I have really mixed feelings about England. On the one hand, it became a place where I could develop my material when no one else was interested. I was given my own talk show. I was paid more money than I could make back home. On the other hand, I just feel like the English are being ripped off by their government with their ridiculous cost of living—believe me, it is the most expensive country on the planet—and their standard of living kind of sucks. Do people really need to live in such stupid small houses? Their tiny roads and tiny cars, the weather, a class system that says you should just stay where you are … all of these things drive me crazy about that country, but hey, it did give me this language that I’m writing in, so thanks, England!
I ultimately returned to the UK in the summer of 2006, when CAA convinced Live Nation UK to book me into the Shaw Theatre. It was a small theatre of about four hundred seats on Euston Road. It was my first solo theatre show in London and my first time back in several years. I ended up selling out the two shows in less than forty-eight hours. I was actually kind of pissed, because I knew I could have played a larger venue, but the promoter wasn’t convinced of my ability to sell tickets. Fact is, we were kind of lucky to have Live Nation UK come on board with me at that time. All the other promoters had turned CAA down. Later that year, I came back and played the Hammersmith Apollo, which has about 3,800 seats. The show sold out very quickly and opened up standing room only. There were people along the back walls and spilling into the aisles. It was great. I returned to the Hammersmith for two shows in 2007, and they also sold out crazy fast.
When we put the tickets on sale, we sold nine thousand on the first day.
In 2009, I returned to London with my Twentieth-Anniversary Tour and played the O2 Arena. When we put the tickets on sale, we sold nine thousand on the first day, which I never expected. I ended up setting a new UK attendance record for a one-off comedy show, almost sixteen thousand people—and my biggest show worldwide. The previous record holder was Chris Rock. I never expected those kinds of numbers. I wasn’t thrilled with my performance that night because I was just in the early stages of writing the act that I’m doing today. I was supposed to be doing my “greatest hits” of the past twenty years, but when I got on stage, I couldn’t bring myself to do it—because comedy is all about the surprise of the punch line.
Have you ever had someone tell you the same joke twice? It’s not that great the second time. That’s where musicians get a pass. They can write one or two great songs and just keep playing them over and over. A comedian may write ten great bits but can’t just keep repeating them. They can be brought out again eventually, but not until many, many years later.
I thought I could have done a better show and felt badly that, in my opinion, I had let the fans down that night. Funny thing is, I got more positive feedback from the fans after that show than I have for any other.
People in the UK got me early. They understood me and were early supporters of what I was doing. Those audiences, from the Comedy Store, to Jongleurs, to all the pubs from Newcastle to Dover, allowed me to get better and become more confident. I thank them for that. I thought it was fitting that I close this chapter with an email excerpt from a promoter who turned me down for a show in London in 2006:
“… While I think that Russell is obviously a top class club comedian I didn’t feel that his material is distinctive enough for it to break through over here. Personally, I thought that I had seen similar material done better before … my opinion is that Russell will find it hard to break into this market with his existing material. Moreover, I think that it would be a mistake to rely on the UK Asian audience which is not guaranteed … I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can get behind this one …”
This man was a visionary.
I ABSOLUTELY loooooove South Africa. It’s beautiful and fascinating. The different cultures and people and the dynamics between all of them: black, white, cape coloured, Indian, Zulu and Xhosa. On my first visit to South Africa in October 2001, it was all new and amazing to me. This was a country that my father had told me about as a kid, and one I never ever thought I’d get to visit.
When I finally got there to play the Cape Town Comedy Festival, it was the beginning of an adventure that would keep me coming back for more. Never in my life had I seen so many beautiful women who were so out of my league. No offence to suicide bombers, but South Africa is paradise.
I was thirty-one years old and had never had a drink in my life. After one of the shows, some of the other comics and I went out to a casino, where we met this really hot coloured girl. She started hanging out with us, having some drinks. I asked her, “What are you drinking?”
“Blah, blah, blah, why don’t you have some?” is what I remember her saying.
“Umm, I don’t drink,” I confessed.
