Josephine Grace Brand

Jo Brand (born Josephine Grace Brand, 23 July 1957) is an English comedian, presenter, actress and writer. She started her entertainment career with a move from psychiatric nursing to the alternative comedy stand-up scene, with early performances on Saturday Live. She went on to appear on The Brain Drain, Channel 4's Jo Brand Through the Cakehole, Getting On, and as a regular guest on QI, Have I Got News for You and Would I Lie to You?. Since 2014 she has presented The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice. In 2003, she was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.

Brand was born in Clapham, London, and grew up in Hastings, East Sussex. She was educated at several schools including Tunbridge Wells Girls' Grammar School and Bexhill College. She took a joint social science degree with a Registered Mental Nurse qualification at Brunel University, then worked as a psychiatric nurse for ten years at hospitals including the Maudsley Hospital in south London.

When Brand began her comedy career, she used the stage name the "Sea Monster". She was part of the British alternative comedy movement, working in London comedy clubs in the mid-1980s and appearing initially on Saturday Live. Her early style involved delivering jokes in a bored monotone, one line at a time, drawing heavily from pop culture and the media. In 1993, she became a resident panellist on BBC's The Brain Drain, and her transition into mainstream television continued when she starred in her own Channel 4 series, Jo Brand Through the Cakehole.

Brand became the most frequently appearing guest on QI, appearing in 34 episodes, and appeared on Countdown as a Dictionary Corner guest 88 times. She wrote a feature-film adaptation of her novel The More You Ignore Me, released in 2018.