by Jo Brand
The night’s auspices weren’t good, due to my suffering from what many people think is the mythical PMT but is very real in many women’s cases. I was bad-tempered, slightly paranoid and one of my favourite words, ‘labile’ — a term used often in psychiatry to denote someone who is emotionally on the edge and could lose it at any time. Not a good state to be in when facing a pissed Glasgow audience, at any rate.
When I stepped on stage, someone shouted something along the lines of, ‘Fuck off, you fat English cow!’ and it pretty soon slipped into warfare. Normally I would have used my ascending collection of pre-prepared put-downs, but I was in no mood and launched straight in with a couple of my mega-put-downs which were very coarse and aggressive. This unfortunately did not do the trick, and to my incredulity after some very bad-tempered banter between us about the Scots and the English, I found myself saying, ‘Well, who the fuck won at Culloden?’
As soon as the words had come out of my mouth I knew this was A VERY BIG MISTAKE.
As if the atmosphere wasn’t bad enough already it then descended further down the scale of civilisation and became really dark. However, as PMT sufferers might tell you, in a weird way this was somewhat enjoyable in a masochistic sense, and I stayed on longer, taking a right verbal kicking and only leaving the stage when I thought it looked likely that someone might jump up there and take a swing at me.
I take full responsibility for this furore. It was totally my fault and 1 deserved what I got. It is just slightly scary that when faced with a semi-baying mob I decided not to go down the Mrs Sensible route but crank things up even more. Glasgow, I apologise. I have always loved Scotland and regret turning into a British bulldog for five seconds.
Another Edinburgh, 2003
After a substantial break of a few years in which I got married and had two children (more of this elsewhere), I had another crack at Edinburgh. We decided to go up as a family and rented a house there. Eliza was six months old and Maisie one and a half.
I took on a bit too much as I was doing my own hour-long stand-up show at 10.45 in the big venue at the Assembly Rooms, after performing a two-hander play with my friend Helen Griffin, or ‘Griffo’, in a smaller venue there. The play was called Mental, and Griffo and I had written it together. It was about a psychiatric nurse and a patient and was set at night. The trick at the beginning was that we didn’t make it clear who was the patient and who was the nurse, and tried to make some points about mental health in a funny and not too worthy way.
I had known Griffo since university and we’d both trained as psychiatric nurses, whilst also nursing ambitions — hers to become an actor and mine to go into comedy.
Griffo has had a tougher time than me in the world of acting. Firstly it is much more competitive and there are many actors competing for any one job. Griffo moved back to Wales reasonably early on in her career and I think this has enabled her to be a big fish in a small pond. Doctor Who buffs may know her from the Tennant/Cybermen battle episodes in which she played a revolutionary van-driving underground type called Mrs Moore.
Doing the Edinburgh Festival with the family in tow was a very different prospect from doing Edinburgh as a single woman. Most of the differences can be summed up under the heading ‘responsibility’. Whereas during previous Edinburghs I could party till dawn and get off my face, I was now pretty much waking up at dawn and therefore wanting to go to bed about ten, which was forty-five minutes before my stand-up show even started. I found it bloody difficult and stressful, especially given that Griffo and I had to perform our play first. Days were spent out with the kids, maybe at the beach — but although it’s beautiful, the nearest beach at North Berwick tends to have a gale-force wind blowing across it, making a mouthful of sand a certainty and frostbite a distinct possibility.
My social life dwindled to nothing, as by the time I finished my stand-up show at 11.45 I would have been quite happy to fall over backwards onto the stage and start snoring there and then. Still, I got through it without having some sort of showbiz ‘breakdown’ and vowed never to do two shows back to back ever again.
Griffo and I got pretty good reviews for the play and as we neared the end of the three-week run I got slightly stir crazy and planned a joke for the last night.
In the play there was a line which Griffo had to say:
‘You wouldn’t expect a man in a fucking bear costume to walk in, would you?’
I managed to persuade one of the guys who was doing a show before us to dress up in a bear costume and enter stage right when Griffo said that line. Unfortunately the audience was completely confused as to why someone had actually appeared dressed as a bear, and Griffo was — to put it mildly — not amused. I suppose this underlines the differences between stand-ups and actresses. I just wanted to make her laugh. She, on the other hand, just wanted to do her job. Another of my practical jokes gone wrong.
Still, we got over it. I apologised profusely and things got back to normal. I crawled back to London, exhausted and jaded, and hoped I would never do Edinburgh again.
I have done Edinburgh since, but pretty much as a one-off or doing a benefit. I suppose it might be a possibility when the kids are older, but by that time I plan to be in a bath-chair on Hastings seafront.
Brief Diary Entries During Edinburgh, 2003
Hunting back through my old diaries, I discovered that I had somehow managed to scrawl some thoughts about how it was all going, when I did the Mental play and my own stand-up, and the kids were babies.
Friday 1 August
Press launch … hideous. Mental: sold out. Restrained but good laughs. Shaky on some lines. Stand-up show: hard but fair and a laugh.
Saturday 2 August
Mental: sold out. Really good crowd. Laughed uproariously in places. Our prop walkie-talkies picking up security Stand-up: the bastards criticised my clothes!
