Jo Brand

My father was an engineer and my mother was a social worker, and they met as young socialists. That probably tells you everything you need to know about my attitude to money - I've never really been bothered about it.

I find it difficult to judge myself, but people say that I have become a bit more socially acceptable over the years in terms of my material; which apparently at the beginning - though I never really intended it to be - was man hating and now is just a bit more cuddly.

Early in the 1990s, I flew alone in a dandelion-yellow, single-engine, 180-horsepower Piper Cherokee from Westchester County Airport in New York westward to the Rocky Mountains, landing and refuelling a good many times in middle-sized cities and towns along the way.