Sensible article
[web]https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... sell-brand[/web]
Confessions of a randy dandy (Russell Brand features)
The ever sensitive delicate little flower Georgina must know that her grandfather doesn't go to newsagents and so will not cause him any embarrassment or upset by seeing his precious darlings tits plastered all over a dubious wank mag this week.
https://www.nuts.co.uk/490b1ccca9abd/geo ... ess-photos
Ross's big mistake was not throwing her some money, something he's not short of...
https://www.nuts.co.uk/490b1ccca9abd/geo ... ess-photos
Ross's big mistake was not throwing her some money, something he's not short of...
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Brand on the run
Russell Brand is no stranger to controversy. But nothing prepared him for 'Sachsgate'
Miranda Sawyer
The Observer,
Sunday November 9 2008[/align]
Three weeks ago, I interviewed Russell Brand. Afterwards I trotted home thinking, 'That was good fun: entertaining, a bit bizarre, a stimulating way to spend an hour.' A few days later, the row about Andrew Sachs blew up. Within a week, Russell had resigned from Radio 2, as had the station's head, Lesley Douglas, Jonathan Ross had been suspended, and the BBC was dissolving - yet again - into hopeless self-flagellation. And my cosy chat with Russell about his new book and DVD seemed as relevant as rabies.
Now Russell has fled to LA; over there for a couple of film roles and to record a stand-up show. He isn't giving interviews, but he calls me from his hotel to explain himself, sounding understandably quieter than when we first talked. 'I don't want to appear in any way cavalier,' he says, which is funny coming from someone with his hairdo.
So, what happened?
'Well, it wasn't that we went: "Let's ring Andrew Sachs and boast about having sex with his granddaughter",' he says. 'It was: "Oh, he's not there, let's just leave a message" and then: "Oh, look what we've done now." There was no malicious intent - it was like an evolving, rolling thing. If you listen, I say sorry more than I say anything offensive - the message is mostly an apology. In fact, it's the acknowledgment of how wrong it was that is the source of the comedy. What's difficult is that it was completely devoid of malice, and there's been a retrospective application of cruelty and intention to cause offence.'
Russell spoke about the sequence of events that led to the prerecorded show being edited but still being broadcast, saying it was his responsibility. 'I don't think this is a situation where I'd go: "Oh my god, why didn't you protect me from myself, Nic Philps [his producer]?"' He acknowledged that big egos like his and Ross's can be hard to keep under control and that part of the fuss was because Ross earns so much money. He expressed regret over Douglas and Sachs (though he said nothing about Georgina Baillie, Sachs's granddaughter). What he wouldn't take responsibility for was the furore.
'I think what I do appeals to lots of people, younger and older, and certainly what it is, is unrestrained, unbridled and authentic. And on this occasion it offended Andrew Sachs and I feel bad about that and he's accepted my apology. But how that has been subsequently conveyed, which is as a vindictive act, then I didn't do the vindictive act. I did the daft thing, and that I take responsibility for. How it's been repackaged ... I'm not at all responsible for that.'
Will you change because of this?
'I can't let it change what I do. If you're asking me to inhibit what is spontaneous and good about my performance, then I can't do that. I don't think anyone who loves what I do, who will have listened to the actual thing and not complained ... I don't think they'll be affected by it. And then the people who don't like me will just think: "Well, this is what we expected." So despite how huge the fuss is, essentially it's meaningless.'
I wonder. Meaningless, probably, for Russell. He has plenty of other projects on the go: including movies (with Judd Apatow and Oliver Stone), his Guardian football columns, now collected into a book, and his Channel 4 Ponderland show. In February, Comedy Central will screen an hour of his stand-up, to coincide with the US launch of his autobiography. Russell's immediate plan is to conquer America - and not having a BBC radio programme won't hinder that.
But Ross's reputation has definitely suffered - he was so pathetically excited about Russell's sex life - and Douglas has lost her job, leaving Radio 2 to retreat back into golf-club-and-cardigan-land. The BBC will have to do something about how much it pays its big stars. And if Sachs held any wafty illusions about his granddaughter (and most grandparents do), then they've been well and truly shattered.
Still. Now that the fuss has begun to die down, perhaps us Russell Brand fans will be allowed to speak up. My name is Miranda Sawyer and I think Russell Brand is funny. I loved his spontaneous, anarchic radio show. I enjoy his filthy, off-the-hook stand-up. His autobiography, My Booky Wook, was impossible to read without laughing out loud. Naturally, I don't think he should spend his time leaving rude messages on people's answer machines, but that is not all he does.
For a start, he enlivens the world with his ludicrous dress sense. For our original, pre-Sachsgate interview, he arrived dressed entirely in black - jacket, leggings, bovver boots and, yes, skirt - accessorised with diamanté belts, clunking chains and enormo shades. Much taller, hairier and better-looking than I expected: a young George Best let loose in the Addams Family dressing-up box.
'Do you like my leggings?' he asks archly, turning an ankle. 'I think the ruching, strangely, stops them from being too feminine. It's not often you can say that about ruching. Yes, they are ladies' trousers.'
We are in a large, tastefully furnished room next to the photo studio. Russell is appreciative. 'Now that I know this room is a possibility, then next time I have an interview it will have to be somewhere at least as good. It'll have to be in a ballroom with a Jacuzzi. And a hand maiden! Don't give me anything worse! The privilege has become the standard!'
Though he seemed slightly shy when he first arrived, it doesn't take much for Russell to get boisterous. Show him the smallest twig of a joke and he snatches it like a mad dog, running away with it as far as he can. It's hard to stop him, because what do you say? Russell's confidence comes from knowing himself inside out. There's no point in taking the mickey out of him for being an attention-seeking sex maniac, nor in pointing out he's an ex-junkie, a drama-school flunk, a perfumed ponce from Essex who fancies himself despite his ludicrous hair. He knows all this. He makes jokes about it. Plus, he's been in NA since December 2002 and so does that tedious 12 Steps thing of spending hours analysing himself and his actions.
'I have a propensity for self-involvement. I can be very vain and I can be selfish and I'm totally aware of that,' he says, settling himself into the leather sofa. 'And I work on it literally on a daily basis, as part of my recovery from drugs and alcohol. I'm like: "Oh no, that was a selfish thing to say. Oh no, I apologise, let me make amends." So that is part of my life.'
All of which takes on a different weight after he's spent a week saying sorry to one and all. Anyhow, this navel gazing means interviewing Russell is peculiar. Every question you ask him about himself, he's already considered. More, he's deconstructed it, put it back together, located an appropriate intellectual quote and tried to solve whichever trait of his personality made him act like that in the first place. He's very clever and uses language with panache, but his mind is less a steel trap, more a pin-ball machine when all the bonus balls are released at once. Exhilarating, but exhausting.
When I talk to him about his recent hosting of the VMAs (MTV Video Music Awards), for instance, where he drew flak for teasing the Jonas Brothers about their virginity and describing George Bush as that 'retarded cowboy feller', Russell launches into a reply which, when I transcribe it, is more than 1,500 words long. To summarise: at the actual awards, he went down better than he'd expected, no matter what happened afterwards. He realises the office of president is talismanic to Americans, even to liberal ones; he loves America, and understands it's going through a necessary crisis vis-à-vis race; and he thinks it's cynical to market a teenage boy band as virgins. 'There's that Michel Foucault idea of sublimating sexuality, so promoting virginity is another way of putting sexuality at the forefront of popular culture. Like, "They don't have sex." "What? They don't have sex?" It's hokey balderdash.' See? Clever.
However, what's more interesting is how he starts his answer, which is with this funny/serious little speech. 'I'm a very sensitive person,' he says, 'so I don't like to read or hear anything negative about myself, under any circumstances at all. To the point where I'm a difficult actor to direct, because if the director says anything other than, "That was brilliant, amazing - how do you think of these ideas? Why, you're so clever and you're handsome ..." I'm like: "Oh fine, fuck you!" I'd feel hurt, but I'd also think, "Leave me alone, I'm trying my hardest!"'
The problem for him, he says, is he only ever Googles his own name, so, as he's always getting into trouble, he reads a lot about how horrible everyone thinks he is, and gets upset. Not that it stops him. His career trajectory is, all too often, get hired, get cocky, get sacked. Which is pretty much what happened last week, as well as at XFM (for reading out porn), during a Steve Coogan film (for using prostitutes) and at MTV (for turning up the day after 9/11 dressed as Osama Bin Laden and introducing his heroin dealer to Kylie Minogue).
Still, he's on a real work mission at the moment. After his acting success in last year's Forgetting Sarah Marshall and hosting the VMAs, America is very interested. 'People ask me: "Do you want to be a niche, avant-garde, Bill Hicks kind of comedian, or do you want to make $100m movies?" And I want to be able to do what I want artistically, in stand-up, writing and films, and for that you have to be able to access a huge number of people. You have to be huge. By 2011, Miranda, I want to be able to host not only the VMA awards, but an awards ceremony of my own devising.'
So you're going for world domination?
'Yes. That is what I will do,' says Russell. 'In an Edmund Hillary way, because it's there. What am I gonna stop for? What would stop me? I'll just carry on until there's nothing left.'
The truly weird aspect to Russell's desire for fame, however, is why he wants it. I assumed he was just a narcissist who'd like the extra attention, but there's something else behind his ambition. What Russell wants, he tells me, quite seriously, 'is to restructure, re-evaluate and change every single facet of our society to maximise the common good for as many people as possible'.
What, like Stalin, I ask. He launches into another rattle.
'The thing is, Miranda, that through circumstance or design, I have aligned my success with some quite powerful feelings. And that is now the focus of my life. The material world is a transitory illusion, and if it is, why organise your life around the systems that it imposes? Particularly if those systems have negative consequences for huge numbers of people, and the planet itself. I wonder if there are ways that that can change; I wonder if there are elements in the way that the world is organised that are arbitrary and not absolute and could be altered? And I don't mean normal things like, let's wear a ribbon - I mean the entire economic structure of the planet or the way we look at religion.
'And I'm more than aware that the chap off of Big Brother's Big Mouth is unlikely to single-handedly augment an entirely new global culture. I am quite aware that this is not something I can legislate while I am appearing in the wonderful comedies of Judd Apatow. But when you say: "What do you want?", that is what I want.'
