大象传媒

The comedian Jo Brand tells Michael Berkeley about the important role classical music plays in her life.

Jo Brand has enjoyed a pretty unusual career path - from psychiatric nurse to The Great British Bake Off. On the way she鈥檚 taken in radical stand-up comedy 鈥� under the moniker The Sea Monster 鈥� invented a new genre of Bafta-winning sitcom drawing on the black humour of nurses and social workers, and has made numerous appearances on panel shows from QI and Have I Got New For You to Question Time.

Jo talks movingly about the music in her childhood 鈥� learning the piano and violin, bell ringing in her local church and listening to music with her father, who suffered from depression. She chooses Mendelssohn鈥檚 Violin Concerto in his memory.

Music runs through Jo鈥檚 family, and her teenage daughters are keen singers. We hear Carmina Burana, which one of them has performed, as well as part of Beethoven鈥檚 Pastoral Symphony, which reminds her of her rural childhood with her two brothers.

And she tells Michael that coping with drunk hecklers in rough comedy clubs was as nothing compared to the paralysing fear she felt when she had to perform Bach鈥檚 Toccata on the organ of the Royal Albert Hall for a television programme:

鈥楾here were 8,000 people there. It was absolutely terrifying. I鈥檇 never actually realized what that expression "your blood running cold" really meant, but two minutes before I walked up and sat down at the organ, my hands were completely freezing and I thought they wouldn鈥檛 work.鈥�

Producer: Jane Greenwood
A Loftus production for 大象传媒 Radio 3