Jo Brand Bio | Wiki

Jo Brand ( Full name: Josephine Grace Brand) is an English presenter, writer, comedian,  and actor. She started her entertainment career with a move from psychiatric nursing to the alternative comedy stand-up scene.

Jo had early performances on Saturday Live and later went on to appear on Channel 4’s Jo Brand Through the Cakehole, The Brain Drain, and Getting On. Her other television appearances included  QI as a regular guest, Have I Got News for You, and Would I Lie to You? also as a guest.

Jo Brand Age

She was born on July 23, 1957, in Clapham, London, England. Jo is 64 years old.

Jo Brand Height

She is a woman of average stature. Jo stands at a height of 5 ft 4 in ( Approx 1.6m).

Jo Brand Family

She was born to her parents in Clapham, London, near St Paul’s Church. Jo and her parents lived in a house that was “a little terraced Victorian place on the Wandsworth Road with an outside toilet.” She grew up in Hastings, East Sussex alongside her two brothers. Her mother served as a  social worker at Charing Cross Hospital.

Her father, a structural engineer suffered from depression from the age of 12 but was successfully treated with antidepressants in his mid-50s. Jo’s parents parted ways when she was a teenager.  At the age of around four, her family moved to the village of St Mary’s Platt near Sevenoaks in Kent. A year later, they moved to Benenden.

Jo Brand Education

She attended school at St Mary’s Platt Primary School before transferring to Benenden Village Primary School. Jo studied there for a while and later joined Tunbridge Wells Girls’ Grammar School. She studied there until she was 16 and joined Hastings High School for Girls and Bexhill College. She worked in a pub, for Barnardo’s, and also as a nursing assistant in a residential unit for adults with learning disabilities.

Later, Jo took a joint social science degree at Brunel University with a Registered Mental Nurse qualification. Then, she worked as a psychiatric nurse for a decade, at different hospitals such as the South London Bethlem hospital, Cefn Coed Hospital in Swansea, as well as Maudsley Hospital in south London.

Jo Brand Husband | Bernie Bourke

She married a psychiatric nurse called Bernie Bourke in 1997. The wedding was held in Shropshire. Bernie and his two daughters are all vegetarian. However, Jo prefers to “pursue pork-pies in service stations when no one is looking.”

Jo Brand Daughter | Children

She and her husband are proud parents to their two daughters named Maisie Bourke and Eliza Bourke. In 1997, Jo delivered a guest lecture on the subject of psychiatric nursing for the University of Derby Psychology Society in return for a donation to Derby Rape Crisis. In the same year, she opened the first major exhibition of the Adamson Collection at Lambeth Hospital in South London.

The exhibition is the biggest since the death of Edward Adamson in 1996 who was the pioneer of Art Therapy. Jo was among a group of British entertainers in February 2009, who wrote an open letter to The Times of London in support of the leaders of the Baháʼí Faith  on trial in Iran

Jo Brand Taskmaster

Currently, Jo makes regular appearances on BBC Radio 4 in programs such as Just a Minute and The News Quiz, among others. Jo has been the presenter of The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice since 2014. She was listed in The Observer in 2003 as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy. Jo became a contestant on Taskmaster in 2009.

Jo Brand Comedy | Comedian

When  Jo started her career in comedy, she used the stage name “Sea Monster”. She joined the British alternative comedy movement in the mid-1980s and worked in London alternative comedy clubs. Initially, Jo appeared on the Saturday Live television show. She also shared a flat with fellow comic and comedy club owners called Ivor Dembina. Jo’s early style involved one line at a time, her delivering jokes in a bored monotone, with pauses in between.

Her style drew heavily from pop culture and the media. Most of her jokes contained references to celebrities and public figures.  Jo has said that she drank heavily prior to her first gig. She was heckled throughout and received no applause at the end of the set. Her Doc Marten boots, large size, and short hair led to false rumors that  Jo was a lesbian. Jo narrated a documentary tribute to Les Dawson titled Laughter & Tears: The Les Dawson Story in 2007.

The documentary was broadcast on BBC Radio 2 in October 2007. She took part in a benefit show, Channel 4’s Comedy Gala in 2010  held in aid of Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital. The show was filmed live at the O2 Arena in London on March 30. In 2011, Jo appeared as Demon Dinner Lady in the British live-action film titled Horrid Henry: The Movie.

She as well offered a voice-over for the Lyric, Hammersmith Theatre’s 2011 pantomime Aladdin. She judged the first-ever Class Clowns competition in August 2015, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Also, Jo announced the winner at the Gilded Balloon on the night. Apart from all that, Jo has written a feature-film adaptation of her novel titled  The More You Ignore Me. She is set to star in the film.

Jo Brand Weight Loss

In 2022, Jo revealed that she lost “three and a half stone in a couple of months when she was younger and as a result, friends changed the way they treated her. The comedian has regularly made jokes about her weight when standing in front of an audience. She recently sat down with Lorraine Kelly and her daughter Rosie for their podcast What if? with Lorraine & Rosie. They discussed Jo’s life and career. They started their conversation by asking Jo what she was like as a child. Thats when the comedian she revealed she was “nice, thin and quite pretty.” Jo said how people have treated her differently depending on her body size

Jo Brand Books

– 1994 A Load of Old Balls: Men in History (London: Simon & Schuster)
– 1996 Mental (with Helen Griffin. HTV Sherman Plays series. Cardiff: Drama Association of Wales
– 1996 A Load of Old Ball Crunchers: Women in History (London: Simon & Schuster)
– 2004 Sorting Out Billy[48] (novel. London: Review
– 2005 It’s Different for Girls (novel. London: Headline Review,
– 2009 The More You Ignore Me (novel. London: Headline Review
– 2009 Look Back in Hunger. The Autobiography (London: Headline Review
– 2010 Can’t Stand Up For Sitting Down. The Autobiography – Part 2 (London: Headline Review

Jo Brand Movies And Tv Shows

– 1990 Up Yer News
– 1992–present Have I Got News for You
– 1994 Absolutely Fabulous
– 1993–1996 Jo Brand Through the Cakehole
– 2003–present QI
– 2009, 2013 The Paul O’Grady Show
– 2009 The Speaker
– 2010–2017 Let’s Sing and Dance
– 2011 Jo Brand’s Big Splash
– 2011 Show Me the Funny
– 2013–2014 Splash!
– 2014–2015 The Great Sport Relief Bake Off
– 2014 The One Show Stand-in
– 2016 Jo Brand’s Hell of a Walk for Sport Relief
– 2016 Going Forward
– 2018 Britain’s Best Junior Doctors
– 2019 Taskmaster
– 2020 Kitten Rescue with Jo Brand

Jo Brand Net Worth

She is an English presenter, writer, comedian,  and actor who has accumulated an estimated net worth of $3,583,692.

How Old Is Jo Brand

Jo is 64 years old. She was born on July 23, 1957, in Clapham, London, England.

Who Is Jo Brand Married To

She married a psychiatric nurse called Bernie Bourke in 1997. The wedding was held in Shropshire.

Who Is Jo Brand

Jo is an English presenter, writer, comedian,  and actor. She started her entertainment career with a move from psychiatric nursing to the alternative comedy stand-up scene.