Sunday 3 August
Mental: sold out. Big tech hitches and Griffo early wobbler. Nice audience. Stand-Up: bunch of 300 twats.
Monday 4 August
Day off. Hoofuckingray.
Tuesday 5 August
Mental: sold out. Terrible arseholes in front row.
Stand-up: heckle a-go-go.
Wednesday 6 August
Mental: good. Stand-up: stilted, unpleasant.
Thursday 7 August
Mental: Couldn’t find our way out. [No idea what this means.] No laughs. Stand-Up: very good crowd, no weirdies. 2 people left near the end. [Oh madam, the insecurity]
Friday 8 August
Mental: sold out. Good, v good. Stand-up: sold out. Oh shit, Friday night, full of pissed bonkers barmies .
Saturday 9 August
Mental: sold out. Stand-up: sold out.
[Didn’t write anything at all for Sunday 10 August.]
Monday 11 August
Day off. Jesus, am bloody knackered.
Tuesday 12 August
Mental: bloody hard graft till halfway point then the buggers lightened up a bit. Stand-up: sold out.
Wednesday 13 August
Mental: bit of a struggle. Stand-up: dull — me, not them.
Thursday 14 August
Mental: a hard, grinding pisser of a show. Stand-up: best so far.
Friday 15 August
Mental: sold out, really good fun. Standup: good fun. The bastards made me sing.
Saturday 16 August
Mental: good. Stand-up: fucking hard work.
Sunday 17 August
Mental: sour audience, Griffo fell on me. Stand-up: wading through bloody concrete.
Monday 18 August
Barely alive. Day off.
Tuesday 19 August
Mental: Griffo had TB type coughing fit. Stand-up: fucking hard work.
Wednesday 20 August
Mental: dull, dull, dull, dull. Stand-up: audience full of personality disorders.
Thursday 21 August
Mental: no breaking-glass sound effect, just weird click. Stand-up: did as benefit, very n
ice.
Friday 22 August
Mental: nice crowd, but we were bloody shambolic. I forgot lines, Griffo got her knitting caught. Stand-up: they were evil and should be killed.
Saturday 23 August
Mental: so knackered, felt I was on auto. Played bear trick on Griffo — not impressed, oh no. Stand-up: they were pissed, me too.
Sunday 24 August
Hooray … it’s over.
Being recognised is a progressive phenomenon which doesn’t really dawn on you until it’s pretty much under way I suppose the first time should have been a big event in my life, but I can’t even remember when it was. And it was very gradual too, with maybe two or three months between the first and second time.
It also catches you unawares. In the chemist, in the street, and when you least want it.
At first, people’s recognition is hazy; they are not absolutely sure who you are, so they take a stab in the dark. This is when you tend to get an array of mistaken identities and double-takes as you walk down the street. Some people come back and check. Then there are the surreptitious ones who walk past you and do a double-take, and then do an about-turn and try to wander back past you as naturally as possible, while staring at you — and you can almost see the neurones firing in their brains. Other, bolder ones will march right back up to you like the police, stick their face in yours and demand, ‘Who are you?’ Some people just think they know you and say hello as they pass; I always give a cheery hello back.
Others turn it into a quiz. ‘No, don’t tell me, hang on … I do know you, don’t I? It’s Jo Something, isn’t it. No, don’t tell me’ — sometimes they get quite cross — and you have to stand there like a nana while they desperately try and identify you. Others will take a stab at a name that fits roughly into one’s area of entertainment.
My top five wrong identities are:
1. A bloke behind the counter in a record shop in Devon, who said, ‘You’re a famous dancer, aren’t you?’ Bloody hell, when have you ever seen a dancer who was several stone overweight? Maybe he thought I was one of Les Dawson’s famed troupe of dancers, the Roly Polys.
2. Someone said to me once: ‘Ruby Wax, hi! Can I have your autograph?’ I did a complete scribble that was unrecognisable as a name to save their embarrassment. I also texted Ruby, who I’m sure wasn’t very flattered as she is half my size.
3. Also on several occasions I have been identified as Dawn French. Very flattered, frankly.
4. Once identified as ‘a newsreader’. Mmm yes — Huw Edwards, that’s me.
5. I once went into a shop in a small town in Wales and the elderly guy behind the counter said, ‘I’ve no idea who you are, but I heard you were in town.’
The upside of being recognised for me is that people are usually really nice and friendly It may be the case that if people can’t stand you, then they don’t bother to come up and say hello, which is fine by me. I’d rather have that than a mouthful of abuse.
Once people do know who you are, if you don’t like to be constantly approached, there are several options:
● Never go out. This is an option for some, but not for me. I think that once you have children, you owe it to them to try and give them as normal a life as possible, and this involves getting stuck into ordinary life. It can be difficult at times as it’s hard for me when I’m with the children and people come up for autographs etc. But it’s preferable to not taking on those day-to-day tasks which are all part of normal life.