But she was so hot that I said, “Okay,” and tried her fruity little cocktail. It was actually really good. I couldn’t taste any alcohol in it at all.
“So, do you drink a lot?” I asked her.
To which she gave me the best reply in the world: “I do, because it makes me horny … and I hate to be horny alone …”
Let’s have another one! She had another, and another, and so did I. After a while, our entire group headed off to a cigar lounge. We sat down in these really nice armchairs and I was feeling good; I was starting to get a nice buzz going, I had on a great suit and Hot Coloured Girl was looking good-to-go. I was feeling pimp, so I ordered a cigar. Now, even though I didn’t drink, I did know that you were supposed to drink Cognac when you have a cigar. Thing is, I wasn’t sure how to drink Cognac. I asked the girl. She said, “You just shoot it.” So I did, and it burned all the way down.
One of the reasons I’d never drunk before was because I didn’t like the way alcohol tasted and smelled. I was also a bit nervous about what kind of drunk I’d be. My dad and some of my uncles could get a bit argumentative and aggressive when they had one too many; turned out that I just felt happy. Not angry or aggressive, just good and giggly. I even felt fine the next day.
I started crying about my dad ant the news that I’d got that day.
The rest of the night was great. A few more fruity cocktails, and Hot Coloured Girl and I ended up back at my hotel … It would be three years before I got drunk again. In February 2004, the day the doctor told my brother and me that Dad had only six months to live. That night I went out with a group of friends to a club on Adelaide Street and I drank a lot of vodka—too much vodka. I ended up projectile vomiting. I remember my cousin Bob taking me outside and walking me around the block to sober up, and I started crying about my dad and the news that I’d got that day. The doctor was wrong, however, or maybe he was just being kind, but the six months actually turned out to be just one month.
I returned to South Africa in June 2002, and this time I was hosting a show at the Durban Comedy Festival. I was there for two weeks, and even though it was my first time in Durban, for some reason I felt like I was at home and was completely at ease. Maybe it’s because Durban has the highest population of Indians outside of India and I grew up in Brampton, which feels much the same way. Anyway, I loved Durban. Still do. The shows were great and the people received me as if they’d known me all my life. They treated me like gold. I stayed at this Holiday Inn right on the ocean, and from my room I could see sharks, whales and dolphins off in the distance.
Toyota was a sponsor of those first shows in Durban, and they told me they’d give me a car to drive. Toyota had set up this brand new Corolla Sport on display in front of the theatre where I was performing, so I figured they’d give me something like that to drive around in. The next day they showed up at my hotel with this old-ass, fucked-up 1994 Corolla with manual windows and no stereo. I’m not sure what they were thinking. That night, I went on stage and made fun of Toyota for giving me such a shit car. The next day, they pulled their sponsorship and took back the piece-of-shit car they’d given me to drive.
I liked Durban so much that I a
ctually considered buying a house there. You can get a wicked mansion for just over two hundred grand. But it’s a long commute back and forth between L.A. or Toronto.
I was treated like a superstar and once again had an awesome time. Crazy things happened.
In November and December of 2002, I once again returned to South Africa, and it was insanity. I was treated like a superstar and once again had an awesome time. Crazy things happened. One of the morning radio shows did this thing where they asked if any of their listeners had slept with a celebrity. A girl phoned in and said that she had. When they asked who, she said my name. The papers ran a piece about me being seen with some girl at Umhlanga Rocks (a seaside resort near Durban).
On that trip there was this Indian guy who owned a cell phone company, and he gave me his Smart car to drive. To me, the Smart car looked like a giant nose, and I have a giant nose. So it was like a giant nose driving a giant nose. The Smart car was fine, but there was this one particularly windy day when it felt like the car was going to be blown over, which made me nervous as hell. BMW was a sponsor of these shows. The BMW guy came saw me driving the Smart car and asked, “What the hell are you driving?” He got me a 330i convertible and then a 745il. The other car that he let me drive was his X5 SUV. I would get bored after the shows, so I would go for late-night drives.
