JO Brand is best known for being a comedian and presenter, fronting The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice on Channel 4.
She’s got a long list of TV appearances and here’s what you need to know…
Jo Brand is a comedian and TV personality known for her dry sense of humour.
She was born in Wandsworth, London, in July 1957 and grew up in a small village in Kent.
Brand was a rebellious teen and was eventually kicked out of her family home by her parents.
The counter-cultural menace was persuaded by agent Malcolm Hardee to begin a career in stand-up comedy in the early 1980s, and acquired the stage name “sea monster”.
In 1993, Brand transitioned into mainstream television and became a resident panellist on BBC comedy panel show the Brain Drain.
Since then her TV career has continued to blossom and she’s won four British Comedy Awards and a Bafta for her sitcom Getting On.
If that wasn’t enough, Brand became an unlikely fitness hero when she completed a 150-mile coast walk for Sport Relief in 2016.
Jo also worked as a nursing assistant for ten years in a residential unit for adults with learning difficulties.
In July 2007, Brand was awarded an honorary doctorate for her work as a psychiatric nurse from the University of South Wales.
Jo has been married to her husband Bernie Bourke since 1997.
The couple met at a comedy show when Jo was 38, and Bernie is six years younger than his famous wife.
Unlike many celebrity spouses, Bernie is not in showbiz as he works as a psychiatric nurse at a hospital in London.
The couple do have a lot in common, however, because Jo was a psychiatric nurse herself before becoming a comic.
Jo Brand is a regular guest host on BBC quiz Have I Got News For You.
The funnywoman has hosted her own 90s programmes, Jo Brand’s Big Splash and Jo Brand Through The Cakehole.
But her proudest telly achievements are arguably her sitcoms Getting On, set in an NHS geriatric ward and directed by Peter Capaldi, and Damned, set in a Social Services office.
She’s the host of The Great British Bake Off spin-off show on Channel 4, after hosting The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice on BBC.
In 2019, she was one of the comedians doing silly tasks for the Taskmaster in series nine.
The small screen seems to be just too small for Jo now though, as she wrote and starred in an adaptation of her novel The More You Ignore Me, alongside Sheridan Smith and Sheila Hancock.
Jo and her husband have two daughters, Maisie and Eliza.
Her husband and two daughters are all vegetarian.
