As a comic and as a nurse, it's important to look calm on the surface when you're absolutely crapping yourself inside. So, if someone is waving a machete at you, which has happened to me when I was a nurse, it's important to make that person feel that you're in control.

Jo Brand

Yourself Yours Your

Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.

Good Food Thing

Whatever situation you are in, that is what is normal for you.

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.

Wedding Romantic Mom

There are two types of people in this world: one who opens a packet of biscuits, has one and puts the rest back in the cupboard, and one who eats the whole packet in one go.

World Whole Who

I swam at school a lot. Long-distance swimming in pools, and diving, then when we moved to Hastings when I was 13 I used to swim in the sea all the time; I loved it out of season and when it was rough.

You look across the board at comedy quiz shows, and they are mainly hosted by men.

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

Travel Way Very

The problem with comedy audiences - it's like the Coliseum - when they see someone struggling, they don't feel altruistic towards them. They feel slightly repulsed by it.

War Wit Towards

The way to a man's heart is through his hanky pocket with a breadknife.

Even nice things don't make you happy when you're tired.

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

Very Trace Tone

I must be an anorexic because an anorexic looks in the mirror and sees a fat person.

As the Tories know, the problem with setting yourself up as a shining example for others to follow is that when you get caught out, that proverbial substance really hits the fan.

Yourself Yours Your

I used to do bell ringing in Benenden church. It was really good fun, actually. My best friend's dad was the local vicar, and so it was expected as her best friend that I would go to church every Sunday with her.

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

People can forgive each other.

There are so many cliches associated with mental health - such as the 'fine line between lunacy and genius' - which are, on the whole, a load of rubbish.

If I am totally honest, I would have to say that 'Allo 'Allo!' was not my cup of tea, even though lots of people loved it. For that reason, I find comedy fascinating. There is a huge difference between what people find funny.

Love Funny Would

Anybody who has had the pleasure of reading an article about themselves in the press knows that, on the whole, there is a huge amount of inaccuracy, value judgment and the use of a crowbar to insert editorial bias that reflects the current political leaning of that particular paper.

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.

What could be funnier than a fat person trying to run a marathon?

One thing lots of Christians do have in common is that they can't help coming across as smug. This winds lots of people up, particularly because famous Christians pronounce on the life of the poor from their very lovely affluent homes filled with their very lovely families and attractive pets.

I've always liked to think I could do anything I wished as well as - if not better than - a man. But I wasn't very good at rally driving.

I think there's a danger that we're moving towards a state where the people we are expected to admire are almost not human anymore, and I don't like that. I prefer it when someone looks like a nice person, and you think, 'I could have a laugh with them in the pub.'

I find it difficult to judge myself, but people say that I have become a bit more socially acceptable over the years in terms of my material; which apparently at the beginning - though I never really intended it to be - was man hating and now is just a bit more cuddly.

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

I read that book 'Fat is a Feminist Issue', got a bit desperate halfway through and ate it.

I've no interest in fashion, shoes, handbags, or sweaty shopping.

Over the years I attempted to make my style a bit more relaxed 'cause the initial style you couldn't watch for more than ten minutes without wanting to kill me.

People are so different in reality from the picture created of them on TV. So it's all a creation; everything is made up.

I think there's a far more general audience now because I've done more populist stuff on telly.

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.

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.

My dad's a very sensitive man, but as the archetypal rebellious teenager, I didn't realise that.

Does anyone really go into nursing intending to be apathetic, cold and removed from suffering? I find that very difficult to believe.

I wasn't one of those hideous children who make their parents sit through hour-long performances when you're seven. I didn't do anything like that thankfully.

We women continue to swallow this line that it's unladylike or even proof of being a lesbian if you wear flat shoes like Doc Martens. I'm prepared to put up with that accusation, because at least my feet aren't killing me and I don't look like a bandy ostrich.

There have been some very extreme hecklers in audiences whose bile was so hateful and so meant that it would be a bit frightening to think that all I'm doing is jokes and yet someone hates me that much.

I have friends who vote Tory, and I'm appalled, but that's not to say they're not great people in so many other ways.

The funny thing is, I don't actually think of myself as fat at all. I don't think I am. Not really.

I'm not a flag waver for obesity. It's not healthy, and you have a crap life because there is such a downer on it.

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 like reading, I like boring things, and yet I think people for ages had this image of me that I was on the tube with a chainsaw looking for any likely candidate.

As a comic and as a nurse, it's important to look calm on the surface when you're absolutely crapping yourself inside. So, if someone is waving a machete at you, which has happened to me when I was a nurse, it's important to make that person feel that you're in control.

By crying on my bed, drinking quite a lot and feeling tempted by drugs. Well, just not reading it to be perfectly honest with you. I know it's a bit of a copout.

I was really, because I thought it was extremely excruciating when I watched a tape of it, that my husband taped for me and I never watched it again after that.

You don't really see ugly people that are old, or a bit grotty and smelly, in the media. If a Martian came down, they would think we were all tall, thin, attractive and wealthy.

I've never, ever had people being aggressive to me in public or abusing me, and actually quite a lot of men do say to me, 'You're quite good' - though they can't bear to go, 'You're great.'

There are lots of people who believe that caricature of me the tabloids created, so they think they don't like me.

I can honestly say I've never sold any arms to a repressive foreign regime while reassuring everyone at home that the weapons will be used for nice things.