you.

Okay.

Let's head back, Doclegs.

And until next time, you and I share the same owl space.

Please go carefully.

It's very unpredictable out there.

And for what it's worth, I love you.

Bye.

Like and subscribe.

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