Jo Brand

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Presenter0:08

Elements of this programme may offend or upset some listeners. The programme was originally broadcast in 2007.

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is the comedian Jo Brand. She's been making people laugh since the alternative comedy boom of the nineteen eighties with her particular mix of deadpan outrageousness and self deprecating one liners. For years she was known simply as the sea monster, a professional alter ego that reflected her distinctive look and attacking style. She once memorably quipped that the way to a man's heart wasn't through his stomach, but through his hanky pocket with a breadknife. Yet there's so much more to her than seeding one liners. For ten years, prior to finding her comedy feet, she was a psychiatric nurse, and more recently she confounded those who had her down as a man-hating lesbian by marrying and having two children in quick succession.

Presenter1:16

But the stand-up that you put yourself through, Joe Brand, I mean, you presumably you love it.

Jo Brand1:20

I do absolutely love it, yes. I don't find it something to be got through. I I find it something to be got through before I've done it, but when I'm doing it it's just an absolute joy eighty percent of the time.

Presenter1:34

I mean, to most normal people, there would be nothing worse than standing up in front of a stage and convincing an often belligerent audience that they did indeed find you funny.

Jo Brand1:43

Well, yeah, that that is a point of view that I hear quite a lot, but I I don't agree with that. You know, ultimately the worst thing that can happen is that you're sort of humiliated by an audience. And I think actually when you think about it, most of us can cope with that, and particularly women can, because women, I think, suffer humiliation like that sometimes on a day-to-day basis when they're out and about, you know, because people feel that it's okay to kind of comment on women's appearance all the time. And so women sort of know what that feels like already.

Presenter2:16

Um, the style that you have on stage, this laconic, almost bored with your own presence, the the style of uh the m the monotone delivery, the apparent lack of concern with what people think of you. What's going on inside when that's appearing on the outside?

Jo Brand2:32

Well, a lot is going on inside really when that's appearing on the outside.'Cause that's um a device that I've always used because I think it's very important in stand-up, as it was when I was a psychiatric nurse to appear to be calm on the outside because that does something to the people that you're interacting with and I think it gives them confidence in you. So to me, kind of eighty percent of it is appearing to be confident. And um once you've cracked that, I think pretty much you can do anything, even if your jokes aren't that funny.

Presenter3:04

Oh, can you remember your first stand-up gig?

Jo Brand3:06

I do indeed. Yes. It was in a nightclub in the West End. I went on about midnight. I'd had probably six or seven pints of lager. I could hardly stand up. I did my appallingly constructed, over-academic five minutes on the works of Freud to a completely bored and drunk audience. So it was fairly hideous really.

Presenter3:07

Yeah.

Presenter3:30

At that first gig, had you deliberately anaesthetized yourself by having a six or seven pints?

Jo Brand3:36

Not deliberately, but it I got there at six, and as the evening went on I got more and more nervous, so I just poured a bit more down. So yeah, it was it was not deliberate, it was just it was five hours, six hours waiting to go on that did it.

Presenter3:50

The measure of a good comic is often how they respond to hecklers in the audience. And with these very drunk late-night audiences, you get your fair share of hecklers. Uh how do you deal with them? Do you dread them?

Jo Brand4:01

Yeah, I I do um get a lot of hecklers, not so much these days, but I did in the old days, which was inevitable because of my weight and my appearance. So I knew it was going to happen. So I would have stuff ready for them. And what I would do with my heckler put downs is I would I would kind of grade them from kind of whimsical and quite sweet all the way through to nuclear. And if I was forced to do a nuclear put-down at the beginning of the show, I knew I was in trouble really.

Presenter4:29

I might ask you for a little taster of one of your nuclear put-downs. After your first record, what's your first track?

Jo Brand4:34

Uh my first track is um Brahm's Variations on a Theme of Haydn, which is um I think the most wonderful kind of delicate piece of classical music I've ever heard. I'm a complete Philistine as far as classical music is concerned. I remember going to see this with a friend of mine, Mandy, who'd never been to a classical concert before, and this was on at the beginning, and we were both absolutely spellbound by it.

Presenter5:50

The opening of Brahm's Variations on the Theme of Haydn, played by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Claudio Abbado. I said in the introduction, Joe Brand, that you first called yourself on stage the Sea Monster. When you went on stage in the early days, what did you look like? What was your stage presence?

