My mum taught me to knit when I was a child, and I turn to it, for some weird reason, when I'm feeling depressed.

Jo Brand

Categorized in : Children Feelings Taught

I know there are certain men that hate women or don't like women, and in order to make women feel small, they tend to isolate them when they bully them. And women are often humiliated by it and feel they can't do anything about it. So my advice to women would be: there's always support around for those sorts of things and if you feel you're isolated in any way, or being bullied, you must talk to someone about it.

hate men order

I think I'd concentrate on young women - particularly girls at school - and I would try and build into school curriculums much more education about relationships and how girls (and boys) can handle them: stuff about consent and that sort of thing.

girl boys school

I think it's so easy when you have children just to turn your focus inward on your family and because, when they're young, you don't sleep very much, you're walking around like a zombie most of the time anyway. It's a really important part of my life to have good friends, you have to work quite hard to keep the relationships going but it's worth it.

good-friend sleep children

I tried to eat better too, but when you're on tour you literally just eat some hideous pork pie on the motorway on the way to a show. It's a really unhealthy lifestyle: you're up late, drinking loads of coffee to stay awake, drinking loads of alcohol because you're socialising with people.

pie coffee drinking

There's something people do to you when they bully you that makes you feel like you're on your own. But don't keep things inside, it's really damaging if you do.

bully like-you people

I think a lot of women are incredibly tough and they're just really admirable. Especially the way that, given what they've got, they just manage to carry on.

tough way thinking

On the whole, you can have a private life and be famous. But when milestones happen in your life like having children or getting married, privacy goes out of the window.

married privacy children

For a long time, people assumed I was gay, so when I got married the press were all a bit shocked and made a big deal of it - and ditto when I had children. I felt very much under the microscope with paps outside the house taking pictures of me getting the baby out of the car, it was excruciating. I remember getting her out of the car seat and thinking 'oh God I'm going to drop her and they're going to take a picture'. I was so nervous. Those sorts of things are really hard.

gay baby children

Work motivates me. I love what I do and I'm a positive person, I've always liked what I've done as a job - however grim it was.

grim done jobs

I think people tend to believe that women who are successful are probably neglecting their children, possibly a bit hard-nosed and that they don't really support other women very much - that they're men-haters and ball-breakers. I've certainly been on the receiving end of those 'compliments' for most of my career.

successful believe children

Usually, what people in the public eye do is pick two charities and just exclusively work for them. But that means you have to turn people down all the time, so I try and do something for everyone that asks me, at least once.

eye two mean

There's still this underlying image of women that they should fulfil a certain role. It's no accident that a lot of men who are a bit misogynistic tend to say things like 'get back to the kitchen' or 'why aren't you at home looking after the kids'.

home men kids