I feel, oddly, like cheering. Instead, I mention David Icke, and we have a bit of a laugh: Russell thinks David Icke is great - 'though he loses me when it comes to the lizards'. Anyhow, it turns out Russell's beliefs stem from Hare Krishna. He had an encounter with a swami in Soho Square and it spun his head around. Russell looked into the swami's eye and the world dissolved, and he became aware that everything is connected, atomically, and it's ludicrous to imagine we are separate from anything, when we are all just vibrations. 'I felt the absolute certainty that consciousness is in tune with enlightenment, and I could access it. In the same way I feel desire for a human, I felt desire for that; it was something that I wanted, and it kind of made me blush.'
Russell then spoils all of this floaty high-mindedness by announcing: 'I love fucking.' You're scared of being serious, I say, and he says, no, he is serious: 'I really do love fucking. And also I am stimulated hugely by attention and status, and that's not in keeping with what I just said, because those things are transitory, illusory and meaningless.'
And fun. 'Yes, but there's no point in swigging down anaesthetic. Miranda, I'm not talking to you from a monastery. After this, I'm going back to my house in Hampstead, which has a hot tub for damn good reasons and none of them spiritual! One time I was motivated by lust towards these women; now I'm motivated by love. I love them! I think I can make them feel better and I truly love them and it's not, like, aggressive - it's simplistic and pure and not, like, woooohaurgh.'
Did you mention this to the swami, I ask.
'Yes I did, and he said, "Do you take anything from these women?" And I was, like: "Yes."'
Their self-respect? Their money?
'Their jewels! Sometimes I take a nipple as a trophy! What else am I to make my nipple charm necklace of, hmm? Scotch mist? Would you recommend Scotch mist as an alternative, because I put it to you it's not good enough! And then I left.'
How to interview Russell without his mad flamboyance stealing the show? Let's take time out for a recap of his life. Born on 4 June 1975, in Grays, Essex, he was an awkward, unhappy child, obsessed with his mum, Barbara, to the extent of thinking they should get married. They had an intense, loving relationship, though a stressful one. They were skint, Barbara suffered cancer three times during her son's formative years, and when Russell was seven she hooked up with stepdad Colin, whom Russell hated. Russell's dad, Ron, had left when he was six months old. As a little boy, when Russell went round to visit, Ron let him watch Elvis films and porn while he 'diddled birds in the room next door'.
All this is in My Booky Wook, which also details Russell's teenage bulimia; the tutor who fiddled with him; his addictions to drugs and sex; the rehab he went through for both. And how, when he was 16, his dad took him to Thailand and immediately hired three prostitutes: two for Ron, one for Russell.
Russell partly attributes his crazy ambition to his dad, who played motivational tapes in the car. Ron also ignored Russell for much of the time, which must have something to do with his son's world-beating attention seeking. Their shared hobbies were sex and football, and they have recently been on good terms, as Ron appears on Russell's Ponderland DVD - Russell phones him up and gets him to colour-code his penis. However, when I mention his dad, Russell tells me they're not speaking at the moment. 'Of course I love him, but there's something I'm not at ease with in my relationship with him. I feel a lot of difficult things, but I recognise he's just a person trying his hardest.'
To me, these father-son problems, coupled with his claustrophobic devotion to his mum, must partly explain Russell's strange approach to masculinity and femininity. Despite foppish appearances, Russell works hard to be a stereotypical bloke. He's obsessed with women and football and, he says, 'through my sexuality and through performance, I've claimed an alpha masculinity that would have otherwise been inaccessible to me'.
He's proud of his Guardian football columns, partly because they've taught him the discipline of writing. He started off by ranting and getting someone else to write it down, but now he sits at a computer and bashes out 800 words like a proper hack. But he's also pleased that the column has 'fortified my relationship with football. My dad was good at football and I wasn't. For me it's riddled with ideas about spirituality, masculinity, fatherhood ...' His dad used to take him to West Ham matches and Russell found the atmosphere exciting but intimidating. Anyway, because of his column, Russell is now no longer nervous at Upton Park. He's accepted, as a famous fan. 'I like it - I feel I've been contextualised correctly.' Maybe now he's acknowledged as a football geezer, a true man, he can give up on all the porny sex and find a girlfriend. I advance my theory to Russell, which is that he's frightened of having a serious relationship with a woman because it will mean he doesn't love his mum best.
Russell thinks and says: 'I lived with just my mum until I was seven. And I think my formative idea of love was uniquely focused on her, so that necessarily I had to exclude from that notion the sexual act. So that now when it comes to reincorporating that, I struggle. I really want a partner, but I don't think I put out the right signals. My friends say I don't spend enough time with women who are challenging intellectually. And because I'm gadding about and wanting things immediately and chewing up flesh, I think some women recoil! Still,' he adds cheerily, 'in the absence of a relationship, perhaps I'll be more devoted to my madcap revolution!'
Aside from his madcap revolution - which may take some time - what does the future hold for Russell Brand? He might be off conquering America for the next few months, but he's scheduled to do a British stand-up tour early in 2009, and Ponderland is still running on Channel 4. Underneath all the recent fuss, the media was actually gunning for the BBC rather than Russell, but does that let him off the hook? His Radio 2 colleagues are very upset about Douglas having to leave. Maybe he'll settle in LA and become a guru. He's got the look, the desire for fame and sex. I just don't know if the USA can cope with all that love - the love Russell wants to give out, but also the vast, unrestrained universe of love that he requires just to exist.
There's an incident in his autobiography where an elderly neighbour, clearly trying to look after this strange little boy, spends time with Russell in his garden before nipping into his house. 'Don't stamp on the flowers,' he says before he goes in. Russell stamps on the flowers and the neighbour never talks to him again. I bring this up.
'Yes, if love comes with some kind of cost, I'll take loneliness!' he laughs. 'I wonder why I would do a thing like that, and I imagine it must have been because I didn't really feel stable or happy or have any trust in the adult world. I really try and be nice now. And I still do things where I'm rude and aggressive and use intelligence to belittle people and all sorts of things. But I'm always trying to monitor it, and I honestly think that I spend more time now laughing about my vanity and obsessions than imposing the consequences on others. And there are loads of things that I question, there are loads of things that I doubt. But I know I'm a good man, I know I'm in alignment with things that are beautiful, and this gives me a great deal of strength.'
Russell Brand's intentions are undoubtedly good. He wants to spread the love, to bring joy, to show people that they shouldn't be fettered by stupid rules if it doesn't make them happy. But good intentions aren't always enough. Nasty results can outweigh whatever niceness was meant. It's like the traditional 'Did you spill my pint?' argument. You may not have meant to, you might even have been leaning over to give me a hug and tell me I'm great. But the fact is that I'm left standing here, dripping, covered in beer.
• Russell Brand's Ponderland: Series One is released on DVD tomorrow
Brand on the run
Russell Brand is no stranger to controversy. But nothing prepared him for 'Sachsgate'
Miranda Sawyer
The Observer,
Sunday November 9 2008[/align]
Three weeks ago, I interviewed Russell Brand. Afterwards I trotted home thinking, 'That was good fun: entertaining, a bit bizarre, a stimulating way to spend an hour.' A few days later, the row about Andrew Sachs blew up. Within a week, Russell had resigned from Radio 2, as had the station's head, Lesley Douglas, Jonathan Ross had been suspended, and the BBC was dissolving - yet again - into hopeless self-flagellation. And my cosy chat with Russell about his new book and DVD seemed as relevant as rabies.
Now Russell has fled to LA; over there for a couple of film roles and to record a stand-up show. He isn't giving interviews, but he calls me from his hotel to explain himself, sounding understandably quieter than when we first talked. 'I don't want to appear in any way cavalier,' he says, which is funny coming from someone with his hairdo.
So, what happened?
'Well, it wasn't that we went: "Let's ring Andrew Sachs and boast about having sex with his granddaughter",' he says. 'It was: "Oh, he's not there, let's just leave a message" and then: "Oh, look what we've done now." There was no malicious intent - it was like an evolving, rolling thing. If you listen, I say sorry more than I say anything offensive - the message is mostly an apology. In fact, it's the acknowledgment of how wrong it was that is the source of the comedy. What's difficult is that it was completely devoid of malice, and there's been a retrospective application of cruelty and intention to cause offence.'
Russell spoke about the sequence of events that led to the prerecorded show being edited but still being broadcast, saying it was his responsibility. 'I don't think this is a situation where I'd go: "Oh my god, why didn't you protect me from myself, Nic Philps [his producer]?"' He acknowledged that big egos like his and Ross's can be hard to keep under control and that part of the fuss was because Ross earns so much money. He expressed regret over Douglas and Sachs (though he said nothing about Georgina Baillie, Sachs's granddaughter). What he wouldn't take responsibility for was the furore.
'I think what I do appeals to lots of people, younger and older, and certainly what it is, is unrestrained, unbridled and authentic. And on this occasion it offended Andrew Sachs and I feel bad about that and he's accepted my apology. But how that has been subsequently conveyed, which is as a vindictive act, then I didn't do the vindictive act. I did the daft thing, and that I take responsibility for. How it's been repackaged ... I'm not at all responsible for that.'
Will you change because of this?
'I can't let it change what I do. If you're asking me to inhibit what is spontaneous and good about my performance, then I can't do that. I don't think anyone who loves what I do, who will have listened to the actual thing and not complained ... I don't think they'll be affected by it. And then the people who don't like me will just think: "Well, this is what we expected." So despite how huge the fuss is, essentially it's meaningless.'
I wonder. Meaningless, probably, for Russell. He has plenty of other projects on the go: including movies (with Judd Apatow and Oliver Stone), his Guardian football columns, now collected into a book, and his Channel 4 Ponderland show. In February, Comedy Central will screen an hour of his stand-up, to coincide with the US launch of his autobiography. Russell's immediate plan is to conquer America - and not having a BBC radio programme won't hinder that.
But Ross's reputation has definitely suffered - he was so pathetically excited about Russell's sex life - and Douglas has lost her job, leaving Radio 2 to retreat back into golf-club-and-cardigan-land. The BBC will have to do something about how much it pays its big stars. And if Sachs held any wafty illusions about his granddaughter (and most grandparents do), then they've been well and truly shattered.
Still. Now that the fuss has begun to die down, perhaps us Russell Brand fans will be allowed to speak up. My name is Miranda Sawyer and I think Russell Brand is funny. I loved his spontaneous, anarchic radio show. I enjoy his filthy, off-the-hook stand-up. His autobiography, My Booky Wook, was impossible to read without laughing out loud. Naturally, I don't think he should spend his time leaving rude messages on people's answer machines, but that is not all he does.
