Smash hit

At 23 I entered a New Act of the Year competition at the Hackney Empire. After performing in rooms above pubs it was amazing to be on stage in front of 2,000 people. I got really drunk. I didn’t win but Malcolm Hay, the critic from Time Out, gave me a lot of column space and after that I signed to an agency, Bound and Gagged, took my show to Edinburgh and got my first job at MTV. I presented the dancefloor chart show where I interviewed pilled-up clubbers, cheekily ribbing them as they were too high to notice.

My most significant “break” was meeting my agent John Noel, who forced me to go into rehab. I was hopelessly addicted to heroin. Before I met him my career was impossibly bleak and destined for naught but anecdotal infamy. I was fired from MTV for dressing up as Osama bin Laden after 9/11. I was with a big agency, ICM, and had a show on Xfm on to which I invited homeless crack addicts as agony uncles (the help they offered was often useless, it was usually “take crack”). I was sacked from a Steve Coogan BBC vehicle for fighting in a Turkish brothel. I was only an extra but carried on like Oliver Reed — daft, really.

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I’m quite a determined chap but John told me to sit down, shut up and sort myself out. He paid my rent for two years and got me into treatment, the drug support centre Focus 12, where I met Chip Somers. He made me realise that I wasn’t going to achieve anything if I couldn’t look after myself. I took one day at a time and for about a year I was a fragile little man and made small, funny films and rode a bike.

The next significant opportunity was getting a Big Brother offshoot show, EFourum. It was a difficult audition process and when I got the job it was written into my contract that I could be sacked without notice if I relapsed.

One of the negative consequences of notoriety is that you may find that one part of you — in my case the “Russell Brand” in the tabloids — is a totally independent entity from who you really are.

I’ll read that I’m a “self-confessed womaniser” or that I “claim to be edgy and dangerous” and of course I’ve never said either of those things. The papers construct a persona for you, judge you and damn you, seldom with consultation.

I don’t mind being confessional. I’ve done bad things which I have apologised for. I don’t take drugs and I don’t sleep with loads of girls any more. If my only knowledge of myself came from the tabloids I would despair.

I have had jolly good advice from Eddie Izzard and Jonathan Ross. Here is that advice so that you can use it. Izzard goes: “Don’t ever stop doing stand-up. In America they don’t give a monkey’s about TV presenters but they have immense respect for stand-up performers.” And Ross reckons: “Don’t temper who you are. Do what you want to do. Don’t give an ‘eff’ about what people say or think about you.”

Of course this whole caper is meaningless and transient rhubarb really. I think the only thing worth pursuing is spiritual rather than professional. But I feel that I have to achieve tangible success before embarking on an inward journey and I’ve barely raised a flicker. I’m at the very, very beginning. The seed has been planted after years of sodding around the garden centre.

Here is a conclusive bit of advice: first, take control. Write a play or some comedy, learn to sing, then book a room above a pub and start performing. If you’re any good people will turn up eventually, even if it’s only the landlord to throw you out of his boozer — he might have a christening do or something. Just ignore him, or any obstacles. Do not desist.

If you really want to excel, the only things preventing you from realising your dreams are death and lethargy. Or some grim hybrid, deathargy.