Jo Brand6:06

Well, I look like a scruff bag, really. What I did initially in the in the old days, as it were, was I realized that as a woman performer, the more feminine you made yourself look, the worse it was for you, really, because people will then just assess you on the basis of your appearance more. So I just tried to look as neutral as I could with kind of like hideous baggy leggings and a black T-shirt, which then of course worked in the other direction for me because people started saying, Oh, God, you know, look at the state of a

Presenter6:40

Were there many other women around at that time doing what you were trying to do?

Jo Brand6:43

Well, I worked out when I first started the comedy, um, Lark, that there were about two hundred and fifty men and probably fifteen women. So you very rarely worked on a bill with another woman. That was really unusual. And you mentioned

Presenter6:58

And before the music, these nuclear put-downs that you you had in your weaponry if you needed them. Um what would be among your favourites?

Jo Brand7:06

Well, I think people should bear in mind that there is at you know, at this point I would be completely under siege. Like I did a gig at Durham University once, I went on, it was very late, they were extremely drunk, and they were all throwing things at me. When some guy shouted a bit of abuse at me, I said to him, If you don't shut up, I'll sit on your face. And that's bad enough. I think they couldn't believe that I'd said that. And then I would follow that up by, But I'm not going to bother at the moment because I haven't got my period. And if that didn't sort of instil a sort of voiceless shock into them, then I would just go off.

Presenter7:42

What did they do? I mean, that is beyond the boundary of not only what.

Presenter7:47

You would hear in banter among women privately. You know, I mean, it's pretty shocking, but to say something like that publicly as a woman is.

Presenter7:54

Takes that takes a lot of nerve.

Jo Brand7:57

It kind of felt very powerful to be able to say something so outrageous to a group of rather kind of smug students who thought that they'd killed me off, you know. Um so in a strange sort of way I used to quite enjoy it really.

Presenter8:13

When do you think fearlessness in comedy becomes tastelessness?

Jo Brand8:18

I think fearlessness becomes tastelessness a lot. It happens sometimes when you're under pressure. Because you are under pressure sometimes. You've maybe knocked out your best put-downs and it's still not working. And you feel a bit like a cornered animal sometimes. And you come out with something that you didn't really mean to say, but you just sort of felt desperate. And tastelessness is not judged as a general standard. It's judged by individuals. So something some individuals find funny, others will find extremely tasteless. And you just have to hope the majority can kind of put up with what you said, really.

Presenter8:56

Tell me about your second piece of music.

Jo Brand8:58

My second piece of music is it's a song by Kate Bush called O England, My Lionheart. I love Kate Bush. I think she's a real kind of one-off. I assume that we have a similar childhood because I was brought up in Kent, in the Weald of Kent, in a little village. I had a pretty idyllic upbringing. And there's mentions in the song of apple orchards and carol singing and all that sort of thing, which really kind of resonates with me. Plus, there's recorders on it. And we were all tortured with recorders at school. And you thought they can't ever possibly sound great. And actually, they do in this song.

Speaker 49:35

Oh England.

Speaker 49:39

File Iron Hands.

Speaker 49:42

Drop from my black spitfire to my funeral bar

Speaker 49:49

Guess now I kiss an apple blossom

Speaker 49:56

Give me a wish and I'd be warned in the ocean

Presenter10:03

Kate Bush and O England, my lion heart and memories there for you, Joe, of your childhood in Kent. Let's spool back then to Joe Brand in Ankle Socks. What were you like as a little child?

Presenter10:14

Yeah.

Jo Brand10:14

I was very sweet and I was very well behaved. Um I think the only time I probably wasn't well behaved was when I was with my brothers,'cause I'm the middle child of two brothers, and I remember as a kid just having laughs really, playing tricks, that sort of thing.

Presenter10:31

And you were a bright girl. I mean, you you did pretty well in in school in the early stages.

Jo Brand10:36

Well, I went to a girls' grammar school in Tunbridge Wales, which I suppose is the epitome of kind of middle classness really. But I actually I really loved it there. I I made some good friends there. And in my I think my O levels, I I got eight O levels and did pretty well in them really.

Presenter10:53

And was that an expectation from your parents that, you know, you should uh knuckle down in school and do well?

Jo Brand10:58

Yeah, definitely. My parents were actually very strict compared to other people's parents when I was a kid. I mean, for example, I wasn't allowed to have magazines like Jackie. Do you remember Jackie? Oh, yeah. Because they thought that was just too vacuous, I think. I wasn't allowed to have Barbies because my mother didn't want to encourage me as if that ever could have happened to grow up with eight foot long legs and blonde hair. And my mother was just not interested in any kind of domestic stuff at all. She was interested in politics, the kind of big stories of the day. So we would have kind of quite intense sort of political discussions, which I discovered was quite unusual.

