The transition from Grays in Essex to Italia Conti’s in central London was dramatic. I’d shed the awful baggage of my past reputation, plus loads of weight as a result of the bulimia.
Suddenly, I was rich. In Grays I didn’t possess anything people wanted. I was trying to spend a fantasy currency from an irrelevant island.
“Sir, I am rich with doubloons,” I would announce. “Yeah, well, we don’t take doubloons, now fuck off .” “Drat! And what of these sovereigns?” But now, at last, I was in a land where doubloons were legal tender. It was an economy built on showing off. Although I couldn’t sing or dance, in the acting and improvisation classes I was good.
The excitement engendered by the magical vista of girls in bras during Bugsy Malone rehearsals was revealed to be as Bos-tik is to crack. Italia Conti was as raunchy as an institute for learning can be and still be called a school. There was a dance studio on the way to the canteen. All these gorgeous young women would be doing their jazz dancing in black leotards. It 105
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was nauseatingly exciting—an overload of sexual information: thick thighs, round arses, sweaty cleavages.
Everywhere there
were beautiful girls bustling around—
prancing into the canteen with cascading manes of youthful hair. They were all, it later turned out, miniature celebrities; Martine McCutcheon kissed me once in a corridor. She was very pretty—a lovely girl—and she said, “I’m glad you like me,”
and gave me a kiss. I wonder if she remembers? Or if she’ll sue me. This trivial exchange lit up the no-man’s-land of my life like a flare, and that’s before she became “Tiffany” and I inflated the incident into a festival of bumming for the amusement of the twerps I by then consorted with. “You see Tiffany?” “Yes, I see her on EastEnders.” “Well, let me tell you, I had sex with her.” “Oh, really.” “And by sex, I mean bumming.” “Really?” “Oh, yes. Right up the ol’ bum.”
Two members of the girl- group-to-be, Eternal, were at the school, Louise Nurding and Kéllé Bryan. There was a dizzying period of a couple of days where they both fancied me. Th is
was lunacy. Just a few days before I’d have sliced out a lung for a few moments with one member of the girl- group-to-be, Eternal, and now I had to choose between two. I was not accustomed to making choices of this magnitude; my volition had previously been confined to dilemmas no more complex or consequential than which color Penguin biscuit to eat, knowing that I’d be eating both eventually, regardless. “I’ll start with you blue, but yellow, you too will know the thrill of being devoured by me.” I thought the application of the “I’ll have ’em all” technique would serve me in this situation. All that remained to decide was which one to have first. I selected Kéllé
because being from “white man’s last stand” Grays, the possibility of a black girlfriend was stupidly exciting; girls from another school had seemed exotic, so another race—well, 106
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that’s almost too much. What a soppy sausage I was not to have yet learned the vital Penguin lesson that beneath the wrapper we’re all the same. I was punished for this embarrassing rationale when a friend of mine, Matthew Warner, the adorable embodiment of a stage- school pupil, in the closet, scissor-kicking his way down Goswell Road like a real-life Fame title sequence, told her of my twittish reasoning. Leading to this scene, almost too awful to write.
DAY. INT. ITALIA CONTI, GIRLS’ TOILET.
We see Kéllé, future star of Celebrity Love Island, sixteen, beautiful, wearing a leotard and Russell, a twit. Kéllé is furious.
KÉLLÉ: Russell, what’s this I hear that you’re only going out with me because I’m black?
RUSSELL: (Incredulous) What! No! That’s not true. Who said that?
KÉLLÉ: Matthew.
RUSSELL: Him? You can’t trust him; he’s not even honest about his own sexuality.
KÉLLÉ: (With incredible sincerity, imagine Oprah Winfrey confronting Eugène Terre’Blanche)* Look Russell, I’m damn proud of being black.
RUSSELL: (Out of his depth) Me too, I’m proud of you being black, this relationship is like the song “Ebony and Ivory.”
Shall we get married? That’ll show all those bloody racists.
KÉLLÉ: I’m not marrying you, you idiot. You’re chucked.