One night, I was driving around Umhlanga Rocks, looking at houses. The X5 had GPS on it, which was still new at that time. As I was driving, I saw this dirt road. I thought, Hey, I’m in an all-wheel-drive SUV. There’s a dirt road. I’ve got GPS and I’m in Africa; let’s see where this road goes. There was a sign for a nursery along this dirt road, so I figured I’d drive up to the nursery and turn around. Unfortunately, the nursery was right there, as soon as you turned the corner. I looked ahead and saw that the road continued, as the GPS confirmed. Hmmm … I’m in Africa. Maybe I’ll see a lion or something! As I drove, I glanced at the GPS and could see all this blue near me, so I figured, Oh neat, maybe this road will take me to a secret beach or something. Not sure what I thought I’d do once I got to the “secret beach,” but hey. The road started curving, running parallel to the ocean, with a highway between myself and the water.
I looked around and saw that I was now driving through a squatters’ camp, which looked exacty like they do in those UNICEF commercials.
As I drove in the pitch darkness, I now realized that the dirt road was just a single lane. I could only go forward, but I was also thinking that I’d catch the highway at some point and be able to get off. I drove under an overpass, with the highway above me. Okay, this should be it. Suddenly I went up an incline and the dirt road had turned into two cement tracks. I was on a bridge of some kind. Fuck! I couldn’t back up, because I was afraid I’d fall off the road, so I kept going forward. The bridge ended and the road became really wonky and fucked-up with potholes and ditches. I looked around and saw that I was now driving through a squatters’ camp, which looked exactly like they do in those UNICEF commercials. It was now past midnight, there was nobody outside and it was dead quiet. From out of nowhere, this dog started barking and scared the shit out of me. The GPS said that the road ended just ahead, and I started freaking out. I decided that now was the time to turn around. After a quick three-point turn, I looked at the GPS and the screen had turned blank. No roads, no ocean, no highway, no nuthin’! So I made a call to one of my cab-driver buddies down by the beach. Sammy, one of the drivers I had be-friended, answered.
“Oh my God! What are you doing there? Get out of there now! A cop was shot there just two weeks ago!”
“Yo! I’m kind of lost.”
“Where are you?”
“I went for a drive at Umhlanga Rocks and turned on that dirt road past the nursery. I’m in the squatters’ camp …”
“Oh my God! What are you doing there? Get out of there now! A cop was shot there just two weeks ago!”
The irony was that this camp was less than a mile away from the richest part of Durban.
Sammy stayed on the phone with me and guided me out of the camp. He and the other drivers stayed on the line until I was safely back on the main road. He told me to come meet him downtown. The drivers were all waiting for me when I got there. They said that I should probably keep a gun with me if I was going to be driving around like that, and Sammy offered me one of his pistols for the duration of my stay. I told them that I would be fine.
These drivers were all Indian guys. They were decent, good guys. They all carried guns with them—not to be bad-asses or anything, but just because they felt that they needed them for their own safety. I got to know them through one of the Indian street kids who stayed near my hotel. I made friends with this kid, whose name I can’t remember now. He was a good kid, but was pretty much homeless. A lot of the kids just hung out on the beach and sniffed glue all day. He introduced me to the cab drivers and they all thought I was all right for being cool with the kid.
In 2003, I came back to South Africa again. The movie I was supposed to be working on had been cancelled and SA offered me a chance to make some money. I was so desperate for cash at that time that I accepted this awful deal for $700 U.S. per day. Now, I know that may not sound too bad, but here’s the thing: I was there for maybe five or six weeks, and the tour was completely sold out. The promoter (that fucker) had tons of sponsors and they just kept adding shows, sometimes two a night without a bump in pay. Seven hundred dollars was less than maybe five per cent of what they were actually making. They made a shitload off of me and I never forgot it.
During that trip I called Sammy, and it turned out that he was now getting married. He invited me and the other comics on the show—Jean Paul, Paul Chowdhry and Rasool Somji—to come to his wedding. We got to the reception and he was very happy to see me. He saw me and said, “I want you to hold the wedding rings, the money and, here, hold my gun too!”