Presenter11:36

And clearly you enjoyed all of that because quite often of course children what they like to do as they get into their teenage years, their pubescent years, is rebel against that, but you always felt it sat well with you that her values were indeed your values.

Jo Brand11:47

Yeah, that al that part of it always um sat well with me. Um the part that didn't was, you know, when I um got into my teenage years, they were incredibly um rigid about what I couldn't do.

Jo Brand12:01

what time I had to be in, how I should dress, all those sorts of things. They were kind of far more controlling because you always compare yourself with your peer group, don't you? And there were people in my peer group that were allowed out um to parties till midnight, you know, whereas mine would be saying, Have your nighty on by eight o'clock. Well, it's a bit of an exaggeration, but it it did feel like that to me.

Presenter12:22

More of that in a moment. For neither what's your third record?

Jo Brand12:25

Well my third record is an icon I think, Paul Robeson. My parents actually had an album of his, very scratchy and actually full of kind of rather jolly songs, you know, like Lazy Bones and I'm Picking the Corn and all this sort of thing, but I didn't really like those very much. And there was this one record, Gloomy Sunday, and it's just really reminiscent of my childhood. I didn't like Sundays very much'cause I had to go to church. So I was slightly gloomy on Sunday, so it kind of fitted in well.

Speaker 312:58

Sadly one Sunday I waited and waited With flowers in my arms for a dream I'd come

Speaker 313:09

Be the

Speaker 313:12

I waited till dreams like my heart were all broken.

Speaker 313:20

The flowers were all dead and the word

Presenter13:25

Bottom. Paul Robeson and Gloomy Sunday. I get the feeling, Joe, that you're rather underplaying your academic capability. I mean, you you were a s you were a smart girl in school. You did well.

Jo Brand13:38

Yes, I yes, I suppose I did do well. You know, there was sort of whispers of doing the old Oxbridge um entrance exams and all that kind of thing, which I would have been very happy um to do and uh go that way. Um but the problem then was that my dad got a job down in Hastings so we moved and I really didn't want to move schools um and so I begged my parents to let me go back to school on the train every day and they put their foot down and said no. So although it wasn't a conscious thing, I think I decided at that point that I was going to be quite a difficult teenager and not like my new school.

Presenter14:17

Were you getting back at your mum and dad?

Jo Brand14:19

I think I probably was getting back at them. I was so appallingly badly behaved. I did stuff like I would get out the window and go to the pub, you know, after my parents had gone to bed and I smoked and all that sort of thing. How old were you? I was probably at this point kind of sixteen, coming up for seventeen. And in the end, my parents just couldn't handle it really. And I was seeing a kind of local man, I suppose, who my mum kind of knew about because she was a social worker in Hastings. I think they had a file on him eight foot thick. He was a bit of a kind of druggy sort of, you know, bit of dealing, all that sort of thing. And so basically they said to me, Either you stop seeing him or you're going to have to leave home. And of course this was, you know, the joy I'd been looking for for for ages. Right, I said, I'll I'll leave home then. So what happened was I found a bedsit in the town in a fantastic place, sort of looking out over the sea and school let me go back one day a week to finish my A levels.

Presenter15:24

Your parents must have been terrified, though they hear that their sixteen-year-old daughter says, Well, I'm off, and she's going out with somebody who not only takes drugs but deals them too.

Jo Brand15:32

Yes. Well, I'm not sure they knew about that bit at the time. Um well, I'm sure they were, but I think they were just at the end of their tether. I think they'd tried their kind of lexicon of um punishments and none of them had worked. And I think they just were at their wits' end and they said, Well, we wash our hands off you.

Presenter15:51

Tell me about your next record.

Jo Brand15:53

Well, my next record is Turn Your Radios Down, People Over the Age of 50, which is nearly me, I have to say. This is a song that I'm very fond of because I remember it from college. I was at Brunel University and Dear, Dear Uxbridge. This was a song we would sort of put on before we went out to get us in the mood. We used to tell it out really loud, like bounce on our beds, just go mental, and it's so joyful. It's great.

Speaker 416:44

Especially like

Presenter16:51

The damned and smash it up and memories there, Joe, of bouncing on your bed before you went out for the night. In those student days, so even though you had drifted through the end of your schooling and hadn't spent much time in school, you didn't make it to college, to university. What stopped the drift?

