Booky Wook 2: This Time It's Personal

by Russell Brand

  This piece of good fortune, however, was not then garnished with market-driven plasticity, for the show itself in content was a rambling anarchic shambles where the three of us would harp on about our daily lives and torment each other like a bunch of dopey mates on a Sunday morning – which is what we were. It wasn’t a contrivance, it was legit. The only production came in the form of a few items, like competitions and the occasional (much too occasional, the station’s core listeners would argue) record. The BBC would give us grown-up producers to curtail us and to massage the mayhem into something resembling radio, but I always kicked against authority, usually our stewards would buckle like substitute teachers, and we’d continue with the chaos.

  For an idyllic few months, while my fame buzzed along at a manageable level – a growing audience on Big Brother, a devoted MTV following – the 6 Music show was free-form fun. Perfect. We had the piratical spirit of Radio Caroline, it was naughty but in harmony with its listeners who stayed in constant email contact, sending requests and enquiries and flirting with us on MySpace. Me and Matt would bully the impossibly English Trevor about his specs and tank tops and incompetence around women, me and Trev would rile Matt about his hypochondria, and the pair of them would forever try to puncture the fast-expanding bubble of my pomposity. We thrived in the slipstream, sailing up the iTunes charts till the mainstream came a-calling when Kate Moss’s brief fly-over provided a GM boost to the natural crop. When Jonathan Ross, the king of chat, the icon of proletariat triumph in the bourgeois world of television, wanted me to be a guest on his Friday night chat show.

  With that appearance and the subsequent brouhaha, the merry burble beneath the radar became a jagged siren that could not be ignored. Fame seeped in through every crack, soon the radio show was sodden with references to my new and exciting life, and we went to the top of the iTunes chart, replacing Ricky Gervais’s record-breaking podcasts.

  I was resolutely single and suddenly women were available and I did not sip like a connoisseur, I barged through the vineyard kicking over barrels and guzzling grapes as they grew. Chianti, Bordeaux, Champagne, Thunderbirds – it’s all the same to me, frenzied and famished I chewed through glass and clenched the soil.

  This is the kind of conduct that the News of the World and Daily Star relish. Soon the Sunday rags oozed with tales of my misdeeds, ghosts of the past rose from their graves, slung on a négligé and sputtered up half-truths for lazy bucks.

  The machinery of celebrity grinds into life with alarming pace and clarity. I was abstracted from myself, cast as Lothario and condemned for crimes of their creation. One night after a gig an attractive girl accompanied me home. Once there I assumed there might be some canoodling, instead she snooped about the place like she’d been sent to flush out a mouse. It was agreed that we’d never be wed and she cleared off. Forty-eight hours later I was astonished to see an exclusive piece in the Sunday Mirror in which she recounted the experience in vulgar detail. It transpired that she was an undercover journalist, UNDERCOVER! Like I was running a sweatshop, or an illegal whelk-picking operation.

  Has journalism sunk so that the practitioners of the profession of Bob Woodward and Charles Dickens are truffling out scoops by pretending to be up for bum fumble? Not to expose a terrifying circle of nonces or racists but simply to gain entry into one man’s private life? Would John Pilger, to expose corruption in the developing world, turn up at the palace of some sweltering general smothered in peach lip-gloss with his quim all waxed? I should coco! He’s a professional. She didn’t find much of note, only observing that I had a flat-screen TV and a Jacuzzi (I had neither) and that the cat’s food was in a bowl on the floor – where the hell else would it be? If you put it on the sideboard he can’t reach it and if you put it on the ceiling it falls out.

  A few weeks after appearing on Jonathan’s chat show he invited me to his home. It was a glimpse of a possible future. His wife Jane is beautiful, doting and fun, his children are confident, polite, cheeky and balanced (that’s their characters not their names, he’s not that mad), and the house is a vibrant den of pets and pleasure. I saw there a chance to break the chain of dysfunction of which I was the conclusion and to which I still clung.

