Television’s Russell Brand always did know where he was going. “When I used to watch TV as a tot, I’d sit really close to the screen: just trying to get into that box.” From the age of four or so, he was also an avid reader of his father’s porn mags, recalling titles such as Jugs and Big Ones with particular affection. The twin themes of sexual consumerism and a longing for celebrity have dominated his life ever since.

He also tells us exhaustively about his use of hard drugs, perhaps because not much else has happened in his life. He certainly doesn’t seem to have travelled adventurously, done any worthwhile work, forged any deep or enduring friendships, let alone relationships, or met any interesting people; although he did once snog the actress Martine McCutcheon in a corridor. On the other hand, we do learn that he suffers from indigestion, for which he takes Rennies; that he once urinated on a friend’s sofa (Brand calls urine “winky water”); and that as a schoolboy he masturbated frequently.

Indeed, there is so much enthusiastic onanism lovingly documented here that the book could very well have been called “Russell Brand: A Wanker’s Memoirs”. He has visited Athens, cradle of western civilisation, where he passed his time in a lap-dancing club, excited to learn that the stuffy Anglo-American “no touching” rule does not apply there. In Istanbul, he spent his time in a brothel with a prostitute called Bev. And in Bangkok, he and his father both copulated with prostitutes in the same room, his father’s appreciative cries of “Phwooar, you’re juicy!” only adding to the erotic intensity of the occasion.

All womankind are now, as he gallantly puts it, a “Disneyland for my Dinkle”, and he no longer needs to pay for it, “cos of the ol’ fame”. The book is “beautifully written”, by the way. The publisher says so on the jacket, which is probably just as well, since you might not notice otherwise; although oddly, it didn’t admire the book quite enough to edit it properly, hence the reference to George IV as “glutinous”. Presumably, Brand means “gluttonous”. Perhaps Messrs Hodder & Stoughton were too busy worrying whether they were quite wise to pay £500,000 for this particular Booky Wook.

Brand first made his name in comedy, feeling “a tremendous compulsion to express myself, not in a smutty fashion, artistically”. He always wanted his material to have “a spiritual and political agenda”, one of his most momentous spiritual observations being, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was ‘f***’.” His politics led him to berate his audience as “passive Nazis”, telling them on the day that Ian Huntley was charged with the Soham murders, “You killed them little girls.”

On a more aesthetic level, he began to realise that his verbal inventiveness made him an heir to the dadaists, serving “to interrupt and alter language” and thereby escape the “homogenised and bland”. Hence the metonymic playfulness and alliterative richness of such phrases as “winky water” and “Disneyland for my Dinkle”. He is also “very politically engaged”. To that end, “I once stuck a sheathed Barbie doll up my arse onstage at the London Astoria”.

Stand-up comedy was never going to be enough, however. “Stardom — the yearning for recognition — had encamped in my gutty-wuts.” (“Beautifully written”, you see.) En route to stardom he tried various attention-grabbing pranks. He and a friend once planned to steal some “malformed foetuses” they’d spotted in a hospital, dump them in a local park, and then phone the newspapers, saying they had found some aliens. But on the appointed night of the raid, “We couldn’t find those bloody babies”, so they contented themselves with stealing medical supplies.

It still wasn’t enough. Brand would have to get on telly somehow. And finally it was with a show on satellite called RE:Brand that he finally made his name, its challenging debates covering such topics as, Is sexuality innate or acquired? “I examined this issue by wanking off a man in a toilet.” He also adopted Homeless James from Oxford Street for a while, for various stunts. Homeless James was malleable because he was desperate for the money. “That’s how it is with heroin addicts,” Brand explains. “If you give them money, they’ll agree to do just about anything.” One amusing stunt involved taking Homeless James . . . to the Ideal Home Exhibition! But it was difficult for them to maintain a “genuine friendship”. Homeless James was, well, homeless, and slept outside C&A, whereas “I’m a glamorous TV presenter!”

Brand was by no means insensitive to human suffering, however. All this time, “I was in such a damaged place, psychologically”, with “absolutely no concern for my own physical or emotional well-being”. But he courageously pulled through, and to this day he is “still proud” of the RE:Brand project, seeing it as full of “humanity, love, self-expression and truth”.

RE:Brand led to Big Brother’s Big Mouth, and such was the ensuing success that he is now inside your television all the time. For one little tot, dreams really did come true.

Call of fame

You get some idea of Russell Brand’s obsessive desire for celebrity at almost any cost from the long, lovingly assembled but underwhelming list of awards posted on his Wikipedia entry. Almost anything will do, as long as it shows him being afforded some measure of recognition. So, alongside a lad-mag gong for funniest man of the year and several television and comedy awards, the site carries the proud boast that Brand was the Sun’s Shagger of the Year for 2006, the world’s Sexiest Vegetarian for 2007, and BBC3’s third most annoying person of 2006.

That compulsive need for recognition has led to some distinctly unpleasant moments. Responding to an insult by Bob Geldof at the NME awards show in 2006, Brand was later heard to retort, “Really it’s no surprise he’s such an expert on famine; after all, he’s been dining out on I Don’t Like Mondays for 30 years.” Five years earlier, Brand got fired from his first presenting job, on MTV, when he came to work on September 12, 2001, dressed as Osama Bin Laden.

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Brand explains his ‘need’ to perform

My Booky Wook by Russell Brand

Hodder £18.99 pp339

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