For a start, he enlivens the world with his ludicrous dress sense. For our original, pre-Sachsgate interview, he arrived dressed entirely in black - jacket, leggings, bovver boots and, yes, skirt - accessorised with diamanté belts, clunking chains and enormo shades. Much taller, hairier and better-looking than I expected: a young George Best let loose in the Addams Family dressing-up box.
'Do you like my leggings?' he asks archly, turning an ankle. 'I think the ruching, strangely, stops them from being too feminine. It's not often you can say that about ruching. Yes, they are ladies' trousers.'
We are in a large, tastefully furnished room next to the photo studio. Russell is appreciative. 'Now that I know this room is a possibility, then next time I have an interview it will have to be somewhere at least as good. It'll have to be in a ballroom with a Jacuzzi. And a hand maiden! Don't give me anything worse! The privilege has become the standard!'
Though he seemed slightly shy when he first arrived, it doesn't take much for Russell to get boisterous. Show him the smallest twig of a joke and he snatches it like a mad dog, running away with it as far as he can. It's hard to stop him, because what do you say? Russell's confidence comes from knowing himself inside out. There's no point in taking the mickey out of him for being an attention-seeking sex maniac, nor in pointing out he's an ex-junkie, a drama-school flunk, a perfumed ponce from Essex who fancies himself despite his ludicrous hair. He knows all this. He makes jokes about it. Plus, he's been in NA since December 2002 and so does that tedious 12 Steps thing of spending hours analysing himself and his actions.
'I have a propensity for self-involvement. I can be very vain and I can be selfish and I'm totally aware of that,' he says, settling himself into the leather sofa. 'And I work on it literally on a daily basis, as part of my recovery from drugs and alcohol. I'm like: "Oh no, that was a selfish thing to say. Oh no, I apologise, let me make amends." So that is part of my life.'
All of which takes on a different weight after he's spent a week saying sorry to one and all. Anyhow, this navel gazing means interviewing Russell is peculiar. Every question you ask him about himself, he's already considered. More, he's deconstructed it, put it back together, located an appropriate intellectual quote and tried to solve whichever trait of his personality made him act like that in the first place. He's very clever and uses language with panache, but his mind is less a steel trap, more a pin-ball machine when all the bonus balls are released at once. Exhilarating, but exhausting.
When I talk to him about his recent hosting of the VMAs (MTV Video Music Awards), for instance, where he drew flak for teasing the Jonas Brothers about their virginity and describing George Bush as that 'retarded cowboy feller', Russell launches into a reply which, when I transcribe it, is more than 1,500 words long. To summarise: at the actual awards, he went down better than he'd expected, no matter what happened afterwards. He realises the office of president is talismanic to Americans, even to liberal ones; he loves America, and understands it's going through a necessary crisis vis-à-vis race; and he thinks it's cynical to market a teenage boy band as virgins. 'There's that Michel Foucault idea of sublimating sexuality, so promoting virginity is another way of putting sexuality at the forefront of popular culture. Like, "They don't have sex." "What? They don't have sex?" It's hokey balderdash.' See? Clever.
However, what's more interesting is how he starts his answer, which is with this funny/serious little speech. 'I'm a very sensitive person,' he says, 'so I don't like to read or hear anything negative about myself, under any circumstances at all. To the point where I'm a difficult actor to direct, because if the director says anything other than, "That was brilliant, amazing - how do you think of these ideas? Why, you're so clever and you're handsome ..." I'm like: "Oh fine, fuck you!" I'd feel hurt, but I'd also think, "Leave me alone, I'm trying my hardest!"'
The problem for him, he says, is he only ever Googles his own name, so, as he's always getting into trouble, he reads a lot about how horrible everyone thinks he is, and gets upset. Not that it stops him. His career trajectory is, all too often, get hired, get cocky, get sacked. Which is pretty much what happened last week, as well as at XFM (for reading out porn), during a Steve Coogan film (for using prostitutes) and at MTV (for turning up the day after 9/11 dressed as Osama Bin Laden and introducing his heroin dealer to Kylie Minogue).
Still, he's on a real work mission at the moment. After his acting success in last year's Forgetting Sarah Marshall and hosting the VMAs, America is very interested. 'People ask me: "Do you want to be a niche, avant-garde, Bill Hicks kind of comedian, or do you want to make $100m movies?" And I want to be able to do what I want artistically, in stand-up, writing and films, and for that you have to be able to access a huge number of people. You have to be huge. By 2011, Miranda, I want to be able to host not only the VMA awards, but an awards ceremony of my own devising.'
So you're going for world domination?
'Yes. That is what I will do,' says Russell. 'In an Edmund Hillary way, because it's there. What am I gonna stop for? What would stop me? I'll just carry on until there's nothing left.'
The truly weird aspect to Russell's desire for fame, however, is why he wants it. I assumed he was just a narcissist who'd like the extra attention, but there's something else behind his ambition. What Russell wants, he tells me, quite seriously, 'is to restructure, re-evaluate and change every single facet of our society to maximise the common good for as many people as possible'.
What, like Stalin, I ask. He launches into another rattle.
'The thing is, Miranda, that through circumstance or design, I have aligned my success with some quite powerful feelings. And that is now the focus of my life. The material world is a transitory illusion, and if it is, why organise your life around the systems that it imposes? Particularly if those systems have negative consequences for huge numbers of people, and the planet itself. I wonder if there are ways that that can change; I wonder if there are elements in the way that the world is organised that are arbitrary and not absolute and could be altered? And I don't mean normal things like, let's wear a ribbon - I mean the entire economic structure of the planet or the way we look at religion.
'And I'm more than aware that the chap off of Big Brother's Big Mouth is unlikely to single-handedly augment an entirely new global culture. I am quite aware that this is not something I can legislate while I am appearing in the wonderful comedies of Judd Apatow. But when you say: "What do you want?", that is what I want.'
I feel, oddly, like cheering. Instead, I mention David Icke, and we have a bit of a laugh: Russell thinks David Icke is great - 'though he loses me when it comes to the lizards'. Anyhow, it turns out Russell's beliefs stem from Hare Krishna. He had an encounter with a swami in Soho Square and it spun his head around. Russell looked into the swami's eye and the world dissolved, and he became aware that everything is connected, atomically, and it's ludicrous to imagine we are separate from anything, when we are all just vibrations. 'I felt the absolute certainty that consciousness is in tune with enlightenment, and I could access it. In the same way I feel desire for a human, I felt desire for that; it was something that I wanted, and it kind of made me blush.'
Russell then spoils all of this floaty high-mindedness by announcing: 'I love fucking.' You're scared of being serious, I say, and he says, no, he is serious: 'I really do love fucking. And also I am stimulated hugely by attention and status, and that's not in keeping with what I just said, because those things are transitory, illusory and meaningless.'
And fun. 'Yes, but there's no point in swigging down anaesthetic. Miranda, I'm not talking to you from a monastery. After this, I'm going back to my house in Hampstead, which has a hot tub for damn good reasons and none of them spiritual! One time I was motivated by lust towards these women; now I'm motivated by love. I love them! I think I can make them feel better and I truly love them and it's not, like, aggressive - it's simplistic and pure and not, like, woooohaurgh.'
Did you mention this to the swami, I ask.
'Yes I did, and he said, "Do you take anything from these women?" And I was, like: "Yes."'
Their self-respect? Their money?
'Their jewels! Sometimes I take a nipple as a trophy! What else am I to make my nipple charm necklace of, hmm? Scotch mist? Would you recommend Scotch mist as an alternative, because I put it to you it's not good enough! And then I left.'
How to interview Russell without his mad flamboyance stealing the show? Let's take time out for a recap of his life. Born on 4 June 1975, in Grays, Essex, he was an awkward, unhappy child, obsessed with his mum, Barbara, to the extent of thinking they should get married. They had an intense, loving relationship, though a stressful one. They were skint, Barbara suffered cancer three times during her son's formative years, and when Russell was seven she hooked up with stepdad Colin, whom Russell hated. Russell's dad, Ron, had left when he was six months old. As a little boy, when Russell went round to visit, Ron let him watch Elvis films and porn while he 'diddled birds in the room next door'.
All this is in My Booky Wook, which also details Russell's teenage bulimia; the tutor who fiddled with him; his addictions to drugs and sex; the rehab he went through for both. And how, when he was 16, his dad took him to Thailand and immediately hired three prostitutes: two for Ron, one for Russell.
Russell partly attributes his crazy ambition to his dad, who played motivational tapes in the car. Ron also ignored Russell for much of the time, which must have something to do with his son's world-beating attention seeking. Their shared hobbies were sex and football, and they have recently been on good terms, as Ron appears on Russell's Ponderland DVD - Russell phones him up and gets him to colour-code his penis. However, when I mention his dad, Russell tells me they're not speaking at the moment. 'Of course I love him, but there's something I'm not at ease with in my relationship with him. I feel a lot of difficult things, but I recognise he's just a person trying his hardest.'
To me, these father-son problems, coupled with his claustrophobic devotion to his mum, must partly explain Russell's strange approach to masculinity and femininity. Despite foppish appearances, Russell works hard to be a stereotypical bloke. He's obsessed with women and football and, he says, 'through my sexuality and through performance, I've claimed an alpha masculinity that would have otherwise been inaccessible to me'.
He's proud of his Guardian football columns, partly because they've taught him the discipline of writing. He started off by ranting and getting someone else to write it down, but now he sits at a computer and bashes out 800 words like a proper hack. But he's also pleased that the column has 'fortified my relationship with football. My dad was good at football and I wasn't. For me it's riddled with ideas about spirituality, masculinity, fatherhood ...' His dad used to take him to West Ham matches and Russell found the atmosphere exciting but intimidating. Anyway, because of his column, Russell is now no longer nervous at Upton Park. He's accepted, as a famous fan. 'I like it - I feel I've been contextualised correctly.' Maybe now he's acknowledged as a football geezer, a true man, he can give up on all the porny sex and find a girlfriend. I advance my theory to Russell, which is that he's frightened of having a serious relationship with a woman because it will mean he doesn't love his mum best.
Russell thinks and says: 'I lived with just my mum until I was seven. And I think my formative idea of love was uniquely focused on her, so that necessarily I had to exclude from that notion the sexual act. So that now when it comes to reincorporating that, I struggle. I really want a partner, but I don't think I put out the right signals. My friends say I don't spend enough time with women who are challenging intellectually. And because I'm gadding about and wanting things immediately and chewing up flesh, I think some women recoil! Still,' he adds cheerily, 'in the absence of a relationship, perhaps I'll be more devoted to my madcap revolution!'
