“We’re all going to die.” That’s how Jojo Sutherland starts her new show Riches to Rags.

Though it isn’t what you’d expect how most stand up sets to start, it’s certainly a startling opening line.

“Regardless of how you grow up, it’s the best leveller. Class or creed, we’re all going to die, doesn’t matter if you grew up in a castle or a council house, death’s the ultimate leveller.” says Jojo, grinning as she looks up from her latte.

This will be Jojo’s first solo comedy show for five years, and during that time she’s had a rough time, in her life which cannot be called uneventful.

“It’s called Riches to Rags and that came from how I grew up in a castle. For the first 14 years of my life that’s where we lived.

“We weren’t exactly loaded, my dad was a writer and remember the electricity being cut off, and it wasn’t because of power cuts.

“Jilly Cooper used to come and stay, Dave Allen as well.

“People would literally land on the lawn in a helicopter and come out bearing Fortnum and Mason hampers.

“There was never any milk in the fridge but you could always get a caviar. It was odd.”

“Then, and it took a few years for me to take it in, we literally moved overnight from the castle into a caravan, which seemed to coincide with granny dying and my father being cut out of the will.

“So the premise of the show is really to compare and contrast how my life had been now if that hadn’t have happened.

“Personally I think I’d have been utterly unbearable.

“That could have scarred me being bitter and regretful – why am I not rich?

“But that’s where I developed my sense of humour, a particularly dark one. It’s not about jokes at other people’s expense, it’s about making ourselves feel better.”

Since then Jojo has gone from tragedy to tragedy, but comedy and a sense of humour, the darker the better, is what she says is the only way to live.

“I was only 23 when my mum died and 27 when my dad died, I got married at 23 and had three children under five before I was 30. I got married to a man who wasn’t the wisest choice and he turned out to be an alcoholic, we had our house repossessed, I got made bankrupt and I’ve had a brain haemorrhage.”

Jojo reels a list off, quite matter of factly.

“But I don’t think all of that would have happened if I’d have stayed in that castle.” she adds.

Laughing through adversity is really the theme of her show, when everything goes wrong, what else can you do but laugh?

Despite humour being a coping mechanism for many, it’s one which Jojo feels is getting lost.

“I do understand it when some people say ‘I don’t want to hurt people’s feelings’.” She says.

“That’s lovely, but if you’re never humiliated or upset or embarrassed, you don’t have those skills to cope when you’re met with tragedy.

“If you look at the people who use humour brilliantly, it is undertakers, palliative nurses, lifeboat workers, the military.

“The military especially, their humour is off the scale. It’s essentially a stag do with matching uniforms. I go out to Cyprus for decompression, which is when they’ve just come back from war.

“But it’s not to everyone’s taste, they’re living in a different environment. Even if they’re not at war they’re training for it.”

Over the last few years controversial comedy has been on the decline. Frankie Boyle was dumped from the BBC as it seems that if you don’t like something, it should be banned.

“People want to ban what they don’t like or don’t find funny. People seem to think there are no consequences. There are.” She says.

“I’m not saying if you make joke people won’t take offence, people will. As a comedian if you make a joke and somebody isn’t happy with you, you can feel it.

Billy Connolly, when he did the Ken Bigley joke, it upset a lot of people and he would have felt that and pulled back. But he didn’t get banned from doing comedy ever again.

“Kevin Hart did a Tweet eight years ago and he lost work over it. But does that mean that we should destroy the rest of his life? It’s not enough to humiliate or embarrass you, you need to be ripped the shreds and left with nothing.

“It’s ludicrous that anyone is whiter than white, because we’re not. Part of it is the hypocrisy of the idea that destroying somebody’s life makes you a good person.”

“Yet what many can get away with still depends on who they are, rather than what they’ve done.

“That whole alleged thing with David Cameron and the pig, and the stuff the Bullingdon Club get up to – they can get away with things.

“It’s class and connections which mean they can do that. If you’re working class you don’t have those connections. The upper classes do.”

“There’s part of me that has that ‘servants day off’ bit of more upper class in me, but my kids don’t. My parents are incredibly aristocratic but my children are working class.”

“I’ve started at the top and I’ve slowly worked my way down. Less landed gentry and more stranded gentry.”

This has come not only Jojo’s history in comedy, but also from what happened in her life several years ago, which will be the big reveal of her show.

“There is a reason that I haven’t done a show in five years. I will tell people in the show and not before. It is very much based on that. It was a horrendous part of my life, and I’ve come out the other side.

“I’ve been through so much, I’ve been through hell and back, and now’s the right time to do this show about it. Come at me.”

l Jojo will be doing Riches to Rags at the Whyte & Mackay Glasgow International Comedy Festival on Friday, March 22 at Yesbar.