  Could I settle with a beautiful girl who truly loved me and build something real, that would remain after the fanfare and nourish my heart like a Tuscan supper instead of surviving on instant soup and blue drinks? I could not, I was blazing through thin air, spun out on vertigo and fellatio.

  At Jonathan’s house, when the canine riot abates and he talks, you can see why he has become the host of a nation’s Friday night. Where confidence ends some new quality is assumed that smoothes you through the evening, relaxed and entertained. Jane will once in a while roll her eyes more deftly than he’ll ever roll an “R” and reminds him that he’s being daft, but they both know it’s thoroughly amusing. Jonathan seemingly himself selects which will be the UK’s next comedy phenomenon, he did it with Vic and Bob, Little Britain, Ricky Gervais, The Mighty Boosh, and now he had chosen me. He has a fine sense of humour – not only is he funny, he also recognises it in others. He has maintained his relevance for decades and, even though he was thought of as cool and edgy when I watched him as a kid, he has now, whilst the country’s most highly paid broadcaster, kept that edge and remained relevant. He is a good bloke. One night after I’d sought sanctuary at his house he gave me a lift home in some daft orange car which, had he not been driving, I’m sure he could’ve worn. The unfamiliar domestic comfort I’d experienced had heightened my awareness of my teetering solitude. For a moment fame felt scary. Jonathan sensed my disease.

  “How you coping with it all?”

  “Yeah. It’s alright. I feel bit lonely sometimes. A bit exposed.” Jonathan employed compassion. As much compassion as a millionaire entertainer in a sports car, puffing on a huge cigar, can ever be expected to show. He exhaled.

  “When you get famous,” he began, “they give you a lot.” The millions, the car, the cigar? I wondered. “But they also take something from you.” He inhaled. “And you don’t ever get it back.” The car then filled with smoke and Jonathan gave me a smile that suggested he’d be there for me if it ever got too tough. I didn’t know just how close.

  The kiss and tells ripened through the summer, and every morning paper brought a new harvest. Barely did I have a kiss that didn’t entail a tell. To me though it didn’t seem pejorative, it merely helped the narrative which they’d concocted, in which I was complicit, that I was a wild man Lothario. These terms were actually used – wild man, oddball, sex insect, spindle-limbed lust merchant, sex inspector; I may’ve invented some of them, but that was very much the tone. It suited me, though; it was a type of notoriety that I enjoyed. The more right-wing papers used me as an icon of moral decline. In the Daily Mail I was second only to immigrants and paedophiles as the most dangerous entity to have breached our shores. “Lock up your daughters,” they bawled. If, when you encounter that kind of hysteria, you’re viewing it through a lens of agonised memories of discontent and rejection, it kind of feels like approval. Bruce Dessau, a respected comedy critic, interviewed me for a proper paper and said, “You realise you’re a phenomenon, don’t you?” I genuinely didn’t. I’d noticed now that my lifelong self-obsession seemed to have crept into a consciousness beyond my skull. But as my life has been a devotional pursuit of success, its arrival is only noticeable piecemeal, or when an icon appeared upon the horizon.

  “Noel Gallagher was here asking for you,” said the ecstatic barman at the pub in the West End of London where I was doing stand-up, almost clambering over to embrace me. “He asked what time the gig was on and if you were definitely performing, then he left.” Noel Gallagher, yob poet, spitting lyrics and epigrams and scoring a decade with what I’d call nonchalance – if it wasn’t so French and he wasn’t so English. David Walliams lives in Noel’s old house in Belsize Park, Celebrity Strasse. When Oasis ruled the world “Supernova Heights” was his Camelot. My dram
a school was round the corner and at night I’d take penniless romps down that road, sometimes drunk, sometimes tripping, and sometimes I’d not even be high so I’d try and get a buzz off the fumes of his success. I’d look through the wrought-iron gates and imagine what marvellous excesses went on behind the frosted glass. Now Noel Gallagher had come looking for me. I quizzed the barman. “It was definitely him, was it? I mean we ain’t that far from London Zoo – phone and check they’ve done a roll call at the monkey house.”