Aside from his madcap revolution - which may take some time - what does the future hold for Russell Brand? He might be off conquering America for the next few months, but he's scheduled to do a British stand-up tour early in 2009, and Ponderland is still running on Channel 4. Underneath all the recent fuss, the media was actually gunning for the BBC rather than Russell, but does that let him off the hook? His Radio 2 colleagues are very upset about Douglas having to leave. Maybe he'll settle in LA and become a guru. He's got the look, the desire for fame and sex. I just don't know if the USA can cope with all that love - the love Russell wants to give out, but also the vast, unrestrained universe of love that he requires just to exist.
There's an incident in his autobiography where an elderly neighbour, clearly trying to look after this strange little boy, spends time with Russell in his garden before nipping into his house. 'Don't stamp on the flowers,' he says before he goes in. Russell stamps on the flowers and the neighbour never talks to him again. I bring this up.
'Yes, if love comes with some kind of cost, I'll take loneliness!' he laughs. 'I wonder why I would do a thing like that, and I imagine it must have been because I didn't really feel stable or happy or have any trust in the adult world. I really try and be nice now. And I still do things where I'm rude and aggressive and use intelligence to belittle people and all sorts of things. But I'm always trying to monitor it, and I honestly think that I spend more time now laughing about my vanity and obsessions than imposing the consequences on others. And there are loads of things that I question, there are loads of things that I doubt. But I know I'm a good man, I know I'm in alignment with things that are beautiful, and this gives me a great deal of strength.'
Russell Brand's intentions are undoubtedly good. He wants to spread the love, to bring joy, to show people that they shouldn't be fettered by stupid rules if it doesn't make them happy. But good intentions aren't always enough. Nasty results can outweigh whatever niceness was meant. It's like the traditional 'Did you spill my pint?' argument. You may not have meant to, you might even have been leaning over to give me a hug and tell me I'm great. But the fact is that I'm left standing here, dripping, covered in beer.
• Russell Brand's Ponderland: Series One is released on DVD tomorrow
[web]https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7748483.stm[/web]
What's the betting her wages are at least double what she got at the BBC? haha, good on her
What's the betting her wages are at least double what she got at the BBC? haha, good on her
[web]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/ar ... comic.html[/web]
Reading the +/- on the comments it seems that the Brand fans are fighting back! haha
Reading the +/- on the comments it seems that the Brand fans are fighting back! haha
[align=center]
Wagster Russell Brand bounces back - with Sachs on the brain
Dominic Cavendish
Jan 14, 2009[/align]
Is he repentant? Is he heck! Russell Brand is back in Blighty, trialling his new stand-up show at the Soho Theatre, prior to going out on a major UK tour from this weekend. His partner in notoriety, Jonathan Ross, whose post-suspension reappearance on our screens is scheduled for next Friday, will reportedly make an apology for his part in the Sachsgate 'affair' - and is then expected to 'move on' - penance done, contrition shown, lesson completely learnt.
Brand, on the other hand, has no equivalent restraints on that motor-mouth of his. He's got plenty to say on the subject, an audience willing to hang on his every word (and pay a fortune on E-bay for the privilege if need be), and no BBC breathing down his neck. Although the material he's airing this week is billed very much as work-in-progress, and is being tried out in an atmosphere of relative secrecy (punters are required to hand over their mobile-phones before entering the auditorium), it's fair to say that unless he rips up nine-tenths of what he has written, this is very much Brand's resume of how that story played out on his side of the furore.
He has a considered laugh at the expense of his own recklessness and vanity, at the hysterical media response and overblown outpourings of public venom - and, unsurprisingly, reserves special contempt for the Daily Mail. He also makes a few serious points en route about misrepresentation and a distorted news values culture - but only a few. The man's a comedian to the bones - and he seizes on the whole episode as a means to one principal, and unprincipled, end: laughter.
I'll file a proper full-length review in due course, once Brand has had a chance to get in his stride, but by way of whetting your appetite for a comeback that is bound to dominate acres of newsprint next week, here's a sneak preview of what he gets up to. He begins with a sight-gag, raising a little placard bearing the words 'I apologise', as if that's the only reference to the incident he's going to make. That's followed, by 'Wow - that was mental!', and more bewildered exclamations to that effect. 'I was just mucking about' he insists - stressing that what he did wasn't 'on purpose'. 'It was inevitable that I would sleep with some sitcom star's grand-daughter,' he proclaims, riffing on the idea of getting into a similar spot of bother with the grand-daughter of Blackadder's Tony Robinson. He's got a TV on stage with him, enabling him to relay choice bits of footage, including shots of Guy Fawkes night effigies of himself and Ross being exploded and the moment when his resignation made headline news.
He finds a moment to reflect on the fate of the Russell Brand lookalike, Joe Davis, whose bookings are down; the Andrew Sachs saga, he reads from a report, has 'claimed another victim'. 'Claimed another victim!' the wild-haired star shrieks, all mock-indignant and camp cockney: 'I'm not Harold Shipman!'
At times, it's as if the old anarchic spirit of that addictive Radio 2 show of his has returned - Brand bouncing around on staging proclaiming 'I am the news' in time to the theme-tune from ITV's News at Ten. 'I look like a hostage there,' he jokes when images of his public apology flash up. No one, he complains, appreciated the genius of his improvised lyrics when he left his tongue-in-cheek apology on Andrew Sachs' answerphone, his rhyming of 'menstrual' with 'consensual', for instance.
There are more than a few digs at his own hubris, though - 'Two idiots dancing towards the canyon' is how he sums up himself and Ross as they gaily carried on cracking gags, oblivious to the uproar they'd cause. His life has always been a succession of mad cock-ups, he figures.'Will it always be like this?' he asked his mum. 'It will', she replied, sagely. There's a genuine touch of hurt at the nastiness directed at him. And he reminds us that, without fame, his whole act would merely be suggestive of mental illness: 'When you use mental illness as your job you end up with that..' - he points back at the screen.
These are only glimpses of self-criticism, though: 'Shamed Russell Brand...' he exclaims, reading in withering detail from a Daily Mail report. 'I'm not shamed, I'm brilliant.' You have been warned: he's back, as large as life, ego as big as ever.
Lock up your grand-daughters.
--------------
sounds like it will be a fine show
Wagster Russell Brand bounces back - with Sachs on the brain
Dominic Cavendish
Jan 14, 2009[/align]
Is he repentant? Is he heck! Russell Brand is back in Blighty, trialling his new stand-up show at the Soho Theatre, prior to going out on a major UK tour from this weekend. His partner in notoriety, Jonathan Ross, whose post-suspension reappearance on our screens is scheduled for next Friday, will reportedly make an apology for his part in the Sachsgate 'affair' - and is then expected to 'move on' - penance done, contrition shown, lesson completely learnt.
Brand, on the other hand, has no equivalent restraints on that motor-mouth of his. He's got plenty to say on the subject, an audience willing to hang on his every word (and pay a fortune on E-bay for the privilege if need be), and no BBC breathing down his neck. Although the material he's airing this week is billed very much as work-in-progress, and is being tried out in an atmosphere of relative secrecy (punters are required to hand over their mobile-phones before entering the auditorium), it's fair to say that unless he rips up nine-tenths of what he has written, this is very much Brand's resume of how that story played out on his side of the furore.
He has a considered laugh at the expense of his own recklessness and vanity, at the hysterical media response and overblown outpourings of public venom - and, unsurprisingly, reserves special contempt for the Daily Mail. He also makes a few serious points en route about misrepresentation and a distorted news values culture - but only a few. The man's a comedian to the bones - and he seizes on the whole episode as a means to one principal, and unprincipled, end: laughter.
I'll file a proper full-length review in due course, once Brand has had a chance to get in his stride, but by way of whetting your appetite for a comeback that is bound to dominate acres of newsprint next week, here's a sneak preview of what he gets up to. He begins with a sight-gag, raising a little placard bearing the words 'I apologise', as if that's the only reference to the incident he's going to make. That's followed, by 'Wow - that was mental!', and more bewildered exclamations to that effect. 'I was just mucking about' he insists - stressing that what he did wasn't 'on purpose'. 'It was inevitable that I would sleep with some sitcom star's grand-daughter,' he proclaims, riffing on the idea of getting into a similar spot of bother with the grand-daughter of Blackadder's Tony Robinson. He's got a TV on stage with him, enabling him to relay choice bits of footage, including shots of Guy Fawkes night effigies of himself and Ross being exploded and the moment when his resignation made headline news.
He finds a moment to reflect on the fate of the Russell Brand lookalike, Joe Davis, whose bookings are down; the Andrew Sachs saga, he reads from a report, has 'claimed another victim'. 'Claimed another victim!' the wild-haired star shrieks, all mock-indignant and camp cockney: 'I'm not Harold Shipman!'
At times, it's as if the old anarchic spirit of that addictive Radio 2 show of his has returned - Brand bouncing around on staging proclaiming 'I am the news' in time to the theme-tune from ITV's News at Ten. 'I look like a hostage there,' he jokes when images of his public apology flash up. No one, he complains, appreciated the genius of his improvised lyrics when he left his tongue-in-cheek apology on Andrew Sachs' answerphone, his rhyming of 'menstrual' with 'consensual', for instance.
There are more than a few digs at his own hubris, though - 'Two idiots dancing towards the canyon' is how he sums up himself and Ross as they gaily carried on cracking gags, oblivious to the uproar they'd cause. His life has always been a succession of mad cock-ups, he figures.'Will it always be like this?' he asked his mum. 'It will', she replied, sagely. There's a genuine touch of hurt at the nastiness directed at him. And he reminds us that, without fame, his whole act would merely be suggestive of mental illness: 'When you use mental illness as your job you end up with that..' - he points back at the screen.
These are only glimpses of self-criticism, though: 'Shamed Russell Brand...' he exclaims, reading in withering detail from a Daily Mail report. 'I'm not shamed, I'm brilliant.' You have been warned: he's back, as large as life, ego as big as ever.
Lock up your grand-daughters.
--------------
sounds like it will be a fine show
[align=center]Russell Brand, Bloomsbury Theatre, London
No apology, and not all that many laughs either
Julian Hall
Monday, 19 January 2009
www.independent.co.uk[/align]
Love means never having to say you're sorry, and since Russell Brand is much in love, with himself, no apology was had when finally he strutted on stage for his first big appearance since the Andrew Sachs scandal.