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“I don’t trust anybody here. I trust you.”
He took off his wedding band and his wife’s rings and gave them to me to hold. I put the envelopes of cash inside and the rings in my jacket pocket and put the gun in my waistband in the small of my back.
After the reception was over, Sammy met me in the parking lot and all the other drivers were there. I handed the rings and money over to him as well as the handgun. One of the other drivers saw me with the gun. “Hey, you’ve got a pistol? Do you want to hold mine too?” he yelled across, smiling through his gold teeth.
One day, I was walking outside my hotel and this guy came up to me like he knew me. “Uncle! Uncle!” I didn’t recognize him, but it was the kid I’d befriended the year before. Not being all that kid oriented, I failed to realize that kids grow. I invited him and his mom to the hotel for dinner that night. Afterwards, I took them shopping for new shoes and a bunch of other stuff they needed.
Over the course of these first few trips to South Africa, I must have slept with anywhere from a dozen to two dozen different women. I even had a hat trick, three different women within twenty-four hours. It was pretty wild. From the guns to the girls, to the squatters’ camps, to the mansions, to the great people that I met, South Africa had it all. My only regret was that I never had the money to take my dad there. He would have loved it too—Dad had always dreamed of one day going to one of the game reserves and sleeping under the stars surrounded by the lions that I’d gone in search of on that dirt road.
RACIALLY, I’M AN INDIAN MAN. BUT THERE ARE THINGS THAT HAPPEN CULTURALLY THAT YOU WILL FIND UNACCEPTABLE IF YOU WERE NOT RAISED IN THAT PART OF THE WORLD.
Like the fact that in India, grown-ass men—GROWN-ASS MEN—hold hands with other men and walk down the street like everything’s okay. And they don’t just hold hands. They’re holding pinkies! To them, there’s nothing gay about it—“I’m holding my friend’s hand. What’s gay about that?”—but over here, there is no acceptable time for two straight men to ever touch hands. Ever.
Have you ever walked
to the mall with one of your guy friends and your hand accidentally bumps into his and you say, “WHAT-THE-FUCK-IS-WRONG-WITH-YOU? Get off me!” But in India, grown-ass men hold hands, and the best thing about it is that these guys still mac on chicks. Some of these guys act like thugs. They’ll be holding pinkies and eyeballing you, like they’re trying to start some shit.
I was at a beach in Bombay hanging out, and this gang of seventeen—no, sixteen, because seventeen’s an odd number and that would leave some guy alone not holding hands Anyhow, this gang is walking across the beach, holding pinkies, and giving everybody dirty looks … while wearing dress pants and flip-flops. And so I asked myself, How do you start a fight while holding another man’s hand?
I LOVE boxing. And like my dad, I’ve admired boxers since I was a kid. Over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to meet many of my boxing heroes and actually become friends with a few of them. But none of them had the impact on me that Vernon Forrest did.
That’s right: porn. I don’t deny being well versed in the subject, and so was Vernon.
I met Vernon in Atlanta on my birthday in 2007, when I was headlining a weekend at the Punchline Comedy Club. My opener that weekend was a comic named King Kedar, and he was friends with Vernon. King knew that I was a boxing nut, and I asked him to invite Vernon to one of my shows.
Vernon came to my Saturday night show and then we hung out backstage afterwards. He was a former WBC welterweight and two-time WBC super welterweight champion who had defeated Shane Mosley twice in 2002. He was also a U.S. Olympian in 1992. Based on his accomplishments, he could have been a complete dick, but he wasn’t. He was this gentle, soft-spoken guy who liked to laugh, and we really hit it off. We talked a lot about boxing, but where we really connected was on the subject of porn, of all things. That’s right: porn. I don’t deny being well versed in the subject, and so was Vernon. I told Vernon that I’d hook him up at the AVN (Adult Video News) Awards in Vegas.
Call Me Russell Page 18