  Noel has got a brilliant sense of humour (I hope), he came that night and we hung out with his partner Sara (too good for him) and my dad (about his level), we talked about football mostly and I was touched by his awareness of the impact of his persona. People that famous can obviously be intimidating, and sometimes instead of speaking I’d just stare at him and run out of stuff to say. Noel would fill these gaping junctures with the sort of questions a hairdresser might ask just to keep the chat going – “Been on holiday this year?” or “Do you want some mousse for that?” But I shan’t forget his surprising social dexterity and compassion in what could’ve been an awkward situation – certainly if left to me. Because as he spoke and smiled and swigged, my mind strolled down memory lane to five years earlier, to Drama Centre in Camden. I was transported to the drunken 3am vigils I’d observe when staggering back from some crack-shack. Noel’s gaff and Oasis represented hope and escape for a lot of people, that’s why it’s a fucking good name.

  I asked him to come on 1 Leicester Square and the 6 Music show and he came on both and was well funny. I saw a side to him that I was unaware of – I think we all know he can be a bit of a wag and can dart out a one-liner when required, but he was funny in a daft way – he did voices, VOICES. Plus he was camp and silly. He obviously enjoyed coming on the radio show and, ridiculously, became a regular feature. He’d just stroll over from his nearby home and join in. He elevated the radio show and effortlessly made it more special. He stayed involved to the very end.

  From the get-go that show had a propensity for aggravation. It was oftentimes daft and gentle, with music-hall banter and light ribbing, but Lesley loved me and gave me lots of room – so I took that room. We began to wind up the newsreaders, throwing to the news in a childish fashion, goading them into including daft words in the news. I went too far and started claiming that during the news I’d be under the desk, interacting in an intimate manner with the newswoman as she racily recited massacres and football scores. She was a bit upset. Another time, my mate Ade who’s in a wheelchair was refused entry into a nightclub and I mounted an on-air campaign to condemn them – which, while good hearted, put the BBC in a difficult position legally as the club could not respond to Ade’s allegations.

  These skirmishes were minor – nothing was to get in the way of my inexorable rise, everyone was talking about me, I was living like a teetotal Bacchanalian. It was time for me to make a pilgrimage, for all this success was built around comedy and I am a comedian. Yes, there is an unusual degree of tacked-on glamour and pelvic thrusting, but under the hairspray and hysteria I am but a joker, and it was time for me to return to every stand-up’s Jerusalem – the Edinburgh Festival, the festival at which I’d been arrested, attacked and hospitalised, where I’d fought it out at late-night bear-pit gigs and gouched on smack on stage, and once employed, Fagin-like, a tearaway gang of local children to promote my show. Where, once clean, I’d toiled to earn the respect of my peers and laboured over my craft till I could go toe to toe with anyone. Now it was time for me to take Edinburgh by storm, to stand above it like the castle, to light the sky like the Hogmanay rockets. I was returning as a star, to show them what rock’n’roll comedy is all about. I was going to tear it up, show ’em where I’m from, go crazy. I was ready for anything they could throw at me.

  †

  They complained about those kids. And they weren’t crazy about the heroin either.

  GILDED BALLOON

  To Russell Brand

  Pablo Diablo

  22 August 2000

  Dear Russell Brand

  I have been made aware of several incidents involving the children you have working for you. Firstly I must point out that it is against employment law to employ minors in any capacity and that the Gilded Balloon does not allow children to work in any of its venues or areas.

  There was an incident on Monday when items were taken from the Production office. You were informed of this and those involved have been barred from the administrative areas.

