Can't Stand Up for Sitting Down (16 page)

The
slag-offs, it has to be said, were and are in the
Daily Mail
mostly
apart from tabloid glee at occasional faux pas or me looking particularly bad.
That is because I became, owing to the material I did and the way I dressed, a
byword for unfeminine, bolshie, unwashed, man-hating, aggressive womanhood.
Therefore, fairly frequently I would be held up as an example of what I shall
call ‘What Not to Be’ — against the perfect
Mail
woman who was
well-dressed, submissive, right-wing and domesticated.

I once
saw an article (yes, one that ‘a friend’ had told me about) in which someone —
can’t remember who —was held up as a paragon of virtue for
Mail
readers
in terms of her appearance, whereas they had found a picture of me looking like
a right old scruffbag with the delightful accompanying caption:
Jo Brand:
Doesn’t care.

On the
whole I have managed to steer clear of ‘the paps’ who only appear on the great
occasions in one’s life like marriages and births. I was followed around once
when I was making
Through the Cakehole.
I’d been driving through South
London on my way to a meeting in the centre of London when I became aware of a
car behind me. I think for women drivers this can be a relatively frequent
occurrence: you have to establish whether you are being followed and if so,
take evasive action. In these cases I tend to turn off down side-streets and
wiggle about a bit to see if the car behind stays with me.

On that
day when I thought I was being followed I did exactly that. I drove a rather
circuitous route to my meeting and realised after ten minutes that matey was
still with me. My competitive nature dictates I find it hard to let these
people get the better of me, so as I pulled up outside the meeting-place I was
ready to jump out of the car and leg it immediately and got in through the door
of Channel X before he’d even got out of the car.

When I
came out with a couple of other people, matey was still there. He obviously had
no idea I’d clocked him. We went into the pub opposite and sat by the window so
I could see what he was doing. Sure enough, he got out of the car and started
to head towards the pub. As he came in through the door, I exited through
another, jumped in the car and drove off, giving him a wave as he ran out of
the pub. I know this is a tiny incident and it means very little, but it used
to give me a huge sense of achievement to escape. Pathetic really on my part.

When I
got engaged I was followed a bit and when I got married I kept it quiet so was
not followed at all.

However,
when the
Sun
did find out I’d got married they allotted me a very
charming headline on the front of the paper which read,
Here Comes the
Bride, All Fat and Wide!
I can’t tell you how touched I was by that.

I also
had a couple of paps outside the house after I came home from the hospital with
my first baby Apart from that, it seems paps are lazy Unless you are on the
Madonna/Cheryl Cole/Wayne Rooney level of fame they don’t put themselves out,
which is good. The only other time one tends to get papped is at restaurants
where celebs go, or at awards ceremonies.

I
suppose my only pappation that I noticed was many years ago when I came out of
The Ivy, a showbiz restaurant I try to avoid, and the photographer asked me to
put my bag in front of my face. Charming! I sneered in his general direction
and he begged, saying he hadn’t sold a picture for ages. Gullible twat that I
am, I acquiesced and sure enough, in the
News of the World
the
following Sunday there appeared a picture of me with my bag over my face and
next to it a picture of Princess Diana with her bag over her face and the
headline
Which One of These is a Princess?
Well, me, obviously.

I’ve
never moved in the showbiz/royalty social circle, maybe because I’m a
republican. I’ve turned down the Royal Variety Performance on a number of
occasions because I feel it’s hypocritical to call for the abolition of the
monarchy and then go to a show and curtsey to Her Maj.

I did,
however, meet Diana once on
The Clive James Show
(I believe that she and
Clive James were friends). When I got to the show there was a lot of whispering
and barely controlled hysteria going on. One of the runners informed me, ‘We’ve
got a very important guest coming down to watch the show.’

‘Who is
it?’ I asked.

‘I
can’t tell you,’ he replied.

‘Oh, go
on,’ I said.

‘Oh,
all right,’ he replied. ‘It’s Princess Diana.’

Blimey,
he would have made a really crap spy.

On the
show we were doing an item about food with rude names in other languages. For
example, I had some chewing gum called
Spunk
which a friend had sent me
from Germany I brought it along with me to the show and did a joke about
spitting it out. (Yes, sorry, I know.)

After
the show had finished, we all ended up in the green room and were told we would
be introduced to the Princess. Stephen Fry was there and began to instruct me
in royal etiquette, showing me how to curtsey I maintained that I would not
curtsey for a royal. He also remarked as she moved along the queue that he was
dying for a wee. I wondered aloud why he didn’t just go. Apparently it’s not
considered good manners to leave the room when royalty’s in. Better to wet
yourself then.

Diana
reached me in the queue and I resisted a curtsey and just shook hands. She bent
over towards me conspiratorially and said, ‘Loved your chewing-gum joke.’ We
had a laugh about some of the names and she moved on. Her interest did seem
genuinely natural and unforced. Poor cow, I felt sorry for her. I think it’s
really hard to keep that smile on your face as endless individuals pass
excitedly past you, come rain or shine. It requires a certain sort of
personality and charm, and Diana certainly seemed to have it. And how ironic in
a culture that worships beautiful women that old jug ears was secretly in love
with someone not considered traditionally attractive. Good on her — us
non-beauties are heartily sick of the endless droning on about women’s looks.

Prearranged interviews
with newspapers, or interviews on telly or radio interviews are a necessary
evil to promote whatever one’s current project is. There are obviously a
handful of iconic cult figures who never grant interviews and who don’t seem to
give a shit whether the public buy what they have to offer or not. I very much
admire these people, but I do not emulate them because we have a family to support
and a mortgage to pay.

