Russell Brand, comedian, columnist, actor, author, radio/TV presenter and
self-confessed narcissist, who once claimed - not entirely jokingly, one
suspects - that he has never knowingly Googled anything other than his own
name, is reading out an article.
Needless to say, the article is about Russell Brand. It was published in the Daily
Mail after he presented the US MTV Video Music Awards last month - a
controversial performance which he kicked off by suggesting that viewers
vote for Barack Obama, arguing that although Americans were evidently
open-minded, since they had permitted “that retarded cowboy fella” to run
the world's only superpower, it might be an idea to “let someone else have a
go”.
“Late nights at his rented house in Hollywood have seen the British comic
slumped in front of the television, flicking channels...”
“How would anybody know?” exclaims the former Time Out
comedian of the year, splayed across an armchair in his agents' office in
North London. “Anyway, our television don't work!”
“His trademark tumbleweed hair flat and lank and his kohl-rimmed eyes smudged
and puffy...”
“God, it's written like a novel! And I don't wear eye make-up watching telly!”
“The flamboyant 33-year-old presenter-turned-actor is feeling the pressure
over his latest disastrous attempt to conquer America...”
“Disastrous? I've got five films coming up and a comedy special with Comedy
Central!”
“His team of handlers have had to launch a damage-limitation operation after
his crude performance made him America's Public Enemy No 1...”
He flicks the cutting, which I had handed to him, on to the table, next to the
two cardboard tubs of food ferried in after he instructed the office
receptionist to “tell Tom I'm hungry”. As is his habit with requests issued
to the agents, assistants and stylists who hover around him, he had prefaced
it with a compliment: “Gosh, I do like your hair.” He shovels a large
plastic forkful of gluten-free, quinoa-based gunk into his mouth before
continuing.
“You know what, I read that article when it came out - because I'm so deeply
narcissistic - and I thought: ‘Do you want to calm down?'” A sip of pink
grapefruit juice. “But this is something I've learnt: whenever people are
offended, you need to look at who you've offended. If it's someone great,
like Gandhi, you need to worry. But if it's the Christian Republican Right
of America...” A raised eyebrow. “My reaction is, good. Because they offend
me! I didn't think it was controversial. Vote Obama - that's obvious, innit?
America should go and take a good look at itself.”
He laughs and, as he tucks deeper into his food - he is so hyperactive that
you imagine he needs refuelling perpetually - I can't help thinking that he
has rather missed the point. It was not just that Republicans were offended,
but the wider US and British press were irritated, too - a reflection, I
think, of the difficulty that so many have with Brand.
In theory he should be universally popular. He is hugely charismatic and his
personal story is compelling. Overcoming heroin addiction, sex addiction and
a troubled upbringing in Essex which included watching his father's porn
videos at 4, teenage bulimia, expulsions from school and drama college, 11
arrests for petty crime, being sexually assaulted by a tutor when he was 7
and being taken to visit a prostitute at 16, he remains close to his mother
Barbara (who separated from his father when Brand was six months old and had
several brushes with cancer during his childhood) and is one of an elite few
British comedians - Walliams, Lucas, Gervais - currently being taken
seriously in America. He is starring alongside Adam Sandler in Bedtime
Stories, Disney's big Christmas movie; alongside Helen Mirren and Alfred
Molina in a feature-film version of The Tempest; and is due to
film Get Him to the Greek, a Judd Apatow film in which he will
reprise the rock-star character he played in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
Yet many are still allergic to him.
What's the problem? I suspect that in part it is his omnipresence - he is all
over our television, radio and newspaper supplements, forever jabbering
away, and familiarity breeds contempt. It is also because he has done some
pretty ropey TV: remember Russell Brand's Got Issues? Even he admits
that it was rubbish. But mainly it is because Britain's “most famous
teetotal vegetarian sex insect” is a complex performer whose odd combination
of high intelligence, arcane diction, base obsessions, overarticulacy, Essex
drawl, unremitting candidness and alternately breezy and intense delivery
begins to make sense only once you see him perform stand-up.
