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

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