It was an hour after the official start time when a montage of news clips about the affair heralded the appearance of the man who boasts of having carnal knowledge of Sachs's granddaughter. He described the incident involving himself and the soon-to-be rehabilitated Jonathan Ross as "two idiots dancing towards a canyon". There are people out there who would use far harsher words about two highly paid performers leaving obscene messages on an elderly man's telephone but they were not in London's Bloomsbury Theatre. The theatre had taken the precaution of using a fan mail listing to fill the seats.
Brand pushed through this preview of the live show that he plans to take on tour in 80 minutes – all in one go – after support from "Russell's KY jelly" and the poet Mr G.
Resembling what the Greek god Pan might have looked like if he had been into Goth bands, the jaunty Brand soon removed a leather jerkin to reveal long johns-cum-skirt top, giving him more freedom to revel in his infamy. "I am the news!" he sang to the theme of News at Ten, leaping to celebrate topping the current affairs agenda, one he contends was deliberately manipulated to bury credit-crunch stories. Earlier, he admitted that "what to wear" was one of the most trying decisions he had to make in the face of the media encampment outside his Hampstead home. Being put on the sex offenders register or sent to Afghanistan, as some of the angry mob suggested at the time, were punishments that did not fit the crime.
While the scandal is not all that is on offer, it is the prime cut of the evening. Elsewhere, familiar material about giving money to homeless people being the equivalent of throwing money into a wishing well combines with tales based on the dislocation of communication. The puffed-up story of an argument with a Jamaican taxi driver in which Brand adopts an exaggerated Cockney accent seems more about showcasing his acting ability than his comedic prowess.
The other large set piece of the evening is Brand's stateside experience of hosting the MTV Video Music Awards last year, where he offended some viewers by telling the audience to vote for Barack Obama and called George Bush a "retarded cowboy fella". He gives his Bloomsbury audience the benefit of the links he ditched after the Bush remark flopped and reads out some of the death threats he received. This portion of his show feels somewhat lazy.
I worry that Brand's catchphrase from his last tour, "my life is essentially a string of embarrassing and shameful incidents punctuated only by telling people about the embarrassing and shameful incidents," says too much about the limitations of his stand up. His treatise on sex is all but reduced to giving sex tips, an approach as formulaic and as one dimensional as reading out death threats.
-------------------
I take it from this review that Mr Hall thinks he deserves an apology for something that happened to someone else... brilliant logic!
No apology, and not all that many laughs either
Julian Hall
Monday, 19 January 2009
www.independent.co.uk[/align]
Love means never having to say you're sorry, and since Russell Brand is much in love, with himself, no apology was had when finally he strutted on stage for his first big appearance since the Andrew Sachs scandal.
It was an hour after the official start time when a montage of news clips about the affair heralded the appearance of the man who boasts of having carnal knowledge of Sachs's granddaughter. He described the incident involving himself and the soon-to-be rehabilitated Jonathan Ross as "two idiots dancing towards a canyon". There are people out there who would use far harsher words about two highly paid performers leaving obscene messages on an elderly man's telephone but they were not in London's Bloomsbury Theatre. The theatre had taken the precaution of using a fan mail listing to fill the seats.
Brand pushed through this preview of the live show that he plans to take on tour in 80 minutes – all in one go – after support from "Russell's KY jelly" and the poet Mr G.
Resembling what the Greek god Pan might have looked like if he had been into Goth bands, the jaunty Brand soon removed a leather jerkin to reveal long johns-cum-skirt top, giving him more freedom to revel in his infamy. "I am the news!" he sang to the theme of News at Ten, leaping to celebrate topping the current affairs agenda, one he contends was deliberately manipulated to bury credit-crunch stories. Earlier, he admitted that "what to wear" was one of the most trying decisions he had to make in the face of the media encampment outside his Hampstead home. Being put on the sex offenders register or sent to Afghanistan, as some of the angry mob suggested at the time, were punishments that did not fit the crime.
While the scandal is not all that is on offer, it is the prime cut of the evening. Elsewhere, familiar material about giving money to homeless people being the equivalent of throwing money into a wishing well combines with tales based on the dislocation of communication. The puffed-up story of an argument with a Jamaican taxi driver in which Brand adopts an exaggerated Cockney accent seems more about showcasing his acting ability than his comedic prowess.
The other large set piece of the evening is Brand's stateside experience of hosting the MTV Video Music Awards last year, where he offended some viewers by telling the audience to vote for Barack Obama and called George Bush a "retarded cowboy fella". He gives his Bloomsbury audience the benefit of the links he ditched after the Bush remark flopped and reads out some of the death threats he received. This portion of his show feels somewhat lazy.
I worry that Brand's catchphrase from his last tour, "my life is essentially a string of embarrassing and shameful incidents punctuated only by telling people about the embarrassing and shameful incidents," says too much about the limitations of his stand up. His treatise on sex is all but reduced to giving sex tips, an approach as formulaic and as one dimensional as reading out death threats.
-------------------
I take it from this review that Mr Hall thinks he deserves an apology for something that happened to someone else... brilliant logic!
[align=center][img]https://quietus_production.s3.amazonaws.com/images/articles/1052/morrisey_-_brand_still_1233140566_crop_500x380.jpg[/img]
Russell Brand Interviews Morrissey On New Album
John Doran , January 28th, 2009 [/align]
Despite his re-engorged popularity Morrissey is what you might call 'a bit of a handful' in PR terms, so what better way of allowing him to hit back at critics than including a filmed interview as part of the deluxe edition of his new album Years Of Refusal? And who is grilling the bequiffed god of intro-pop? Jeremy Paxman? Noam Chomsky? Tomas de Torquemada? No. It's bearded piratical sex case Russell Brand, the man who can't spell 'book'.
To be fair to the OAP upsetter - when he's not on the telly or trying to get teenage Top Shop goths into bed he's a pretty good writer and funny to boot. Just don't expect Morrissey's dear friend to ask him any awkward questions. His label Polydor have the following to say: "The Deluxe edition of the album will feature a DVD with exclusive content including Wrestle with Russell, a revealing 20 minute filmed interview with Russell Brand recorded at the comedian’s home in LA in November ’08. The friends talk candidly about music, lyrics, image, fame and hair in a piece that is both serious and highly entertaining. Morrissey’s performances of 'That’s How People Grow Up' from Friday Night with Jonathan Ross and 'All You Need Is Me' from Later With Jools Holland will also feature, as will the video promo for the single 'All You Need Is Me'. iTunes have an exclusive digital booklet for those who purchase the standard album version via their site."
New studio album Years of Refusal released February 16 preceded by single 'I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris' on February 9.
--------------------
I'm sure this will be an excellent feature - here's hoping any Morrissey fans out there have the ability to get the daffodils out of their arses and upload it!
Russell Brand Interviews Morrissey On New Album
John Doran , January 28th, 2009 [/align]
Despite his re-engorged popularity Morrissey is what you might call 'a bit of a handful' in PR terms, so what better way of allowing him to hit back at critics than including a filmed interview as part of the deluxe edition of his new album Years Of Refusal? And who is grilling the bequiffed god of intro-pop? Jeremy Paxman? Noam Chomsky? Tomas de Torquemada? No. It's bearded piratical sex case Russell Brand, the man who can't spell 'book'.
To be fair to the OAP upsetter - when he's not on the telly or trying to get teenage Top Shop goths into bed he's a pretty good writer and funny to boot. Just don't expect Morrissey's dear friend to ask him any awkward questions. His label Polydor have the following to say: "The Deluxe edition of the album will feature a DVD with exclusive content including Wrestle with Russell, a revealing 20 minute filmed interview with Russell Brand recorded at the comedian’s home in LA in November ’08. The friends talk candidly about music, lyrics, image, fame and hair in a piece that is both serious and highly entertaining. Morrissey’s performances of 'That’s How People Grow Up' from Friday Night with Jonathan Ross and 'All You Need Is Me' from Later With Jools Holland will also feature, as will the video promo for the single 'All You Need Is Me'. iTunes have an exclusive digital booklet for those who purchase the standard album version via their site."
New studio album Years of Refusal released February 16 preceded by single 'I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris' on February 9.
--------------------
I'm sure this will be an excellent feature - here's hoping any Morrissey fans out there have the ability to get the daffodils out of their arses and upload it!
Last edited by faceless on Tue Jan 27, 2015 3:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
[align=center]<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/baMW9t-Ui0U" frameborder="0"></iframe>
Russell Brand Descends on COMEDY CENTRAL in his First-Ever COMEDY CENTRAL Original Stand-Up Special
'Russell Brand in New York City', Sunday, March 8 at 10:00 P.M.*
February 18, 2009 [/align]
From the theatre at El Museo Del Barrio in New York City comes the latest COMEDY CENTRAL stand-up special featuring the winner of "Best Live Stand-up" at the 2008 British Comedy Awards, comedian, actor and author Russell Brand. From Brand's scene-stealing performances in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and Adam Sandler's "Bedtime Stories" to hosting the incredibly successful "2008 MTV Music Awards" and his run of sold-out shows at the Montreal Just for Laughs comedyfestival, Brand has taken the United States by storm. "Russell Brand in New York City" is a truly original, witty and gritty hour of stand-up viewers won't want to miss!
Next, Brand will be seen in Julie Taymor's "The Tempest" and in May 2009, he will begin production on "Get Him To The Greek," a new Judd Apatow-produced comedy, in which Brand reprises his role as Aldous Snow, when the once-sober rock star falls off the wagon before a major gig. Brand's much anticipated award-winning and bestselling biography, "My Booky Wook" will finally be released in the United States on Tuesday, March 10.
"Russell Brand in New York City" was executive produced by Jesse Ignjatovic.
-------------------
Should be a larfff.
Russell Brand Descends on COMEDY CENTRAL in his First-Ever COMEDY CENTRAL Original Stand-Up Special
'Russell Brand in New York City', Sunday, March 8 at 10:00 P.M.*
February 18, 2009 [/align]
From the theatre at El Museo Del Barrio in New York City comes the latest COMEDY CENTRAL stand-up special featuring the winner of "Best Live Stand-up" at the 2008 British Comedy Awards, comedian, actor and author Russell Brand. From Brand's scene-stealing performances in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and Adam Sandler's "Bedtime Stories" to hosting the incredibly successful "2008 MTV Music Awards" and his run of sold-out shows at the Montreal Just for Laughs comedyfestival, Brand has taken the United States by storm. "Russell Brand in New York City" is a truly original, witty and gritty hour of stand-up viewers won't want to miss!