For years I considered him irritating, only to spend an evening watching his
stand-up and, mesmerised by his extraordinary use of language, his
effervescence and the bravery of his subject matter - David Baddiel was
spot-on when he observed that Brand said “maybe 10 per cent of what he'd
like to have said” during his MTV performance - I suddenly realised that he
was a genius. Alone on stage he is incredibly funny. But, having said that,
even I found the Obama remark annoying, not least because he doesn't seem to
appreciate that the more foreigners tell Americans to do something, the less
likely they are to do it.
“Yeah, I'm going to be making films in America and I've got to watch what I
do,” Brand responds, conceding that he found the media furore “literally
surreal”. On the one hand, he says, everyone around him, including MTV
executives and celebrities such as Oliver Stone (who told Brand that he
reminded him of Jim Morrison) praised his performance. But on the other,
there was an almighty “cacophony and racket” in the press.
The strangest moment, Brand recalls, came when his friend Noel Gallagher,
recovering from an injury in a US hotel room, sent him a clip of a CNN
report that he had recorded on his mobile phone. “You had these photos of me
making me look like a monster, people talking about how I should be sent
back to the United Kingdom, and in the background you could hear Noel
Gallagher shouting ‘Oh f*** off' at the report. That was weird.” He scrapes
the bottom of his second tub of quinoa before stretching his long legs in
satisfaction.
Did the fuss make him want to come home? “It made me want to go Upton Park and
watch West Ham.” Which is a way of saying that he wanted to come home? “I
wanted to watch a football match.” There's a difference, I suppose. “But it
didn't change my feelings about America. They are solely responsible for
some of the best art and music in the world. They're beautiful people.”
If Brand sounds a little hippified here, it is because he has just returned
from a meeting with a guru, Radhanath Swami. “He's got the answer,” Brand
intones, and I notice that he is sporting a garland of flowers around his
neck. It says something about the eccentricity of his appearance - the Amy
Winehouse hairdo, clothes that he admits make him look like “a superhero S&M
scarecrow” - that it took half an hour to register. “I'm a spiritual gent
and increasingly that's the level I want to vibrate on, were it not for my
crazed lust for sex and glamour.”
Ah: Brand recently split up with his Australian actress girlfriend Teresa
Palmer, his co-star in Bedtime Stories, and is rumoured to be back on
the prowl. Can we safely assume that the sex-addiction therapy didn't work?
“It did in a way, because now I'm really happy about my sex life. I wasn't
always.” So what did it teach him, if he is still sleeping around? “Don't
try to heal inner maladies with external things.” So before the therapy, was
he using sex before to cover up problems? “Or just to cope, you know -
habit. It's not a good way to live.”
He returns to the subject of his guru, who he says has helped him to find
happiness. “He's a beautiful fellow. There's nothing you could say to him
that would irritate him.” Thus inspired, Brand refuses to be riled this
afternoon.
Did it annoy him that Kevin Spacey recently remarked that he would “never”
allow the star to perform in one of his productions because Brand is “just a
f**ing personality”. “I bet he didn't even say it. I think he is brilliant.”
Did it bother him that he was recently named the 62nd most irritating thing
in Britain? “I'm glad that I'm in the top 62 things that are noticed.” The
man who was sacked by MTV in 2001 after he turned up for work on September
12 dressed as Osama bin Laden (“I thought, ‘I'm an artist, I'm creating a
moment' but what I actually created was the sack for me”) is even relaxed at
the mention of a gig in Northampton that also landed him in the headlines
this year.