● Go out in disguise. I have experimented with a selection of disguises, but it seems that donning a big hat or silly coat doesn’t fool anyone. (I have tried both these.) A bloke in a shop in Tottenham Court Road in London once said to me, ‘You can take that stupid hat off; we all know who you are.’ He went on to tell me that Chris Evans goes unnoticed whenever he comes into the shop. Apart from by you, mate, obviously.
● Make a plan which avoids major areas of potential hassle.
For me, places where schoolchildren congregate are always a threat as the peer-group phenomenon gives them false courage. So I don’t tend to hang round secondary schools. And as I don’t need to, that’s fairly easy.
When we had snow one winter, I was walking down the road when I came upon a group of teenage boys chucking snowballs at cars. Oh, here we go, I thought, there’s one with my name on it. I decided to wrong-foot them as I saw one of the boys raise a snowball-filled hand and started to run towards them, shouting, ‘What are you going to do with that?’ (Plus some swearing.)
Thankfully it worked and the snowball was dropped on the road. I then attempted a completely ridiculous plea for them to stop throwing snowballs at cars, especially cars with old ladies in them, pointing out that they could be responsible for killing someone and go to prison, which of course was 99 per cent bullshit. They looked at me with the teenage boy stare, half defiant, half empty brain-ish. And then I marched off with as much dignity as I could muster, which to be honest with you is not much at all. As I walked on down the road I was aware of a quiet crunching behind me and thought, Oh, here we go again. Now I’m going to get a snowball in the back of the head. I turned to see two of the boys looking rather sheepish. ‘Sorry,’ they mumbled. Bloody hell, result.
The worst places for me are pubs, clubs or crowded areas on a Friday night when everyone is pissed in a tired, irritable and lary way I do much crossing of streets with my head down, I dive into shop doorways or go into shops, I squat on the pavement to do up an imaginary shoelace or I face a wall for no reason, which in itself must look pretty stupid. But these minor tactics have served me well and I have had relatively little hassle over the years.
My biggest mistakes have been:
● Drinking in a huge hotel bar in Belfast on a Friday night. First of all I met a singer who was very big in the eighties, completely off his face, who made a beeline for me, arms out and breathing red-wine fumes right at me, while he announced with pride, ‘I’ve just come out of rehab today!’ He was followed by an even drunker bloke who forced his way onto our table, sat on my lap, drank my drink, snatched my fag out of my mouth and then tried to stick his tongue in there instead. At this point John, my tour manager, manhandled him off me and escorted him a few feet away while I regretted the hideous drunken kiss and felt sick.
● I once agreed to meet someone in a pub and they were late. As I tried to sit quietly in a corner looking at my watch and pretending to read a piece of paper I had in my bag, which was a shopping list, I became a pisshead magnet and every single inebriated individual in the pub gradually came and sat down at the table, saying as they always do, ‘You’re fucking loaded, buy us a drink.’ Eventually I could stand it no longer, made my excuses about going to the lay and legged it from the pub, never to return. I have no objection, by the way to buying anyone a drink. However, I do have an objection to sitting there and drinking it with them if they are pissed out of their heads and talking utter bollocks at me.
● This was something that I couldn’t have avoided, but I found myself on a plane from Dublin to London sitting right behind a very pissed rugby team. I didn’t want them to recognise me as I knew I would get it big time, so I spent the entire flight with my hands over my face, staring down towards the floor and looking like I was seriously depressed. I was desperate for a piss as well, but the agony of getting up and being clocked was a far worse prospect than being incontinent.
There are also places in Central London where it is advisable not to go unless you like having your picture taken by the paps. These are top fashionable restaurants or showbiz haunts like The Ivy, where several paps hang about outside 24/7 in the vain hope they will catch Cilla Black with a big bogey hanging out of her nose or one of Girls Aloud with her pants showing. Also, film premières are not a great idea — unless you want to run the gauntlet of rows of paps shouting, ‘Over ‘ere, Jo!’ ‘To me! To me!’ ‘Over ‘ere, you silly cow!’ and other delightful stuff like that.
I was once at a party with my best frien
d’s husband Roland (yes, she did know) and I was approached by a slightly histrionic PR woman who said her client’s car had not turned up and would I give this celeb a lift in my car. She meant my chauffeur-driven car, but I always drive myself. I agreed to do it, picked up my car from round the corner and then discovered my cab fare was Jermaine Jackson. What a hoot.
We were ushered outside the stage door and as we appeared, it all went mental. Jermaine Jackson and his wife were pushed into the back of the car and Roland and I got in the front. At this point we were surrounded by about thirty paps and a few had actually got on the bonnet of the car. I have to say it gave me great pleasure to turn on the ignition and pull away sloughing off a couple of them onto the pavement as I went. Jermaine Jackson was a sweet, almost childlike person, very softly spoken and unerringly polite. We dropped him at a posh hotel and he kindly allowed me to take a picture of him and Roland on my mobile phone. It gave me a very interesting insight into the life of mega-stars like him. Poor sod, I really would never go out if I got that level of attention.
Most people say that if you are famous you have to put up with the side-effects because that’s what you wanted. Fair enough, but I do feel one should be accorded some privacy at those times of one’s life when we all expect it.