Next, Brand will be seen in Julie Taymor's "The Tempest" and in May 2009, he will begin production on "Get Him To The Greek," a new Judd Apatow-produced comedy, in which Brand reprises his role as Aldous Snow, when the once-sober rock star falls off the wagon before a major gig. Brand's much anticipated award-winning and bestselling biography, "My Booky Wook" will finally be released in the United States on Tuesday, March 10.
"Russell Brand in New York City" was executive produced by Jesse Ignjatovic.
-------------------
Should be a larfff.
Last edited by faceless on Tue Jan 27, 2015 3:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
[align=center]Russell Brand Confirms His Radio Return With Noel Gallagher
Comedian reveals news on his Twitter account.[/align]
Noel Gallagher is set to host a one-off radio show on football alongside Russell Brand. The Oasis mainman, and winner of the Best Blog award at last week's Shockwaves NME Awards 2009 (February 25), featured as a regular guest on Brand's old Radio 2 show.
Brand revealed the news over his Twitter account, writing: "It's true, myself and Britain's favourite swearer are doing a radio special on football. Let's hope Noel doesn't get me in trouble/twouble. Me and Gallagher will turn Talksport into the fulcrum of the revolution.If we can just get Wossy [Jonathan Ross] to come on as a guest a new dawn will rise."
Internetrumourmill reports -
"Brand, who resigned from Radio 2 last October the middle of the Sachsgate furore, is understood to be in the advanced stages of negotiations with the UTV-owned network about the show.
Details of the new programme are being kept under wraps, with only three TalkSport executives understood to be involved in the talks. However, an announcement could be made this week for what promises to be a weekly show, one station source said."
------------
that's quite a coup for talkSPORT!
Comedian reveals news on his Twitter account.[/align]
Noel Gallagher is set to host a one-off radio show on football alongside Russell Brand. The Oasis mainman, and winner of the Best Blog award at last week's Shockwaves NME Awards 2009 (February 25), featured as a regular guest on Brand's old Radio 2 show.
Brand revealed the news over his Twitter account, writing: "It's true, myself and Britain's favourite swearer are doing a radio special on football. Let's hope Noel doesn't get me in trouble/twouble. Me and Gallagher will turn Talksport into the fulcrum of the revolution.If we can just get Wossy [Jonathan Ross] to come on as a guest a new dawn will rise."
Internetrumourmill reports -
"Brand, who resigned from Radio 2 last October the middle of the Sachsgate furore, is understood to be in the advanced stages of negotiations with the UTV-owned network about the show.
Details of the new programme are being kept under wraps, with only three TalkSport executives understood to be involved in the talks. However, an announcement could be made this week for what promises to be a weekly show, one station source said."
------------
that's quite a coup for talkSPORT!
Last edited by faceless on Tue Jan 27, 2015 3:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
[align=center]
Russell Brand: interview
He says he's vain, a sex addict and an egocentric ex-junkie. Time Out gets to the bottom of Russell Brand's obsession with poo, his self-destruction, the price of fame and what really happened with Sachsgate
By Tim Arthur.
Photography Ellis Parrinder
Mar 31 2009
timeout.com[/align]
Russell Brand crosses the corridor from his room in an exquisite luxury hotel in the middle of Dartmoor and looks around thoughtfully at the smart suite in front of him. ‘Is this where we’re doing the interview?’ I nod. ‘I like it in here. It’s calm. In fact I might do a poo in here. Tom, would you fetch my wipes?’ This is to his personal assistant. ‘I can’t go in my room, there are girls in there. Seems a bit rude.’
He’s taller than I expected, and disconcertingly handsome, his kohl-blacked eyes intense yet benevolent. There is no hint of the hyperactive faux-fop we’re all now so familiar with. He speaks eloquently and intelligently, avoiding his customary archaic grammatical flourishes. Perhaps the suite is in fact having a calming effect.
‘He comes from Essex and he could be the real deal’ were Time Out Comedy editor Malcolm Hay’s words when he saw you in the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year in 2000.
How important was it to get that feedback early in your career?
‘It was hugely significant. It was the catalyst that brought about the change from small pub gigs to getting signed with an agent which led to being on MTV and then on to Edinburgh. You forget that you would scour Time Out for any kind of mention, even just to see your name in the listings. To be singled out, particularly after the disappointment of only coming fourth, was an incredible boost. My pre-fame existence was like a kind of madness. I often felt I was one of those guys reading the Bible out loud on the tube or screaming “The end is nigh!” in Leicester Square. I knew I was good. But at the same time I was ill – a drug addict and an alcoholic – and it was a long, self-destructive slog. Whenever I’d get near to success I’d fuck stuff up. I badly needed someone to believe in me and Malcolm was one of the first people to understand what I was trying to do.’
That must seem like a lifetime ago.
‘Sometimes. We’re going from here to New York and then to LA and then to Australia with this tour, which is selling out fast. We’re also doing a documentary with Albert Maysles, who made “Gimme Shelter” with the Stones, which Oliver Stone is exec producing, documenting the next year of my life. And I’m doing another film with Judd Apatow, “Get Him to the Greek”, where I’m playing Aldous Snow, the character I played in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”, again. And then after that we’re remaking [the Dudley Moore hit movie] “Arthur”. However, because of those years and years of crying in the wilderness and of relentless dogged pursuit, I am aware of trying to stay in the moment and understand how transient all this is.’
How do you ground yourself?
‘I regularly attend Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings to keep me balanced and on track and I’m surrounded by people who are respectful and supportive of me but who are very quick to point out “That’s mental, what you’re saying there, you’ve just crossed the line into madness”.’
Does it annoy you that every journalist who writes about you seems to want to psychoanalyse you?
‘I don’t mind what people do as long as I’m being true to myself and not disingenuous. I don’t mind my stuff being analysed because I’ve put a lot of it out there in the public domain. They’re not telling me anything I don’t know. I’m coruscatingly self-analytical. I’m incredibly self-involved. Vain. Compulsively addicted to sex. There’s not much that someone could say that would make me respond “How dare you!” I’ve been through so much therapy I’m more aware of my own failings than anyone else. Although I prefer it when the verdict comes out as “He’s unquestionably a genius” rather than “He’s a neurotic fuck-up”.’
You’ve written that you created ‘a papier-mâché version of myself to send out into the world’. Is there still a private and a public Russell Brand?
‘Yeah, there is a distinction. I think all of us have façades and coping methods. People think I’m very confessional on stage and it’s true, you do use yourself, but it’s not really that personal. It’s sort of become this product – sterilised by that process, and certainly abstracted. In my current show I’ve been talking about why I don’t have girlfriends but have endless promiscuous encounters. Why can’t I commit? Is it because of the template of love my mother imposed? I know that’s a deeply, personal thing to share on one level, but I think loads of people can relate to the things I’m talking about. Unlike if I were standing on the stage going “I really need to fuck cats, dogs and toddlers.” I have uncontrollable impulses, like when you want to throw hot tea in someone’s face, and I have to be especially careful now because of the way things can be interpreted. I did a joke in Nottingham about these unsuccessful sex attacks in an underpass. I was being sort of glib and flippant and ended up phoning the police, which was probably a mistake. But the room was exhilarated, the audience was alive and buzzing. On that night, in that room, we had consensus. However, once wilful misunderstanding had been applied by the Daily Mail, they’d reduced it to: “What, you think rape’s funny?” I don’t; that wasn’t what I was saying at all. I was making fun of the way it was written in a local newspaper. But that doesn’t fit in with the way they wanted to tell the story.’
And did the media do this with the whole Radio 2, Sachsgate affair?
‘Yes, to some extent. They’re not interested in the whole situation – that would be a bit complicated. They judged us as if me and Jonathan Ross – while smoking roll-up fags and wearing fingerless gloves – went: “ ’Ere, let’s phone up Andrew Sachs and say I fucked your granddaughter. I hope he kills himself.” What actually happened was a slow and incremental process. The joke was, “Oh no, what a terrible thing we’ve done.” And if you actually listen to the tape we spend most of the time actually apologising for having done it. Obviously, it went too far and we apologised and everyone knows what happened after that, but what I think is more interesting, more relevant and says more about our culture than that particular isolated bit of stupidity is the way that it was used culturally. Whether or not there’s an explicit agenda, the Daily Mail wants people to be scared. It doesn’t want anything to be taken lightly, everything has to be taken seriously. And I resent that.’
Wasn’t it the case that Andrew Sachs was actually invited to be a guest that night specifically because you’d already talked about the relationship with his granddaughter several weeks before when David Baddiel mentioned it on air? He wasn’t able to take the call when you rang so you left the message on his answerphone.
‘Exactly. David said “I was round your house the other day and there were those two girls there, the Satanic Sluts. And isn’t one of them Manuel’s granddaughter?” I think the joke would have been us chatting on the phone and skirting around the topic. And it could have been fun. But it’s not convenient to look at the full story, because [the media] want to believe that I’m the sort of person who’d phone someone for no reason and say “Yeah, I’ve fucked your granddaughter.” It’s this deliberate removal of nuance that I think is a form of tyranny. This in microcosm demonstrates the mentality of that form of media. They use words like “totty” and “love nest” because they have to use abbreviations because they haven’t got the physical or ideological space to relay complex ideas. They just want to simplify things. Like with the Jade Goody situation. I personally think that poor young woman would not have developed cancer had she not been the focus of such intense hatred – malevolent hatred – for such a long period of time. And now, it’s convenient for the narrative to like her again. It just sickens me.’
Is this ‘simplification’ at the heart of the media’s obsession with your sex life?
‘Absolutely. They’d like to portray me as some loner constantly trawling the night-time streets. The truth is I’ve got a legitimate and also quite thorough interest in sex. But when people say, “Oh, he’s obsessed with sex, it’s all he ever goes on about,” 99 per cent of the time I’m responding to a question somebody has asked. I’m not obsessed with sex, I’m just fulfilling my biological destiny evolved over millions of years. Rather well!’
Are you worried that as you become more famous you might have to compromise who you are?