KÉLLÉ STARTS TO LEAVE.
* Eugène Terre’Blanche is a barmy (mad), South African, pro- apartheid racist who kept turning up on the telly harping on about racist stuff. Everyone just thought, “What a crazy name, what a nitwit.”
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RUSSELL: Kéllé! Please, don’t go! I can change. And if I can change and you can change, maybe the whole damn world can change.
KÉLLÉ DISGUSTED, SLAMS THE DOOR.
RUSSELL: Kéllé! No! (Pause) Kéllé, could you find out if Louise is free later? Also find out if she’s got any ethnic blood in her.
CUT TO . . .
I became obsessed with Louise. I spoke to her recently and she reminded me that I’d send her up to six letters a day. What on earth was I finding to write about? I hope to god these letters were bloody short. Dear Louise, please go out with me. Yes?
No? I’ll write again after ballet. They weren’t short, though, they were long, loooooong and filled with longing, emotional more than sexual, for although as I’m sure you can imagine the sixteen-year- old Louise Nurding was pretty bloody gorgeous, I wanted love and a partner, salvation damn it; this was before I’d become a bounder. I often wonder if Louise, when she reads in a tabloid about some loveless bit of smut I’ve been involved with, glances over at her handsome, intelligent, kind, lovely ex-footballer husband Jamie Redknapp and thinks, “I’ve made a terrible mistake.” Almost certainly.
The novelty of being good at something gave vent to the wild, reckless aspects of my character. Previously, these had come in the form of tantrums, self-harm and smashing things, but from this point onward, they began to evolve. I started to become aware of and lovingly nurture the archetype/cliché of the self-destructive artist—the perpetually drunk poet.
The drunk part was easy. And when it came to writing poems, “Oh, I’m depressed and on my own” was essentially my only topic. But the vocabulary was good, and people liked 108
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them. These were boors, knowing nothing of Shelley and Byron. Poetry should be more than just a list of feelings, shouldn’t it? Good poets like my mate Mr. Gee, from the R2 show (who just read this chapter to make sure I don’t come across as a racist nit) can convey truth, beauty and humor without lapsing into self- indulgence. The poetry I wrote was not about self-expression but about getting people to like me. I’d yet to learn that earnestness was an aspect that was ill-befitting and that I would have no real success, personal or professional, till I focused on making people laugh. But girls liked the poems.
Perhaps overawed by the abundance of varied and spectacular flesh, I opted to go out with this girl called Rachel, who came from Romford. I used to get the train into school with her, ’cos I was staying at my dad’s in Essex at the time. She was very beautiful, with long blond hair, but also a bit insecure and obsessed with getting a nose job.
As will already have become clear, my early sexuality was not characterized by the almost piratical nonchalance that I have developed in later years. I was a nervous and sensitive young man. I suppose partly because of those early filthy encounters—I was really apprehensive about sex, and as a consequence there were a lot of opportunities that I was too nervous to take advantage of.
I’d seen loads of pornography, but I was quite scared of girls, really. What I wanted was to be in love, to have a companion to look after me—someone to replace my mother. But before I could persuade anyone to fulfill that function, I found drugs. V
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Body Mist
I’d never tried social drugs in Grays because I wasn’t really a social person, I didn’t get invit
ed to parties and the like on account of the ol’ oddness. The first notable encounter with marijuana was at Conti’s. I was with this lad called Jimmy Black. I really admired Jimmy. He was from Hull and had long hair and was funny and could sing. Me and Jimmy were sat smoking a joint, and he said “Russell Brand . . . is that your real name?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “That’s a good name, that.” I said, “Oh, do you think so?”
“See all these buildings, Russell? All these buildings were once a drawing on a piece of paper, and before that they were an idea in someone’s head. Any idea that you have, you can make manifest.” Wow. Man. That, like, totally blew my mind man. It was my first bit of countercultural chitchat. He was one of a spellbinding band of Conti pupils who were out of place in every way but their theatrical abilities.
