Jo Brand's unusual reaction when man tried to punch her in the face while on stage

Jo Brand says being attacked while working as a nurse was worse than being abused as a comedian - but helped her to deal with the hecklers from hell.

The much-loved TV star, who spent a decade working as a hospital psychiatric nurse, says she needed to have “seven layers of armour” in order to get through some of her 2am appearances at The Comedy Store.

And despite one audience member trying to punch her in the face during a stand-up routine - she admits she “enjoyed” staying on stage and outwitting the drunks.

“Because I was a nurse I got attacked a few times - nothing in comedy was ever as bad that you might get as a nurse,” she explained, saying one patient once came at her with a machete. “Being psychologically disturbed is far more damaging than being drunk. I always thought ‘I can run away if I want’ but I wanted to stay and wind them up. It’s terrible really but I enjoyed it.”

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Describing herself as “not a looker” Jo, 67, said she’d attract comments about her appearance from the second she walked onto the stage - and soon developed strategies to deflect them.

Speaking to fellow comic Ada Buxton for his podcast, she explained: “I thought - I’ll show them I don’t give a sh*t, I’m going straight for the eyes. It was like all the blokes that have ever shouted at you out of a van all concertinaed into one night really. I used to pre-empt it by having a spectrum of put downs. I would start quite nice and whimsical and go through to nuclear if I had to. That really helped me.

“It was like having different layers of armour - if you got to layer seven you might just as well go home as you haven't got anything else apart from physically assaulting them. I didn’t ever do that but I had that done to me on a couple of occasions.”

Jo told Adam that while she avoided being punched by psychiatric patients using a “lower status” tactic, she nearly got hit in the face while on stage.

"I had one where someone walked up on stage and grabbed my collar and put their fist back like they were going to punch me. It was all so quick. Someone grabbed their fist before they managed to gather any strength.”

Admitting that she tends to “minimise things”, Jo said the experience left her feeling “shaken up for maybe half a minute” then she put it behind her. But she reasoned: “There is a level of being drunk that you reach where you don't actually care what you do. And that is always a fear because you don’t know if someone is going to pull a knife out or head-butt you. My nurse training was really useful to me because I could judge those confrontations with a lot of experience and knowledge.”

Jo, who is married and has two sons in their twenties, also told Adam, 55, that she spent much of her youth lying to her parents about where she was and what she was doing.

Having had her drink spiked twice with LSD as a teenager in the 1970s, she said she drank heavily in her twenties but now barely touches alcohol. “My attitude towards drink is ‘what is the point unless you get absolutely smashed and behave really badly?’ she laughed. “At the age of 67 that is a little bit more difficult.”

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