Brand - Two Autobiographies

LOOK BACK IN HUNGER

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Jo Brand

Toanyone out there who hasnt done what they want to do yet.

Thanksto everyone who helped me.

CHAPTER ONE

SLAUGHTER IN LOUGHBOROUGH

Please welcome Jo Brand!

I stepinto the firing line.

Yes,firing line is the appropriate phrase. The ultimate fear of the stand-up isthat a heckle will get you right in the heart and melt you, like the WickedWitch of the West, into a steaming heap of green gooey stuff.

I am atLoughborough University in the Midlands, notable for its emphasis on sport,which of course I am not. I am doing what we stand-ups euphemistically call astudent gig. (In my limited experience this means an inebriated rabble,coated with sexual tension, displaying the concentration span of a gnat, whosemilk of human kindness sours quickly and unpredictably, resulting in anavalanche of heckling and/or the appropriation of missiles.)

I am ona stage above the audience and as I look out I see a young male-heavy crowd,probably a bit pissed, gazing at me half expectant, half challenging. And thisis what Ive sat in a car on the M1 for. Sitting on the M1 is a major hobby ofmost comedians. The time Ive spent on my arse on this charming motorwayprobably adds up to months, if not a year, of my life.

The M1is a capricious mistress (yes, I do aspire to be Jeffrey Archer). Of coursethere are certain times of the week when the M1 is much, much worse, andwithout doubt Friday is the winner. My heart would always plummet when I lookedat a tour sheet and saw either Manchester, Sheffield, Bolton, Blackburn orsimilar booked in on a Friday night, because I knew we would have to leave at aridiculous time, maybe midday, just to travel a couple of hundred miles. I sayjust a couple of hundred miles because on a few occasions I drove toNewcastle and back in a day, so Sheffield and the like seem dead easy.

If youput together worst-case scenarios of what can go wrong on a motorway journey,then time stretches like elastic. Maybe Friday night on the M1 with a crashthrown in. If you had road works as well, you knew it was going to take thebest part of a weekend to get there.

Servicestations werent up to much in the eighties either, although that staple of thestand-up comic, a Ginsters pie and a can of Coke, was always welcome as far asI was concerned, if only to break the monotony of staring out of the window atthe never-changing landscape of scrubby trees and silver-coloured NissanMicras.

Themost demoralising motorway problem is the one when youre tonning it (I begyour pardon, I mean sticking to the national speed limit) back from up north atabout two in the morning and out of nowhere there suddenly appears a bleedingmassive queue stretching as far as the eye can see ten miles outside London. Itmakes you want to weep or get out and hit the driver of the car in front, asyouve somehow managed to convince yourself its his fault.

For noparticular reason other than I can, here are my three favourite motorways:

The M40

I love the M40. Thecountrysides glorious and Ive never been in a really bad traffic jam on it(although I know many have). I like the sweep down towards Princes Risborough,where a very naughty comedian whod borrowed his friends flash motor to takeus to a gig once got up to 140 miles an hour, while I screamed because he was abit of a shit driver.

The M42

Theres something gloriousabout skirting around Birmingham without having to enter the city. Sorry, thatwas a crap joke at the expense of Birmingham, which I actually like.

The M5

It can be hideous atholiday time, but Im never on it then so I dont care. Also there are lots ofmysterious sculptures at the side of the road which are slightly scary and makeyou wonder whether, if you broke down there in the middle of the night, thelocals might come out and kill you.

And my three worstmotorways:

The M1

Everything about it isdepressing.

The M56

I once got a puncture onthe M56 at two oclock in the morning and there was no way I wasstopping. I drove into Manchester on it and buggered up my car. Also, I had mycar nicked in Manchester and it was used to ram-raid a jewellers, and thatdoesnt endear the place to me.

The M50

Where is it going and whyis it there?

The lot of the stand-up isto spend hours gazing out of the window feeling that maybe you couldnt getmore depressed. And then you meet a student crowd at Loughborough University.

I knowits important to get the audience with the first couple of jokes, because onceyou start to lose them things can go downhill pretty quickly. I throw out acouple of one-liners, because thats what I do. I ask the audience whether Ishould move the microphone stand, as otherwise they wont be able to see me. Afew people nicked this joke off me subsequently, including some who werenteven fat, and I considered suing them under the Trade Descriptions Act.

I alsotry: Im anorexic, by the way, because anorexic people look in the mirror andthink they look fat and so do I. Result: some tittering but not the woof oflaughter that it normally gets. I think lots of comics cling to their favouritejokes as if they are lifebelts bobbing up and down ahead of them in the stormysea of a difficult audience. And if you grab for one and the joke goes badlythen at that point you start to drown.

Ihavent reached the stage where Im relaxed enough to improvise on a theme orsize up the rabble and respond to the mood of the room. Within a couple ofminutes its all gone horribly wrong. Well, it seems like a couple of minutes.For all I know it could be twenty, as I find time has a different quality whenIm on stageit moves at a completely different pace and when the audienceisnt an easy one, it slows down almost to a standstill. The crowd is split.Half of them arent the least bit interested in what I have to say, turning toeach other to chat, and the other half seem quite keen on shouting abuse at me,which on the whole, thankfully, they dont seem to have prepared earlier, owingto its lack of sophistication. Consequently, the air is peppered with a ratheruninspiring collection of fat lesbians, fuck offs and borings, which Ican just about cope with, even though its obviously not the ideal night outfor anyone with an ego as fragile as an eggshell.

Peopleconstantly say to me, Oh God, I couldnt do your job, youre so brave, as ifI work on an oil rig, do a spot of gun-running in Sierra Leone ortightrope-walk across the Niagara Falls for a living. Honestly though, its notthat bad once you get used to it. I suppose its possible that my threshold forabuse is higher than other peoples. This is partly because Im a woman, andthere seem to be more opportunities for abuse in Ladyworld. We are constantlyappraised, commented upon, looked up and down, dismissed as invisible, and allbecause the lady loves Milk Tray. If youve got a few (or loads) of poundssewn on due to Milk Tray scoffing, the appraisal is laced with abuse about yourunsuitability as a sexual partner. Having had my fair share of this, I kind ofexpect it and probably put up with more than a three-stone deb with a securesense of self may have done. Added to that, throughout my nursing career Idput up with some excessively extreme and very articulate abuse, so a mere fatheckle isnt really much to write home about.

Thetrick is to try not to take it personally, even though it is directed at you.This involves a shift into a parallel universe which is not too far away, onein which you expect to be abused by an audience and therefore when it happens yourenot surprised and you deal with it.

And youcan answer back.

Infact, its expected of you. Think of all the poor sods working in the helpingprofessions nurses, ambulance men, doctors, receptionists, social workers andmany otherswho just have to grin and bear it until they go home and get thechance to take it out on their poor, unsuspecting partner, feet up in front ofthe telly without any culpability for their other halfs frustration andbitterness. As a nurse, I used to tell myself that the people who aimed themost vile and revolting abuse at me were ill (even though lots of them werent;they were just pissed or horrible) and therefore I shouldnt take itpersonally. To some extent the same goes for hecklers. I just convince myselfthey are arseholes. This makes it much easier to come back at them with awell-chosen package of abuse.