They were: Justin Edmonds, a mixed-race lad from Moss Side; Jose Vedberg from East London, a handsome lad who was in Th e
Bill; and Dean Northard from York, with his ginger hair and muscles and a beautiful falsetto singing voice. Till then I’d only known people from Essex. Talent was anathema. Th ese young
men were cool. Although they were only a couple of years older 111
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than me, they seemed absurdly worldly. These eigh teen- year- old lads, to me, seemed like a crew of rum-drinking smugglers, smoking weed, singing songs and having it off. Charismatic and brilliant, and forever skinning up—and they accepted me into their group and all I had to do was be an unpaid butler carrying out whatever whim my new idols requested.* As soon as I saw them I wanted their company as much as I did the stunningly attractive dancing girls. I realized that the easiest way to win their friendship was through grass, so I bought some and nervously approached Jimmy in a toilet which, given the thriving gay culture in that building, the only exemptions being the boys listed on the previous page, was perhaps naive.
He was combing his lustrous hair. I marveled at him for a while then said, “Jimmy, I’ve got some draw—do you want to smoke it?” Jimmy paused and put his comb back in his pocket like Fonzie, surveyed my little face to see if there was any kind of catch—I don’t know what that could’ve been; I was too young to be a government agent. Satisfied that I was legit he grabbed the dope with a curt, “Yeah, alright,” rolled a couple of joints, and the next thing I knew, he was lecturing me about architec-ture and opening my mind.
I hadn’t really considered when using weed as bait to entice cool friends that it can have powerful psychoactive side eff ects.
We went back to school, my querying in my mind the history of every building we passed. Jimmy bowled off to do some eff ort-less singing, while me and my open mind, listless body and yellow face slumped ourselves into a chair and watched the atoms in the windows vibrating, entranced and queasy, like William Blake watching angels in the trees on Peckham Rye. A teacher saw me sat there, grinning at nothing and reeking of weed, and
* The act of “skinning up” is to make a marijuana cigarette.
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a brouhaha ensued and a summit was called. “Th ere’s children
taking drugs at this school—we’ll have to clamp down on it.”
Jimmy Black remarked, “Fucking hell! We’ve been here two years, doing this every day. He’s had one joint and there’s a fucking offi
cial inquiry.”
It was obvious that drugs were going to disrupt my life. Th e
first time I went round to Jimmy and Justin’s flat, I saw they had a tray full of Rizlas and hash, and the idea of these kind of accoutrements seemed amazing to me.* I loved the paraphernalia—the blowbacks and bottles and bongs—and I got so stoned that I went to bed and was there for three days. I didn’t eat or anything—just lay there bewildered; people came to look at me, someone took a photograph, I refused all food, I just stared and wondered and became a drug addict. From then on, I smoked draw every day without fail or exception until the narcotic ba-ton was passed on to heroin. Whenever I went to school—or, indeed, anywhere—I would have a joint first.
If I had to go on a train journey, for instance, I used to think,
“This’ll be alright. I’ll just skin up and smoke in the toilet.”
Many years later, when I eventually got clean, I was astonished to learn that I actually don’t enjoy my own company. I always thought I loved being on my own, but actually I don’t. It was being on drugs that I liked. Here’s a tip for you. If you don’t have enough money to buy a train ticket but you have to take a train, use this little method I invented:
• Go into the toilet
• Hide
• Smoke weed
* Rizla is a brand of cigarette paper so dominant that its name has become de rigueur, like Kleenex to you folk, or Coca-Cola.
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• Don’t lock the door because the ticket inspector can see that the door is locked and will knock or wait for you to emerge.
But if you can get your hands on one of these “out of order”
signs, then you’re super safe.
There is a risk that smoking soft drugs will lead to harder ones and then any money you saved on the ticket purchase will go on heroin, so economically perhaps my method is flawed.
It’s unlikely to feature on Th
is Morning as a handy financial
hint. “Thank you, Fern. And now we’re going live to Fenchurch Street Station where Russell Brand is crying in the toilet.”