Jo Brand17:06

Uh

Jo Brand17:07

Well, um, I'm going to sound like a terrible drunk when I was a teenager, but I burnt my flat down when I was drunk after a party. Not deliberately. Um I lived in a bedset in Tunbridge Wells and I came home from a party and I didn't have any money for the meter so I had a candle alight by my bed and I dropped off to sleep and then woke up and the bed was on fire and um it was awful'cause I was drunk and I just thought what do you sort it out in the morning and make you do so I kind of patted the worst of it and went back to sleep and actually the underneath of the mattress was on fire so I I woke up'cause I was quite hot and lifted it up to look at it and as I lifted it up the air kind of got to it and the whole thing just sort of exploded in a wall of flame at which point I thought oh dear this is quite serious and I lost everything I had.

Presenter17:55

So did you end up back at home after that?

Jo Brand17:57

Yeah, what happened was I phoned my mum and she just came and picked me up and uh took me back home and I kind of started again and I think she said sensible things like, you know, you've got to have um a proper career if you'cause I I sort of I'd thought about comedy and I'd thought about doing drama then and and in in a way she kind of taught me into doing this course at Brunel which was a joint nurse training and social sciences degree.

Presenter18:24

And why psychiatric nursing?

Jo Brand18:25

Well, I think because um my dad had quite a serious um period of depression when I was a teenager and um y you know that really changed the atmosphere in our house quite a lot. And so I suppose it was something that I kind of felt I knew something about that I didn't feel frightened of or uncomfortable with and so I was pleased to to do it really.

Presenter18:47

The unpredictable nature of the things you have to deal with, the potential chaos at any given moment of working uh with psychiatric patients, must mean that you have to have a very particular approach, a calm approach.

Jo Brand19:00

Absolutely. I mean, particularly, I actually wasn't attached to a ward. I was on an outpatient's department, an emergency clinic. So we would assess people coming in off the street who had either brought themselves in, been brought in by their families or been brought in by the police. And by their very nature, the people brought in by the police who'd been picked up on the streets of South London and assumed to be mentally ill had to be behaving pretty weirdly to even be noticed. So there was quite a lot of disturbed behaviour. But you learn, I mean, if you're a kind of sympathetic person, and hopefully I was, you learn that these people are just in kind of very deep distress, really.

Presenter19:38

Were you ever frightened?

Jo Brand19:40

Oh God, yes, I was absolutely terrified sometimes, yeah.

Presenter19:43

What would be the worst of what you had to do?

Jo Brand19:45

Yeah.

Presenter19:45

Uh

Jo Brand19:45

Deal with

Presenter19:45

Yeah.

Jo Brand19:45

Um

Jo Brand19:46

Well, um

Jo Brand19:49

We had a guy come in one day with a huge carving fork and he came right up to the desk which was sort of chest level and in a kind of very Robin Hood sort of way just stabbed it down onto the desk. That was quite scary. I mean we had a lot of incidents where people would pick up chairs and throw them at you. We had another incident where a consultant was stabbed in the back and you know walked out into our department with a knife sticking out of his back. I mean I'm compressing all the incidents together. So obviously it wasn't like that every day and the vast majority of people I think it's really important to emphasize this aren't violent who have a mental illness. But because of our department we were seeing people in a very high state of distress so those sort of incidents were more common.

Presenter20:37

The characteristics of understanding and empathy and patience and calmness are not at all what you exhibit when you're on stage. You know, you you're very uh snippy and nippy with people and you you know you shoot straight from the lip. It seems extraordinary that inside that is is somebody who is much more willing to uh to take time and patience and to do a job that actually most people would run a mile from.

Jo Brand21:01

Well, I think what that comes down to is my act on stage is a very small part of what I am. And it I kind of it's quite interesting, you know, I think most celebrities have their kind of they have their sort of three adjective tag in the tabloids, don't they? Like w with me it was kind of fat, man-hating and feminist, you know. But you know, my self on stage is is i i is kind of a a minuscule part of what I am really. What's your next piece of music? It's from um

Jo Brand21:31

A film called True Stories, which was written and produced by David Byrne from Talking Heads. It's sung by John Goodman, who plays a character in the film who's fat and he's basically just looking for someone to love him. And the lyrics in it just make me think about people that I met when I was a psychiatric nurse, because I think in South London, particularly where I was, if you did something about the sort of loneliness of a lot of people, that actually you would do away with probably half of the need for psychiatric treatment.