According to reports, while he was on stage, Brand called the police with
false information about a sex attacker. During the call he said that he had
seen a man wanted for assaulting three women and, referring to media reports
that the attacker was wearing an orange top and three-quarter-length beige
trousers, had commented: “However serious this sex attack was, the real
crime was against fashion.” At the time Brand appeared to issue an apology,
but he now he insists that he didn't apologise. He elaborates: “I worded it
very carefully. It was equivocating - something along the lines of ‘I'm very
upset if I upset anyone'. Everyone in that room knew I wasn't saying that
it's funny to rape people. I've been the victim of sexual abuse myself. They
were laughing at the minutiae of the article. It was properly funny. [Joking
about] it transports it from a place where it's all frightening to a place
where it's all right and you can talk about it. I've got quite high-minded
ambitions in these areas and I will continue to exercise them.”
It is a reflection of Brand's talent and drive that his career still appears
to be in the ascendancy despite these periodic crises. His enemies will
probably read something into the remark that he may not, as previously
suggested, present the VMAs next year (“It's there if I want to do it but I
might leave that decision for a little bit”) and that the film of his
autobiography, due to be directed by Michael Winterbottom, is on hold. But
he has so many other projects on the go that it's hard to work out what he
is actually promoting in this interview.
As well as the US work, which will mean him spending more time in LA, there is
the forthcoming DVD release of Ponderland, his Channel 4 series from
last year, and a new series of Ponderland similar to the last but
with a bigger set (and Brand with wilder hair and a deeper tan). There is
also Articles of Faith, a collection of his football columns for The
Guardian.
However, for all this diversification, Brand insists that stand-up - he is
touring the US in November and the UK in the new year - will remain key to
his art: “I love the immediacy of it. In film you can be nice and lovely but
what they cut is up to them. But with stand-up people can write what they
want about it, but the people in that room will know what happened.” He must
also have a similar level of control over his books, surely? “Yes.” Is there
going to be a follow-up to his successful memoir, My Booky Wook?
“Yes... well, it'll be a mix of anecdotes, opinion... self-help guide... art
of seduction... in-the-field experience... diagrams. I'm going to try and
talk about things other than me a bit.” He yawns, then laughs at the
absurdity of the thought. “Let's face it, I'll probably be pulled back by
the lure of the self.”
Articles of Faith by Russell Brand is published by HarperCollins on
October 20. Russell Brand's Ponderland is released on DVD by
Universal Pictures on Monday, November 10.
The rise to fame
June 1975: Born in Grays, Essex
1990: A role in a school production of Bugsy Malone earns him a
scholarship to the Italia Conti Academy, London
1995: Gives up a job as a postman to go to drama school
2000: After years trawling the stand-up circuit, a performance at
Hackney Empire catches the attention of a celebrity agent, John Noel. Brand
later credits Noel as the man who helped him to kick his drink and drug
addiction
May 2001: Arrested at an anti-globalisation protest for stripping naked
in Piccadilly Circus, while covering the march for MTV
2001: Fired from his first presenting job on MTV after turning up to
work dressed as Osama bin Laden the day after the September 11 attacks
2002: Begins a Sunday afternoon show on the indie radio station Xfm,
but is fired after reading out pornographic material live on-air
2004: Begins hosting Big Brother spin-off Big Brother's Big
Mouth on E4. He quits after three years, thanking the producers for
“taking the risk of employing an ex-junkie twerp”
February 2006: Presents the NME awards, where Bob Geldof calls him “a
c***”. Brand's riposte: “Geldof's the best person to speak about famine,
seeing as he's been dining out on I Don't Like Mondays for 30 years.”
May 2006: Reportedly spends the night with Kate Moss after she watches
his stand-up
September 2006: Performs to sell-out crowds on his first solo UK tour, Shame,
which draws on embarrassing anecdotes and experiences with the tabloids.
Named best stand-up of 2006 by Time Out magazine
2007: Releases warts-and-all autobiography My Booky Wook, which
tells all about his 11-year drug habit, bipolar disorder, bulimia and sex
addiction
April 2008: Receives rave reviews for his performance as Aldous Snow in
the film Forgetting Sarah Marshall
September 2008: Hosts the MTV Video Music Awards, where he calls George
W. Bush a “retarded cowboy fella” who wouldn't be trusted in England with
scissors