John Bird said of Peter Cook, “You met him one day in a quad in Cambridge and immediately decided you wanted to spend the rest of your life with him.” I felt this kind of sentimental awe for this gang of lost boys. I moved in with Jimmy, Justin, 114
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and Justin’s girlfriend (their Wendy) Julie, in a two-bedroom flat in Bermondsey Street, near London Bridge. I was only sixteen but I didn’t really have anywhere else to go. I detested Colin, I stayed with my nan a lot and with my dad, but he’d acquired a barmy wife and a few kids and I didn’t feel welcome. Once in the flat my friends treated me like a clothed chimp—sending me on errands—but occasionally they would ruffle my hair and refer to me as “our kid.” I liked that.
I didn’t have keys to the flat. I used to put my arm through the letter box to open the door: the doors of perception were about to be flung open because Dean had acquired some acid, sheets of it; I’d heard tell of its qualities, of how it made you hal-lucinate and readdress your life and I thought, “My God! Th is
sounds extraordinary.” We went over to the YMCA opposite Conti’s after school, took some and went back to his house in New Cross on the tube.
With or without acid, New Cross can be mind-bending, so it’s the ideal venue to have something so fundamental as your perception of reality altered, because it just exposes everything—the world as you see it, even your own psyche—as a construction.
All the things you believe to be true are thrown into doubt.
And what’s so ridiculous is the way that you take this extraordi-narily powerful, potent drug: not in a hospital with someone making you sit down and have a glass of water, but on the way home from school with your daft mate, walking though New Cross all fragile and delicate. It’s difficult to convey the wonder and horror of LSD: most people who’ve taken it have at some time tried to document the events that take place while tripping; fancying themselves all Huxley, only to be confronted the next day with a piece of paper covered with the most frightful balderdash. What I recall is becoming aware that my presumed 115
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objectivity was subjective and arbitrary and that my hands looked like dead chickens.
There were still raves going on in those days, and the walls of Dean’s room were covered with flyers, which I could now see had obviously been expressly designed for people to look at while high. Not as interesting as my hands though. “Th ey look
like dead chickens!”
It’s a stereotypical response to taking acid—to b
ecome fascinated with your own hands. But it’s the transformation of things you are utterly familiar with that makes it such a revelatory experience. The quotidian and unquestioned became the source of rigorous inquiry. Dean had a deodorant called “Body Mist.” Th at
consumed what seemed like hours, but time no longer conforms to previously agreed parameters but instead leaps and whirls, pauses and rewinds, whizzes by and slithers back so it could’ve been five seconds. What I am certain of to this day is that “Body Mist” is a stupid name for a deodorant. What? It’s a mist for your body? “Here, I stink. Has anyone got some mist because I’m pretty sure that this stink is coming out of my body?” Mist.
Mist doesn’t smell and is by its nature vague and intangible and Body is too general. “I want to kiss you, I want to kiss you right on the body.” Torso cloud, trunk vapor, corpse fog. It still gets me. Later that night—in the spirit of making the evening as clichéd as possible—I saw the film Th
e Doors and decided “I’m
gonna be like that person.” The flimsy identity that I had constructed was instantaneously swept aside: not by Jim Morrison himself, but by Val Kilmer’s interpretation of Jim Morrison, as viewed through the cinematic prism of Oliver Stone.
The next morning, I went into Conti’s with a dry mouth, some ill-researched but heartfelt views on spirituality, wearing a sheepskin coat, beads and no shirt, with a joint hanging out of 116
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my mouth, asking if everybody was in, because the ceremony was probably going to begin. If not now, then very shortly. At any rate, there certainly would be a ceremony.
There was always a sense of being safe inside Conti’s, which made it the ideal place for that kind of ridiculous posturing. But when you’d hear of students that had left and weren’t famous, it was always a little bit terrifying—“What? They’ve left, and now they’re just living in a flat? Bloody hell! That’s a bit worrying.” It was a reminder of what might become of you. Once you’ve left stage school, you’ve got to be famous, or what the fuck are you doing?
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