AFTER two decades in the business, Jo Brand is among the top female comics in the country. Sussed, sassy and streetwise, she offers a razor-sharp perspective on life.

She is at her funniest when letting rip about all that is sexist and sizeist. After successful series such as Jo Brand Through the Cakehole and Jo Brand's Commercial Breakdown and a hugely successful appearance on the recent Comic Relief version of Fame Academy, she is now a major-league telly star. But for all that, what she still loves most is stand-up.

"Nothing can beat a live audience,'' Jo enthuses, "theatre beats telly every time. Even if you do the same material, every night is still different. Each audience will take away something unique from my show. They may come away, for instance, saying 'did you see the moment where that Mars Bar hit Jo's head?'"Live performing is the core of what I do. Out of all my work, it's the most enjoyable, the most immediate and the most dangerous. If you become purely a TV performer, you can become smug and cocooned. But live, audiences either laugh or they don't - it's the only way of really seeing whether you can still cut it as a comedian.''

And Brand certainly can. An enormously popular performer and now the proud mother of two young daughters, she has built up a warm relationship with her audience which often manifests itself in the most unusual way. "People throw sweets at me on stage,'' the comedian chuckles. ''If I only get a handful of wine gums, it's obviously a bit disappointing. But when they run down the aisles to leave me cakes they've made, that's a real compliment.''

Contrary to the idea put about by tabloid papers, Brand's act does not focus on 'women's problems' to the exclusion of all else. "The clich is that all women comedians go on about is periods,'' she sighs.

"But I've totted it up and I only have ten minutes about periods in seven hours of material.''

Recently the comedian has also been working up "the female equivalent of Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man speech. In the Seven Ages of Woman, I'll be looking at the way stuff has changed for us over the last fifty years.

"For instance, half a century ago, women in their 60s looked 90. Nowadays, they look about 45. I'll also talk about how childhood has been changed by capitalism. Children these days are being converted into mini-consumers and sold the most awful tacky brand-names.''

In addition, Brand has been developing new routines about being a mother. "I'm writing material about what motherhood turns you into. You have to become an entirely unselfish person and put aside all desire to sit down and read the paper or wash your hair.

"It's a very rich source because so many people have kids and can identify with it. In adverts, mothers are portrayed as having everything completely in control. Their children always eat five different types of vegetable for dinner without complaining, they always sleep for eight, uninterrupted hours, the parents always look immaculate and never stuff chocolates in their children's mouths just to shut them up.''

Brand would be the first to admit that when you become a parent, "your focus has to shift. When I was on my own, I could please myself. If I wanted to do ten benefit gigs a month, I could because I had no responsibilities. Now I have to be aware of working closer to home.

''There aren't many precedents in stand-up,'' she continues. "Once you become a mother, you realise what a male-dominated profession it is. What other mothers are there on the circuit? Jenny clair and that's it.''

But a joke with Brand is never more thirty seconds away and she hastens to add: ''I'm not a trail-blazer. I'm just trying to hold myself together and not do a gig with baby sick down my front. That'll do me fine!''

Jo Brand is at the Theatre Royal Winchester tonight. Performance: 8pm. Tickets: from £11. Box office: 01962 840440.