Jo Brand has spoken about assisted dying and her own mortality after the death of her mother, urging people to make end-of-life plans while they still can. The comedian's mother Joyce died aged 86 in 2021 after contracting Covid alongside other health complications. Joyce was reported to have obtained drugs to end her own life when she was ill, although she did not use them.
Reflecting on mortality
Brand, who turns 70 next year, highlighted the importance of being able to "end" your own life. "Now's the time, if you want things, to get them in place. I think a lot of people say, 'I really want to do that, but I'll forget it for now.' And then they get to a stage where they can't," she told The Guardian.
When asked whether she meant in terms of a bucket list, she said: "I mean the ability to perhaps end your own... I know it's not legal yet, but I think it will be, sooner rather than later." The comic has supported organisations in the past like Dignity In Dying, which campaigns for legal reform around end-of-life choices.
Care home concerns and family
Brand explained that she is worried about living in a care home after witnessing male staff's "appalling" behaviour at a residential home for adults with learning disabilities, where she worked as a teenager. She was sacked after making complaints, which were not investigated.
"That was in the 70s. Are they that different now? Who knows?" Brand said. "I can't imagine I can persuade any of my family to get interested in looking after me." The TV personality has two grown-up daughters, Maisie and Eliza, with her husband, Bernie Bourke.
Health and new book
Brand reflects on grief and dying in her new book, Decline and Falling Over, in which she calls the point past middle age "your s***ter second half". She revealed she has given up smoking in a bid to improve her health - but has instead taken up vaping - and claimed it's "too late for her to go to the gym every 10 minutes".
The comic did, however, walk 140 miles from Hull to Liverpool for Comic Relief in 2016. The Getting On star worked for more than a decade as a psychiatric nurse before turning to stand-up comedy full time.
Career and advocacy
Brand met her nurse husband Bourke there and previously said working in a psychiatric emergency clinic has helped her to cope with her more challenging fans. "I had much worse then, in terms of threats of violence, and I kind of know how to handle myself just through experience," she told The Independent in 2012.
Brand is no stranger to highlighting important issues facing women and was previously praised for her comments about sexual harassment while appearing on the panel show, Have I Got News For You. She reminded the panel that no case of sexual harassment was insignificant after Ian Hislop described an incident of harassment where an MP took his personal trainer to the cinema as "not some high level crime, not compared to Putin or Trump".
Brand responded: "Can I just say as the only representative of the female gender here today, I know it's not high level, but it doesn't have to be high level for women to feel under siege in somewhere like the House of Commons." She went on to say that being harassed constantly as a woman "wears you down".