Speaker 422:01

People are you

Speaker 422:06

We're gonna make it because we don't want freedom.

Speaker 422:13

We don't want justice.

Speaker 422:17

We just won someone to love.

Speaker 422:24

Someone

Presenter22:27

John Goodman singing People Like Us from the soundtrack to the film True Stories. Where was comedy roundabout now?

Jo Brand22:34

Well, with the comedy, well I I started work as a as a nurse full time in the in kind of eighty two, eighty three and from that point I kept thinking I really want to do comedy. And then eventually I think one night um w there's a group of us out having a meal and um this friend of mine, Dave, said, Oh, for God's sake, will you stop going on about it, just do it, you know? So that's when it started really. And I have to say I absolutely loved doing stand up at that time. I loved getting in a car with kind of three blokes sitting in the motorway services moaning about the gig and all that sort of thing. It was just such a joy.

Presenter23:12

When I think about the subject of a lot of your comedy, you know, things like notions of beauty, sex, gynecological issues, you know, the inadequacy of men, there are there's a strange parallel universe between you and Joan Rivers, and you both seem to be at opposite ends of the same spectrum.

Jo Brand23:30

Yeah, so that's quite quite interesting.

Jo Brand23:34

I think being what I'm not would just be too much effort, really. And I mean, I think there's an awful lot of women around, but you very rarely hear from them who kind of aren't interested in, you know, ironing their pants or putting their makeup on for half an hour every day, because they want to get on and do other things. So I mean, I like to think that I speak for all women to the extent that a lot of women feel constrained from saying sort of unfeminine things about men because they think it will kind of get them into trouble. And with a certain sort of man, it would, you know, because I think a lot of men don't like to hear themselves being criticised. What's your next record? My next record is Billy Bragg, who I think is the kind of perfect Englishman, really. There's a lot of sort of difficulty in this day and age for English people to say that they like being English because it always has kind of connotations of racism and little Englander-ishness and daily maleness. And I think Billy Bragg is spot on. I've always kind of admired his politics and he manages to achieve being English without sounding like he wants to send everyone back home, you know.

Speaker 424:53

Jungle sales are organised and pamphlets have been posted Even after closing time there's still parties to be hosted You can be active with the activists So sleeping with the sleepers While you're waiting for the great leap forward

Speaker 425:15

Ah, one lead forwards to lead back World politics scared me to sack White

Presenter25:23

Billy Bragg and waiting for the great leap forward. So you have consistently always been sort of labelled, as we've said, as this man-hater. I mean, did that how much did that impinge on your personal life? How difficult did it was it then to chat up a bloke or to make it clear that you fancied somebody, or just to to form sort of functional, straightforward relationships with men?

Jo Brand25:45

Well, it had absolutely no bearing whatsoever on having men as friends, because, you know, the the whole comedy circuit is all men. So if you didn't want um to have any friends at all, fair enough. But if you had friends on the circuit, they were inevitably men. So um absolutely no problem at all.

Presenter26:02

Yeah.

Jo Brand26:03

I just couldn't really kind of understand the way that I was being discussed because it didn't really reflect real life in any way whatsoever. And in terms of kind of chatting blokes up and kind of meeting sort of potential husbands, well, I think in a way it kind of cleared out the dross. And I only kind of got the ones that actually in any way thought I was all right. Do you know what I mean? Because all the ones that didn't bother to approach me were all the ones who I wouldn't have been that interested in anyway. So in some ways, it worked as a very sort of good filter.

Jo Brand26:39

Yeah.

Presenter26:39

From your husband, when you were around about forty.

Jo Brand26:41

Yeah. How did you meet?

Presenter26:41

That's right.

Jo Brand26:43

Um I met him um through a mutual comedy friend. I mean uh it just so happened that we uh are both psychiatric nurses.

Presenter26:51

And was it uh if not love at first sight, then, was it a very uh obvious moment when you thought, Yeah, th this could work?

Jo Brand26:59

I don't know really. I mean, what was important to me at the time was um

Jo Brand27:06

Just meeting someone who had something to talk about, who kind of understood different aspects of my life. It was really, really good fun. We could talk endlessly about um you know um largactyl injections and ECT together, which is great as well. Uh we liked the same sort of books and we he was interested in politics, so was I. So yes, in lots of ways I thought, Yeah, this is this is it.

Presenter27:25

Great.

Presenter27:34

Tell me about your seventh piece of music.

