Jo Brand entertains fans at Ludlow Library

Jo was due to have headed straight home to London after a gig in Tewkesbury on Wednesday night but her 79-year-old mum Joyce persuaded her otherwise.

"I have been emotionally blackmailed into this by my mother who lives in Ludlow," the star told an audience yesterday afternoon at the Ludlow Library.

"It is hard to say no to mother as she knows quite a lot about me I don't want you to know."

Jo is best known for her stand-up work but she is also a successful author, with seven books published to date, and she was ostensibly at the Ludlow Fringe to talk about her writing.

Two of her books – Look Back in Hunger and Can't Stand Up for Sitting Down – are autobiographies and she said that, unlike teenage TV stars who rush into print with their limited life experiences, writers had to have an interesting past to commit it to paper.

That proved a cue for Jo to detail her life from an "idyllic" childhood, growing up in a small, Kent village, to her eventual breakthrough on the comedy circuit.

She recalled how the family moved to Hastings but she hated school there and began a rebellious teenage phase which culminated in her being "invited to leave home" at the age of 17.

The bad boy she had hooked up with left her after three months, a few months later she accidentally burnt her bed-sit down with a lit candle and the day after that she lost her job.

Penniless, with no clothes, nowhere to live and no job, she called on her mum and moved back into the family home.

"It was at that point I decided I would have to grow up," she said.

Jo got into Brunel University in Uxbridge, West London, to study a joint social science degree with a Registered Mental Nurse qualification at the end of it and then worked as a psychiatric nurse for ten years.

She said she loved her experiences at the South London Bethlem, Cefn Coed Hospital in Swansea and Maudsley Hospital in South London but they were emotionally draining and she decided to quit before getting burnt out.

She tried out in stand-up and even recalled her first joke, walking on stage with a red dye capsule in her mouth which would burst and she would explain it saying: "I must give up smoking". "I thought it was hilarious but, unfortunately, no-one else did and I thought 'I've got to write some proper jokes'," she told her audience.

Her comedy career did blossom, however, and in 1988 she quit nursing for good to go as a full-time professional.

The rest, as they say, is history but Jo does not forget the part played by her mum.

"I come quite a lot to see my mother in Ludlow, about four to six times a year," she told the Shropshire Star after the talk.

"She's been here since 1991. She is my role model. She's strong, very bright and has a great sense of humour.

"She does laugh at my jokes – well, she bloody well better do!"

Fans of Jo's books could have a wait on their hands for her next work, though.

The comic, who gave her choice of a comfort read as an up-market thriller, said: "I was commissioned about eight months ago to write my eighth book which is about being middle aged and invisible.

"But I have postponed that because I just can't manage to do that and my work life as well. I just have too much on," she explained.

Proceeds from Jo's appearace the Ludlow Fringe yesterday will go to the 2013 Summer Reading Challenge initiative for children.

The challenge is the UK's biggest reading promotion and is run annually by The Reading Agency with the library network, and involves children aged between four and 12 being encouraged to read for pleasure during the summer holidays.

By Simon Hardy