I interviewed Russell Brand once before, only two and a bit years ago. People don’t usually come around again that fast, but a lot has changed since 2006. Following a TV chat show, a Radio 2 show and, especially, the Andrew Sachs answerphone affair, Brand is now properly famous. Mainstream, your-mum-knows-who-he-is famous. Back then, he was Channel 4/comedy club famous. Now, he can sell out three or four or five-thousand-seater stadia for his stand-up gigs.

What’s more, for the first interview, we met in an anodyne room at his publicist’s office in St John’s Wood. This time, we are to meet in his house, and no way am I going to pass up the chance to nosy around Russell Brand’s house. House mind, not flat, four or five storeys slap in the middle of Hampstead. He moved here 18 months ago, so no change out of a few million, I would have thought.

I arrive at noon on a Saturday, the appointed hour. A young man opens the door – it’s Tom, a personal assistant. Russell has gone out for breakfast, says Tom, he’ll be five minutes late. Turns out he’s rather more than five minutes, more like 30, which is irritating, but at least the delay provides the opportunity for a protracted snoop, although sadly the assistant bars the way to the upper floors.

Russell’s gone for Modern Gothic. Lots of black and silver. An off-gold carpet. Purple divans. Blue and silver flock wallpaper. Upwards of 30 or 40 silver candlesticks, variously supported by cherubim, seraphim and mermaids. A silver-handled cane in the fireplace. A pair of diamanté-encrusted antlers above the mantel. Frosted glass in the lower half of the windows, silver and black ruched blinds in the upper. Sliding lacquered Japanese-style door. Big Sony Bravia telly, its various remote controls arranged precisely in a row. Bang & Olufsen sounds.

There are lots of books: the ubiquitous Malcolm Gladwell; art and fashion and photography tomes; showbiz biogs by or about Woody Allen, Peter Cook, Keith Allen, Piers Morgan; collected scripts from Fawlty Towers, Seinfeld and Porridge. Some look well-thumbed, some look unopened. It’s all very neat – the coffee table has those plastic coasters under its casters to stop them marking the carpet – and a bit impersonal.

That’s the front room. Brand later admits: “I am slightly intimidated by that room. I tend not to go in there much. You shouldn’t have a room you’re intimidated by, it’s a bit Victorian.”

Down in the basement is the kitchen. It is more homey, although still spick and span, as if it’s just been cleaned floor to ceiling. There are three black-and-white photographs of Noel Gallagher, one with Brand, one alone, one with Paul Weller – but most of the snaps are of (non-famous) friends and family and colleagues. “My surrogate family, by proxy.” There’s Brand with Barbara, his mum, Brand with Morrissey, his cat, Brand playing with his mate’s kids.

There’s a Maytag fridge. Siemens espresso-maker. Cooker so chic I scour it for a maker’s name but can’t find one. Fancy X-Bike cross-trainer. West Ham United cat bowl. A blackboard on which someone has written: Thursday, recycling; Friday, trash, water garden; and then, “You broke my heart but I am still smiling, K.”

Off the kitchen is a small walled back garden. Black cane sofa. Barbecue. Mirrors. Ashtray (strictly no smoking in the house; Brand gave up fags when he gave up alcohol and drugs). Morrissey the cat edging around, not unfriendly, not massively matey either. And there’s a hot tub with what looks like, and on closer inspection is, a telly built into the wall next to it. An outdoor telly! Pretty decadent, watching the telly in the hot tub? “Yes,” says Brand, “without the telly it’d be an austere necessity, almost a Trappist appendage.”

So now he’s turned up, with a bag of pastries by way of an apology, and a beautiful young Spanish woman whom I recognise, having sat next to her at his gig in Birmingham two nights previously. This morning, he’d been helping her go clothes shopping and got carried away. No wonder women like him: a good-looking straight guy, 6ft 2in, sensitive, funny and bright, and willing to go clothes shopping on a Saturday morning and actually enjoy it. It’s a powerful combination.

Brand is wearing the same skintight black leggings he wears on stage: “I call them my Testosterousers, in an attempt to make them more masculine.” They were a freebie from the designers. Two years ago he didn’t get freebies. Now he gets loads. His loose white T-shirt, though, he bought that, from a designer called Rick Owens. How much? “I don’t know, but I bet it was a bit too much, you know, it’s just a T-shirt.” A hundred quid? “Maybe, probably.” He’s also got on a necklace strung with feathers. “Someone left it in a hotel room in Edinburgh. She told me it was cursed. I think she said that to toy with my emotions.”

Is the Spanish lady his girlfriend? “No, she’s lovely, but I don’t have a girlfriend. I’m single.” Mostly because, he says, of work commitments rather than desire. When we last met, I say, you were seeing an art student. “Laura? I still see her. She’s amazing.” But romantically, that’s over, is it? “No, it still continues.”

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