Time & Perspective Quote by Jo Brand

Jo Brand’s line lands because it treats fame like an infection you catch at work, not a prize you bring home. The setup is bluntly procedural: she “used a name” (a stage name, a pseudonym) not for mystique but for containment. The punch isn’t in a crafted joke so much as in the collision of two worlds that aren’t supposed to touch: the hospital ward and the comedy listings in Time Out. One is built on care, hierarchy, and professional credibility; the other runs on attention, banter, and social demolition. Brand is basically doing risk management.

The phrase “people from working coming along” nails the specific British dread of your colleagues showing up anywhere outside the sanctioned setting, armed with inside knowledge and a mandate to mock. “Taking the piss” is doing a lot of cultural work: affectionate, vicious, normalizing. It frames ridicule as inevitable, not traumatic - and that’s the subtext. Brand isn’t asking for sympathy; she’s naming a workplace truth. In environments like nursing, you survive by being competent and by not giving anyone extra material.

Context matters: Brand emerged from an era when comedy circuits were clubby and coverage in Time Out could suddenly make you legible to your entire city. A nurse doing stand-up wasn’t a quirky brand identity yet; it was a potential disciplinary headache, a credibility problem, a gossip accelerant. The intent is privacy, but also control: if the audience wants to laugh at you, fine. You just don’t want it spilling into the ward.