Over
the years I have tried to steer clear of the papers I don’t like very much, but
in the good old, bad old days it wasn’t like that. I thought I had to do
everything. I once did a photo-shoot for
Cosmopolitan
which went with an
accompanying little piece about ‘up-and-coming comic’, etc etc. The article
itself was pretty harmless, but the photo session was excruciating and involved
me having to squat on a high stool for about forty minutes looking like I was
enjoying it. After about five minutes I couldn’t feel my feet and was desperate
to say ‘Fuck this, I’m off.’ However, at that point, I didn’t realise I could
actually say no to things, and the residual well of politeness, which I had had
poured onto my grey-matter as a child, prevented me.

An
interview with the
Daily Mail
was similarly painful. It was quite early
on, when I didn’t understand that their editorial line on me was as an
unacceptable, probably lesbian nightmare. Following a pretty friendly
interview, the ensuing article ripped me apart. It taught me a valuable lesson
though, and at that point I became much more wary of the way various
journalists would portray me.

In
reality what it comes down to in interviews is what the journalist thinks of
you as a person and the line they have been instructed to take editorially So,
it doesn’t matter how polite, how entertaining, how solicitous you are, if they
have decided to be horrible to you, horrible they will be.

Added
to this, over the years I have read so much sneering journalism about
celebrities’ houses that I will never let a journalist set foot in my house
unless I have a contract killer waiting in the cupboard to finish them off. And
believe you me, that thought has crossed my mind more than once.

The critic is a strange
animal. To assume that your opinion is more valuable than anyone else’s surely
makes you a bit of a big-headed twat. And this opinion has been borne out on
more occasions than I care to remember. Again, it comes down to the paper’s
editorial line, coupled with the critic’s personal opinion of you. I know for a
fact that I have done gigs which I absolutely stormed and the audience loved,
and have consequently been completely rubbished by a critic as if I died on my
arse. And the more vile and personal a critic is about you, the more the
readers of those august organs like the
Sun
and the
Mail
enjoy
it.

There
is no such thing as an objective critic. They unavoidably bring their
personality prejudices and taste to their pieces of work, regardless of what an
audience thinks or what the ratings say This can work positively in some cases,
such as if a comedian is doing horrible racist or misogynist material and the
critic is offended, but on the whole, randomness seems a big weapon in their
arsenal. You don’t know if they were in a bad mood when they watched you, had
just had a row with their partner, don’t like fat women, don’t like
left-wingers. It’s impossible to fathom.

And
there’s no defence. Letters to papers berating critics or journalists
inevitably look whining and pathetic. I’m not saying all negative criticism is
bad, it can be constructive and help you change direction, but when it’s a
tirade of personal abuse, that’s different.

I got
it with both barrels from the critics very early on and became slightly
obsessed with it. Of course I don’t want to give him any more publicity than he
deserves, which is none, but a certain critic in the
Sun
took against me
quite early on and directed a stream of abuse about my appearance at
Sun
readers.
The only way I could counter this was in my act, by saying that he wasn’t
exactly an oil painting himself — unless there was an oil painting called
Constipated
Warthog Licking Piss Off a Toilet Seat.
Well, it made me feel better.

Another
critic, who works for the
Evening Standard
and who is considered a bit
of a wit, although much of his copy is crap, once remarked that I should be
sent to Saudi Arabia where they know how to deal with extra pounds of ugly
flesh. However, I do derive a great deal of satisfaction from the fact that
his comedy career amounted to nothing after a couple of crappy series on telly.

I know
I’m making it sound as if all journalists are psychopaths, and that’s not true.
There are some good ‘uns — it’s just I’ve never met any.

Thanks,
dear reader for allowing me to cathart.

Newspaper Columns: The
Endless Search for an Original Thought

When your profile enters
the public domain, people start to want to know your opinion on things, and
opinion is a huge part of what newspapers and newspaper columnists do.

In the
nineties, when I was asked whether I wanted to write a column for the
Independent,
I was somewhat wary since, because of their very nature, newspaper columns
just seem to be a long list of celebrity character assassinations.

There
was, of course, the late Lynda Lee-Potter in the
Mail
who made it her
stock in trade to be absolutely vile, mainly about other women’s looks, and I
didn’t want to end up doing that as I think the majority of women get enough
disdain in the pages of the tabloids without me joining in. Lynda, who died in
2004, was forever immortalised in
Private Eye
as Glenda Slagg, and I
always used to think the spoof column in that brilliant satirical magazine was
so well-observed. Perhaps her most shameful hour was when she set to work on
the glorious Mo Mowlam, the late Labour politician, describing her as looking
like a Geordie trucker. This is the kind of abuse I’d expect from a yob on the
street who is ill-educated and misogynistic, but to see it in print written by
another woman made my blood boil. So I made a supreme effort not to have a go
at the appearance of women and concentrate, for example, on their political
views rather than how they looked, while generally promoting commonsense all
round.

It’s
easier said than done, having to drag up opinions on a regular basis. Some
weeks I would sit and look at my computer screen, empty and sad, and think to
myself, What the feck do I think about anything this week? I would pray for
interesting things to happen to me so I could talk about them.

For a
period of time, Janet Street Porter was Editor of the
Independent
and I
found her fierceness very entertaining because underneath I think she’s a
decent person.

But one
week, after a call from Janet, I foolishly agreed to give a plug to some
charity thing Elton John was doing (they are good friends) even though I felt
uncomfortable about it.

Rightly
so, a little piece about it appeared in
Private Eye
under the heading of
Brown-nosing.
I felt suitably admonished. Eventually my column was syndicated
to the
Daily Mirror
and suitably tabloided up for
Mirror
readers.
I found that quite difficult to look at. I eventually resigned from the
Mirror
after what I considered to be a racist front page, and hoped Piers Morgan’s
career would head downhill. Well, that hasn’t happened, has it?