‘As long as I don’t compromise to the point where I’m grinning with a tin of brown carbonated water in my hand or endorsing things that I don’t believe in I think it’ll be all right. I have clear objectives. Running parallel to my success is a narrative of scandal and anti-establishment ideas. It’s good because I think there’s gonna come a point where that becomes the story. It’s not going to be “Oh, he’s made a dodgy phone call.” Instead you could alter the narrative of the way the world is going. I could change the world – make everyone be nice to one another [he laughs]. That’s what I want to do. But it has to be absolutely authentic – if I was secretly thinking that I could fuck all their daughters, it wouldn’t work at all.’
It would be easy to mock Brand’s near-messianic mission statement had it not been delivered with such sincerity and genuine warmth. Our time is up and before I go he gives me a huge hug. For some reason I’m worried about him. He seems childlike, naive. I think he’s far more vulnerable than he lets on. ‘Are you happy?’ I ask.
‘Happier. But that’s as close as you’re likely to get. I feel better now than I’ve ever felt, mostly because of the thing that I keep returning to – working with people who are in good alignment with each other. We’ve got a good overview, interesting plans, a bright future. I still have a constant awareness of mortality, but overall, I’m much happier. This is much better than being a penniless junkie in Finsbury Park.’ He walks me to the door and gives me another hug. ‘I’ll leave you here if that’s all right. I still need to do that poo.’
Russell Brand plays the O2 on April 17. A four-disc box set of highlights from his Radio 2 shows, ‘The Best of What’s Legal’, is out on April 13.
Russell Brand: interview
He says he's vain, a sex addict and an egocentric ex-junkie. Time Out gets to the bottom of Russell Brand's obsession with poo, his self-destruction, the price of fame and what really happened with Sachsgate
By Tim Arthur.
Photography Ellis Parrinder
Mar 31 2009
timeout.com[/align]
Russell Brand crosses the corridor from his room in an exquisite luxury hotel in the middle of Dartmoor and looks around thoughtfully at the smart suite in front of him. ‘Is this where we’re doing the interview?’ I nod. ‘I like it in here. It’s calm. In fact I might do a poo in here. Tom, would you fetch my wipes?’ This is to his personal assistant. ‘I can’t go in my room, there are girls in there. Seems a bit rude.’
He’s taller than I expected, and disconcertingly handsome, his kohl-blacked eyes intense yet benevolent. There is no hint of the hyperactive faux-fop we’re all now so familiar with. He speaks eloquently and intelligently, avoiding his customary archaic grammatical flourishes. Perhaps the suite is in fact having a calming effect.
‘He comes from Essex and he could be the real deal’ were Time Out Comedy editor Malcolm Hay’s words when he saw you in the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year in 2000.
How important was it to get that feedback early in your career?
‘It was hugely significant. It was the catalyst that brought about the change from small pub gigs to getting signed with an agent which led to being on MTV and then on to Edinburgh. You forget that you would scour Time Out for any kind of mention, even just to see your name in the listings. To be singled out, particularly after the disappointment of only coming fourth, was an incredible boost. My pre-fame existence was like a kind of madness. I often felt I was one of those guys reading the Bible out loud on the tube or screaming “The end is nigh!” in Leicester Square. I knew I was good. But at the same time I was ill – a drug addict and an alcoholic – and it was a long, self-destructive slog. Whenever I’d get near to success I’d fuck stuff up. I badly needed someone to believe in me and Malcolm was one of the first people to understand what I was trying to do.’
That must seem like a lifetime ago.
‘Sometimes. We’re going from here to New York and then to LA and then to Australia with this tour, which is selling out fast. We’re also doing a documentary with Albert Maysles, who made “Gimme Shelter” with the Stones, which Oliver Stone is exec producing, documenting the next year of my life. And I’m doing another film with Judd Apatow, “Get Him to the Greek”, where I’m playing Aldous Snow, the character I played in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”, again. And then after that we’re remaking [the Dudley Moore hit movie] “Arthur”. However, because of those years and years of crying in the wilderness and of relentless dogged pursuit, I am aware of trying to stay in the moment and understand how transient all this is.’
How do you ground yourself?
‘I regularly attend Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings to keep me balanced and on track and I’m surrounded by people who are respectful and supportive of me but who are very quick to point out “That’s mental, what you’re saying there, you’ve just crossed the line into madness”.’
Does it annoy you that every journalist who writes about you seems to want to psychoanalyse you?
‘I don’t mind what people do as long as I’m being true to myself and not disingenuous. I don’t mind my stuff being analysed because I’ve put a lot of it out there in the public domain. They’re not telling me anything I don’t know. I’m coruscatingly self-analytical. I’m incredibly self-involved. Vain. Compulsively addicted to sex. There’s not much that someone could say that would make me respond “How dare you!” I’ve been through so much therapy I’m more aware of my own failings than anyone else. Although I prefer it when the verdict comes out as “He’s unquestionably a genius” rather than “He’s a neurotic fuck-up”.’
You’ve written that you created ‘a papier-mâché version of myself to send out into the world’. Is there still a private and a public Russell Brand?
‘Yeah, there is a distinction. I think all of us have façades and coping methods. People think I’m very confessional on stage and it’s true, you do use yourself, but it’s not really that personal. It’s sort of become this product – sterilised by that process, and certainly abstracted. In my current show I’ve been talking about why I don’t have girlfriends but have endless promiscuous encounters. Why can’t I commit? Is it because of the template of love my mother imposed? I know that’s a deeply, personal thing to share on one level, but I think loads of people can relate to the things I’m talking about. Unlike if I were standing on the stage going “I really need to fuck cats, dogs and toddlers.” I have uncontrollable impulses, like when you want to throw hot tea in someone’s face, and I have to be especially careful now because of the way things can be interpreted. I did a joke in Nottingham about these unsuccessful sex attacks in an underpass. I was being sort of glib and flippant and ended up phoning the police, which was probably a mistake. But the room was exhilarated, the audience was alive and buzzing. On that night, in that room, we had consensus. However, once wilful misunderstanding had been applied by the Daily Mail, they’d reduced it to: “What, you think rape’s funny?” I don’t; that wasn’t what I was saying at all. I was making fun of the way it was written in a local newspaper. But that doesn’t fit in with the way they wanted to tell the story.’
And did the media do this with the whole Radio 2, Sachsgate affair?
‘Yes, to some extent. They’re not interested in the whole situation – that would be a bit complicated. They judged us as if me and Jonathan Ross – while smoking roll-up fags and wearing fingerless gloves – went: “ ’Ere, let’s phone up Andrew Sachs and say I fucked your granddaughter. I hope he kills himself.” What actually happened was a slow and incremental process. The joke was, “Oh no, what a terrible thing we’ve done.” And if you actually listen to the tape we spend most of the time actually apologising for having done it. Obviously, it went too far and we apologised and everyone knows what happened after that, but what I think is more interesting, more relevant and says more about our culture than that particular isolated bit of stupidity is the way that it was used culturally. Whether or not there’s an explicit agenda, the Daily Mail wants people to be scared. It doesn’t want anything to be taken lightly, everything has to be taken seriously. And I resent that.’
Wasn’t it the case that Andrew Sachs was actually invited to be a guest that night specifically because you’d already talked about the relationship with his granddaughter several weeks before when David Baddiel mentioned it on air? He wasn’t able to take the call when you rang so you left the message on his answerphone.
‘Exactly. David said “I was round your house the other day and there were those two girls there, the Satanic Sluts. And isn’t one of them Manuel’s granddaughter?” I think the joke would have been us chatting on the phone and skirting around the topic. And it could have been fun. But it’s not convenient to look at the full story, because [the media] want to believe that I’m the sort of person who’d phone someone for no reason and say “Yeah, I’ve fucked your granddaughter.” It’s this deliberate removal of nuance that I think is a form of tyranny. This in microcosm demonstrates the mentality of that form of media. They use words like “totty” and “love nest” because they have to use abbreviations because they haven’t got the physical or ideological space to relay complex ideas. They just want to simplify things. Like with the Jade Goody situation. I personally think that poor young woman would not have developed cancer had she not been the focus of such intense hatred – malevolent hatred – for such a long period of time. And now, it’s convenient for the narrative to like her again. It just sickens me.’
Is this ‘simplification’ at the heart of the media’s obsession with your sex life?
‘Absolutely. They’d like to portray me as some loner constantly trawling the night-time streets. The truth is I’ve got a legitimate and also quite thorough interest in sex. But when people say, “Oh, he’s obsessed with sex, it’s all he ever goes on about,” 99 per cent of the time I’m responding to a question somebody has asked. I’m not obsessed with sex, I’m just fulfilling my biological destiny evolved over millions of years. Rather well!’
Are you worried that as you become more famous you might have to compromise who you are?
‘As long as I don’t compromise to the point where I’m grinning with a tin of brown carbonated water in my hand or endorsing things that I don’t believe in I think it’ll be all right. I have clear objectives. Running parallel to my success is a narrative of scandal and anti-establishment ideas. It’s good because I think there’s gonna come a point where that becomes the story. It’s not going to be “Oh, he’s made a dodgy phone call.” Instead you could alter the narrative of the way the world is going. I could change the world – make everyone be nice to one another [he laughs]. That’s what I want to do. But it has to be absolutely authentic – if I was secretly thinking that I could fuck all their daughters, it wouldn’t work at all.’
It would be easy to mock Brand’s near-messianic mission statement had it not been delivered with such sincerity and genuine warmth. Our time is up and before I go he gives me a huge hug. For some reason I’m worried about him. He seems childlike, naive. I think he’s far more vulnerable than he lets on. ‘Are you happy?’ I ask.
‘Happier. But that’s as close as you’re likely to get. I feel better now than I’ve ever felt, mostly because of the thing that I keep returning to – working with people who are in good alignment with each other. We’ve got a good overview, interesting plans, a bright future. I still have a constant awareness of mortality, but overall, I’m much happier. This is much better than being a penniless junkie in Finsbury Park.’ He walks me to the door and gives me another hug. ‘I’ll leave you here if that’s all right. I still need to do that poo.’
Russell Brand plays the O2 on April 17. A four-disc box set of highlights from his Radio 2 shows, ‘The Best of What’s Legal’, is out on April 13.
Last edited by faceless on Tue Jan 27, 2015 3:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
[align=center]
Brand Power
British comedian Russell Brand is renowned for the shock factor - and Channel Seven, having bought his new show, is banking on it, writes Melissa Kent.
April 19, 2009
theage.com.au[/align]
As part of his rehabilitation from heroin addiction, Russell Brand kept a diary. In it, he jotted down a number of goals: "Keep radio show" was one. "Don't fuck up the jobs I have" was another. Brand, the infamously naughty British comedian, has spectacular form when it comes to screwing up. He lost his first radio gig after reading out pornographic material on air. He was fired from MTV for turning up to work the day after 9/11 dressed as Osama Bin Laden and introducing Kylie Minogue to his drug dealer.
