Jo Brand is a real 'Kentish Maid'

By Jo Pattison
BBC Kent

Jo spent a very happy childhood in the village of Beneden

Jo Brand has been described as many things: an outspoken woman with razor-sharp observations; one of the best-loved female comics in the country.

But Jo prefers to call herself a 'Kentish maid'.

Jo is a hard person to track down and when I finally do so, it's an interview over the phone, snatched between the squeals of her children and the sounds of a hectic home life.

Jo lives in Camberwell in London with her partner and their two children.

When she was about four, Jo moved from London to St Mary's Platt near Sevenoaks. "We lived on a fairly modern housing estate and I went to the local primary school," says Jo. "We were only there for about a year and don't remember an awful lot about it - it wasn't a particularly rural place so there wasn't much running around in the fields."

Village life

At the age of six she moved to Benenden village in the Weald of Kent. "We lived just outside the village down a long country lane in an old converted oast house. I have two brothers and we basically spent our lives playing in the woods, falling in ponds, getting chased by wasps and riding donkeys that we shouldn't have been riding."

Jo was a pupil at Tunbridge Wells Grammar School

As the children continue to squeal in the background Jo tells me that she spent a very idyllic childhood in the village and attended the local school. "The village school was great. There were probably about 100 kids and it was on the village green, the church 20 seconds walk away at the top of the green. I loved it - there were a couple of rather scary, slightly sadistic teachers but apart from that it was all pretty enjoyable really."

Jo became ensconced in community life; she was a brownie and was a regular churchgoer. "I used to do bell ringing in Benenden church," laughs Jo. "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. I really didn't want to because I hated church so as a kind of compromise I became a bell ringer - so I was actually in the church but I didn't have to sing the hymns and say the words as it were."

Teenage years

As a teenager, Jo went to Tunbridge Wells Grammar School a journey of 25 miles each way from the village and a total of two and half hours on the bus.

I was very drunk and some bloke at the back started shouting 'f*** off you fat cow' immediately I got on the stage. He then just chanted it over and over again until I got off. Jo Brand, on her first gig

"School was great. There were no boys there which didn't really bother me at the time because I had two brothers so I was quite pleased not to spend any more time with boys. I made some great friends there and I actually really liked school." Then she said: "oi shush!" which I presume wasn't aimed at me.

While at Tunbridge Wells Grammar School her favourite subjects were languages studying French, German and Latin and she hated the sciences especially physics. Musically she was into Bob Dylan, Neil Young and any hippy type music. "I'm very pleased that I missed the Bay City Roller phase - I was slightly too old for that and was sneering at them by the time they came round."

Not only was she in to hippy music she also dressed in that style: "I had a short skinhead phase before I realised what it actually meant politically - but most of the time I was a complete hippy mostly wearing rubbishy Laura Ashley type long skirts and smelling of patchouli all the time - much to my parent's delight."

Comedy

Jo ventured into comedy much later than her childhood years in Kent. "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."

Perhaps it would have been kinder if she had tried her stand-up act on her parents before stepping on stage for the first time. "It was appalling, it was dreadful. I went on at a benefit at midnight and I was very drunk and some bloke at the back started shouting 'f*** off you fat cow' immediately I got on the stage. He then just chanted it over and over again until I got off - so that was my first one. But the one good thing about it was that I was so drunk I didn't care."

If you think that's bad, Jo has also had a pint of beer thrown over her, a slap around the face and at a student gig, rather than eating their food, the audience threw it at Jo. "It toughens you up" was Jo's response to my horror at what she was telling me.

Back to Kent

Jo would love to return to Kent to live with her family

Considering their input into our conversation it was inevitable that we would get on get on to the subject of children. Has motherhood changed Jo? "I hope it hasn't," she says. It's just made me a lot more tired and more irritable. But apart from that, I don't think I've become more mature - I hope I haven't anyway."

Jo plans to bring her children to her home county. "I drive my children through Kent because my brother lives the other side of Hastings. And I've taken them to Tunbridge Wells a couple of times but at the ages they are they don't realise the significance of it. Once they are a bit older, I'm sure I will bring them to Kent more."

"I'd love to live in Kent but it's all a question of work because it would involve a lot of commuting. It's actually very hard when you're settled in one place to completely uproot yourself and go. Because I had such a brilliant upbringing in Kent it wouldn't worry me at all to move - it would all be down to how practical it was really. I'm a real Kentish maid you know."