Humor & Life Quote by Jo Brand

Jo Brand’s genius here is the way she performs honesty as a kind of anti-sales pitch, turning promotion into a miniature roast of promotion itself. She’s nominally doing the job - telling you there’s a video release, hinting at “extra bits” - but the sentence keeps swerving away from hype, as if her mouth is trying to escape the press release in real time. The phrase “I have to be perfectly honest” is the classic setup for a hard sell; Brand uses it to undercut the entire premise, immediately walking back the idea that anyone, anywhere, is burning with desire for a DVD.

The comedy lives in the awkward precision: “probably not specifically for DVD” is hilariously over-specific, like she’s litigating the motive of an imaginary consumer. It signals a self-awareness about how dated the format feels, and by extension how forced these promotional rituals can be. The “extra bits” are the required dangling carrot, but even that gets deflated by “as exciting as that sounds,” a deadpan tag that reads as: we both know this isn’t exciting, and pretending otherwise would be insulting.

Subtext: Brand is protecting her persona - blunt, weary, allergic to bullshit - while still fulfilling the obligations of media culture. Contextually, it’s comedy work in the content-bundle era: every release must be “enhanced,” every audience must be “rewarded,” and the performer has to perform enthusiasm on top of performing. Brand’s move is to make the reluctance the hook.