Jo Brand27:37

My seventh piece of music is Elvis Costello. It's a song called Couldn't Call It Unexpected. I love Elvis Costello to bits. I think his lyrics are so witty and cynical and intelligent. This particular song, I've got no idea why it's my favourite, it just is it's got some interesting images in it and it just kind of takes me back to a period kind of in the eighties and nineties when I was really having a good time.

Speaker 428:08

Picture has eyes finally closing As you sometimes glimpse terrible faces in the fire Burn a look at wood Looking close to

Jo Brand28:14

Yeah.

Speaker 428:28

From Birds of the Ridge, I'm the Hawaii.

Presenter28:36

Elvis Costello and couldn't call it unexpected. It's very interesting that the the headlines that you got when you got married and then not only did you get married, but you had children. The man hating Joe Brand has got a husband and children.

Jo Brand28:45

Map

Presenter28:50

Did those headlines make you laugh, or did you find it hurtful that people imagined that you couldn't actually have this ha happy, functioning home life?

Jo Brand28:58

Well, I think by that point, ha having been kind of well versed over the years in the sort of journalistic approach to celebrity, I wasn't surprised. And I wasn't I think the sun had I think on the front of it,'cause it made me laugh now. Here comes the bride all fat and wide. Oh, how romantic for my wedding day. Thank you so much.

Presenter29:21

And becoming a mother for the first time at forty four, how did that affect you initially?

Jo Brand29:25

Well, I absolutely loved it. It was very easy. You know, and most people obviously didn't even know I was pregnant'cause I'm so big, which is brilliant. I was a bit tired, but other than that, it was great and it was all a pleasurable experience.

Presenter29:43

So you've got two children now, four and six. That's very close in age. How how do you manage to combine being a mother with being a very well known stand up comedian and somebody who's on T V a lot?

Jo Brand29:56

I don't know really. I suppose I just take every day as it comes. Um and I feel, like I think lots of women feel, that I'm barely clinging on by my fingertips some days. Um I think, you know, you get used to that sort of chronic tiredness sort of thing that you have from when they were babies, that you y y your life is just gonna be you know, it's gonna be a slight sort of freeston of irritability in every day'cause you're a bit tired. Has it softened you though and softened your act?

Jo Brand30:25

Well, I don't know if it's for me to really judge. I don't personally feel it's softened my act because I still get the impression that when I say certain things in my act, um a little kind of freeson of of gasping runs around the audience, um you know, and people are getting their mobiles out and phoning the council and all that sort of thing. Um but I but other people say my act is is different, but I think it's inevitable because I've got a bit older and my life is different, so I'm not sure it's softer, it's just different really.

Presenter30:58

What about your final p

Jo Brand30:58

Piece of music. Okay, my final piece of music is.

Jo Brand31:04

A piece of jazz actually and it's by a trio called Dollar Brand headed by Abdullah Ibrahim and it's called The Wedding. It's the loveliest piece of music jazz-wise I think I've ever heard and when I met Bernie my husband he's a massive jazz fan and I always absolutely hated it and he's kind of shown me that actually I was listening to the wrong sort of jazz and this is really for him really to say he's a great bloke and thank you for making jazz palatable Bern.

Presenter32:04

Abdullah Ibrahim and The Wedding. So we give you the Bible and we give you the complete works of Shakespeare. What book are you going to take along with those?

Jo Brand32:13

What I thought I'd take is the um decline and fall of the Roman Empire by um

Jo Brand32:19

Edward Gibbon. And I think two reasons, mainly. First of all, it's extremely long, so if I was there for a long time, I would at least have something to keep reading. And secondly, I think it would kind of enable me to have a decent conversation with Stephen Frye, because he knows about those things and I don't.

Presenter32:38

And the luxury?

Jo Brand32:40

Um well as a luxury I'd like a church organ, if I may. You because over the last six months I've learnt how to play um the organ for a BBC series and I had to play it at the Albert Hall just before Christmas in front of about 8,000 people which is much harder than doing comedy. I was absolutely paralyzed with fear. But I've decided to learn it now so um I'd like to take it to the desert island and get better at it.

Presenter33:09

You may have that. And if the waves were to wash to the shore and threaten to uh take away the records that you'd amassed there, which one of the eight would you save?

Jo Brand33:17

I think I would probably save um Kate Bush because that's it's a lovely tune. It's got the recorder on it and um it it would just be nice to think thoughts of my childhood.

Presenter33:30

Joe Brand, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Jo Brand33:33

Do you really mean that, Kirsty?

Presenter33:35

But I really do.

Presenter33:42

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.