He was "let go" from a Steve Coogan comedy for being almost permanently drunk and high on drugs. For his next and most famous act of self-sabotage, he called up Fawlty Towers star Andrew Sachs and left lewd messages on his answering machine about a tryst he'd once had with Sachs' granddaughter. Britain was outraged. The BBC received 40,000 complaints. That time he wasn't fired - he resigned before they got the chance.
But like an overly-confident cat with nine lives, the notorious pantsman with the big hair and grandiose turn of phrase has emerged from it all with his career unscathed. In fact, it's going swimmingly, thank you very much.
On the eve of his successful stand-up tour of Australia last month, Channel Seven announced that it had acquired his latest television venture, the BAFTA-winning series Ponderland. His success Down Under is all part of his plan for world enlightenment, as he explained to M magazine in a recent surreal, Foucault-quoting interview.
"I like to align people with things that are beautiful," he mused, his gaze settling - ironically - on an arrangement of fake flowers on the hotel table. "If you look at the idioms and nomenclatures that surround comedy, the phrase MAKE people laugh - that's good, isn't it, like you MAKE them? Like they're laughing and they don't even know why. I like that and I like the phrase 'sense of humour'. It's so vague and mystical. For me, comedy is a complete escape and I love it."
Ponderland, which debuts on Seven this week, takes us inside Brand's anarchic mind via a series of amusing archive clips which serve as a starting point for his chaotic, exotic commentary. This week's subject is pets and their peculiar owners. He introduces a series of clips including one about an American woman who had an affair with the family dog and is now eyeing up the horse. Brand muses on what the dog might be saying when the woman's husband takes it for a walk: "This is awkward for me as well," he offers, then, pointing out that he is about to defecate, the dog tells the husband (Brand says): "Legally, you are obliged to pick that up."
For many, it will be their first taste of Brand's off-centre humour and it probably won't be for everyone. Putting it together involved a team of researchers trawling through mountains of archival footage for funny material and whittling it down to a manageable amount for Brand's perusal.
"You know when you're watching telly and something makes you crack up? That's the sort of stuff we were looking for," he says. "Stuff that was not necessarily immediately amusing, like someone falling off a chair or things that would make it on to a blooper show, but things that might have a peculiar subtext. The show is really funny and I love it, I'm proud of it. It's kind of gentle, it's cool, it's not like subversive, right, where you'll watch it and go out in the streets and smash up the homes of the rich. Not mine anyway."
The first episode of this series screened in Britain just a few weeks after "Sachsgate" blew up, when the anti-Brand campaign was at fever-pitch. The tabloids were calling for his head and even his staunchest fans predicted the scandal would spell the end of his career.
Speaking of it now, Brand is unapologetic. In fact, he is the first to admit the "hullabaloo", as he calls it, did wonders for his image. "What I got was a great big marketing campaign that merely confirms that I am a subversive commodity," he says with a wicked grin. "The reaction was 'Look at him, he's dangerous.' 'What did he do that was so dangerous?' 'Oh, he left a phone message that was a little bit rude.' 'Oh.' It's not like a child ended up in intensive care or, you know, that was the last panda that we had."
Certainly the scandal has increased his profile in Australia, where pre-Sachsgate he was merely a mildly famous actor-comedian, known mostly only to Anglophiles and filmgoers as the libidinous rocker Aldous Snow in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Seven was sufficiently seduced. "Like everyone, we were just overcome by his raw sexuality," jokes Brad Lyons, Seven's head of program development. "We just succumbed to his might. You can quote me on that."
Surely, though, Brand must occasionally consider self-censorship, just to save himself a whole lot of hassle? "No, never," he says, semi-serious for the first time in our conversation. "Normally other people do that. I just think I'll do whatever I want and let other people say 'Don't do that, it will catch on fire, you've broken it, you're reckless, you're dangerous, stop it, aaaahh, it's not even your dog.' I just do whatever I want and leave other people to curtail it and then I'm free to express myself."
Ponderland debuts on Channel Seven, Wednesday, at 10.30pm.
ON GEORGE BUSH
"But I know America to be a forward-thinking country because otherwise why would you have let that retard and cowboy fella be president for eight years. We were very impressed. We thought it was nice of you to let him have a go, because, in England, he wouldn't be trusted with a pair of scissors."
ON MEETING THE QUEEN
"A little part of me was thinking, 'Grab her boobs!' "
ON THE DAILY MAIL
"The Daily Mail want us to be scared of everything - even the weather. Remember when it snowed? SNOW, there is SNOW! Immigrant snow! Immigrant, Gypsy snow! Immigrant, Gypsy, pedophile snow! Don't make a snowman, it will come into your house and fuck you."
ON BOB GELDOF
"Really it's no surprise he's such an expert on famine. He has, after all, been dining out on I Don't Like Mondays for 30 years."
Brand Power
British comedian Russell Brand is renowned for the shock factor - and Channel Seven, having bought his new show, is banking on it, writes Melissa Kent.
April 19, 2009
theage.com.au[/align]
As part of his rehabilitation from heroin addiction, Russell Brand kept a diary. In it, he jotted down a number of goals: "Keep radio show" was one. "Don't fuck up the jobs I have" was another. Brand, the infamously naughty British comedian, has spectacular form when it comes to screwing up. He lost his first radio gig after reading out pornographic material on air. He was fired from MTV for turning up to work the day after 9/11 dressed as Osama Bin Laden and introducing Kylie Minogue to his drug dealer.
He was "let go" from a Steve Coogan comedy for being almost permanently drunk and high on drugs. For his next and most famous act of self-sabotage, he called up Fawlty Towers star Andrew Sachs and left lewd messages on his answering machine about a tryst he'd once had with Sachs' granddaughter. Britain was outraged. The BBC received 40,000 complaints. That time he wasn't fired - he resigned before they got the chance.
But like an overly-confident cat with nine lives, the notorious pantsman with the big hair and grandiose turn of phrase has emerged from it all with his career unscathed. In fact, it's going swimmingly, thank you very much.
On the eve of his successful stand-up tour of Australia last month, Channel Seven announced that it had acquired his latest television venture, the BAFTA-winning series Ponderland. His success Down Under is all part of his plan for world enlightenment, as he explained to M magazine in a recent surreal, Foucault-quoting interview.
"I like to align people with things that are beautiful," he mused, his gaze settling - ironically - on an arrangement of fake flowers on the hotel table. "If you look at the idioms and nomenclatures that surround comedy, the phrase MAKE people laugh - that's good, isn't it, like you MAKE them? Like they're laughing and they don't even know why. I like that and I like the phrase 'sense of humour'. It's so vague and mystical. For me, comedy is a complete escape and I love it."
Ponderland, which debuts on Seven this week, takes us inside Brand's anarchic mind via a series of amusing archive clips which serve as a starting point for his chaotic, exotic commentary. This week's subject is pets and their peculiar owners. He introduces a series of clips including one about an American woman who had an affair with the family dog and is now eyeing up the horse. Brand muses on what the dog might be saying when the woman's husband takes it for a walk: "This is awkward for me as well," he offers, then, pointing out that he is about to defecate, the dog tells the husband (Brand says): "Legally, you are obliged to pick that up."
For many, it will be their first taste of Brand's off-centre humour and it probably won't be for everyone. Putting it together involved a team of researchers trawling through mountains of archival footage for funny material and whittling it down to a manageable amount for Brand's perusal.
"You know when you're watching telly and something makes you crack up? That's the sort of stuff we were looking for," he says. "Stuff that was not necessarily immediately amusing, like someone falling off a chair or things that would make it on to a blooper show, but things that might have a peculiar subtext. The show is really funny and I love it, I'm proud of it. It's kind of gentle, it's cool, it's not like subversive, right, where you'll watch it and go out in the streets and smash up the homes of the rich. Not mine anyway."
The first episode of this series screened in Britain just a few weeks after "Sachsgate" blew up, when the anti-Brand campaign was at fever-pitch. The tabloids were calling for his head and even his staunchest fans predicted the scandal would spell the end of his career.
Speaking of it now, Brand is unapologetic. In fact, he is the first to admit the "hullabaloo", as he calls it, did wonders for his image. "What I got was a great big marketing campaign that merely confirms that I am a subversive commodity," he says with a wicked grin. "The reaction was 'Look at him, he's dangerous.' 'What did he do that was so dangerous?' 'Oh, he left a phone message that was a little bit rude.' 'Oh.' It's not like a child ended up in intensive care or, you know, that was the last panda that we had."
Certainly the scandal has increased his profile in Australia, where pre-Sachsgate he was merely a mildly famous actor-comedian, known mostly only to Anglophiles and filmgoers as the libidinous rocker Aldous Snow in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Seven was sufficiently seduced. "Like everyone, we were just overcome by his raw sexuality," jokes Brad Lyons, Seven's head of program development. "We just succumbed to his might. You can quote me on that."
Surely, though, Brand must occasionally consider self-censorship, just to save himself a whole lot of hassle? "No, never," he says, semi-serious for the first time in our conversation. "Normally other people do that. I just think I'll do whatever I want and let other people say 'Don't do that, it will catch on fire, you've broken it, you're reckless, you're dangerous, stop it, aaaahh, it's not even your dog.' I just do whatever I want and leave other people to curtail it and then I'm free to express myself."
Ponderland debuts on Channel Seven, Wednesday, at 10.30pm.
ON GEORGE BUSH
"But I know America to be a forward-thinking country because otherwise why would you have let that retard and cowboy fella be president for eight years. We were very impressed. We thought it was nice of you to let him have a go, because, in England, he wouldn't be trusted with a pair of scissors."
ON MEETING THE QUEEN
"A little part of me was thinking, 'Grab her boobs!' "
ON THE DAILY MAIL
"The Daily Mail want us to be scared of everything - even the weather. Remember when it snowed? SNOW, there is SNOW! Immigrant snow! Immigrant, Gypsy snow! Immigrant, Gypsy, pedophile snow! Don't make a snowman, it will come into your house and fuck you."
ON BOB GELDOF
"Really it's no surprise he's such an expert on famine. He has, after all, been dining out on I Don't Like Mondays for 30 years."
Last edited by faceless on Tue Jan 27, 2015 3:15 am, edited 1 time in total.