  I have now had further complaints from Venue Managers of the same children causing a nuisance in and outside of venues. This has involved the throwing of items at people queuing for shows and abuse being given to staff and customers of the Gilded Balloon. This is unacceptable.

  I must therefore insist that these children are no longer admitted to any Gilded Balloon venues or public areas and that you cease to employ them - illegally - to do flyering for you.

  I am sorry to have to take this action, but they are causing a great nuisance to staff and customers alike and I would appreciate it if you could advise them to no longer come to the Gilded Balloon.

  I hope that I do not have to take this matter further

  Yours Sincerely

  Mick Bateman

  General Manager

  cc. Karen Koren, Artistic Director

  Chapter 6

  No Means NOooo

  There’s nothing more tragic than being in Edinburgh on 1 September, the day after the festival, or indeed in the first few days of August before it starts. Because of my inability to be punctual, my unmanageability and my lack of planning, I’ve experienced both the bookends of the month of August when Edinburgh pulls you into its cultural embrace; a cerebral carnival, not a carnival of just decadence. There is such a strong sense of unity in the city, a common manner of purpose, ad hoc venues hastily formed from dentists’ waiting rooms and people performing on street corners. But “the day after”, like the post-H-bomb TV movie that goes by that name, Edinburgh is bereft and eery or like Emily’s shop when Bagpuss has gone back to sleep – still nice, but where’s the magic? Edinburgh in its post-festival slump probably doesn’t have the agonising pathos that Bagpuss had– nor does it raise so many questions, like: why was a little girl trusted to run a second-hand shop? How come Bagpuss could turn inanimate objects into dancing mice and pompous woodpeckers just by waking up? I don’t want to get all “Joseph Campbell”, but that’s what Jesus did with Lazarus. Where’s Bagpuss’s gospel? Probably never penned because, as Matt once wisely observed, the woodpecker bookend Professor Yaffel is a handicraft doppelgänger of that Godless stick-in-the-mud Richard Dawkins. Whenever Bagpuss was delighting the gallery with some unlikely thesis on a bottle or a ballet shoe, claiming them to be rocket ships or Minotaur mittens, Yaffle would coldly high-jack these flights of fancy – “Rocket ship? Why that’s nothing but an old bottle. A Minotaur’s mitten? It’s a dirty old shoe. Islam? It’s inherently violent.” Why can’t Professors Yaffle and Dawkins just let us all enjoy a nice story? I expect Dawkins would say that it’s because he opposes ignorance, especially where it causes war and bloodshed. Well, I happen to think people cause wars, not ideologies, and were we to be united by one, drab godless dogma we’d be murdering each other over who ate the last croissant within an hour.

  The first time I went up to Edinburgh I arrived two days early, which is embarrassing, like arriving at a party early or misjudging the mood and touching a date’s thigh or calling your teacher “Mummy”. If I call a teacher “Mummy” now, it is a part of a cheeky little sex-game – not a kindergarten blunder – I think sometimes my sexual pursuits are like time travel: I Quantum Leap back into my past to try and unravel some perceived slight or wrong. “Hmm, those teachers didn’t respect me – I’ll drag a few back to my chamber, that’ll remedy the wrongs of the past.” I’m like Marty McFly hurtling “Back to the Future” to paint in a new present. He seemed to have an unusual interest in sex with his mother for the pro
tagonist of a children’s film – he couldn’t keep his hands off her. What on earth were our young minds supposed to glean from that? Time travel is possible and by the way have you noticed what a lovely arse your mum’s got?

  So it’s a drag to arrive at the festival early, but at least there’s hope. Not like the day after the festival, when it’s all gone, like looking into the eyes of someone who no longer loves you, all the more empty for how full it once was. In the middle, however, it’s amazing and exciting, and in Booky Wook – the hit autobiography (now a major motion picture in my mind) – I mentioned the excitement of the first time I went up there as part of a play with students from Webber Douglas and performed my first ever stand-up. I went there the next year with Nigel Klarfeld and it built. My first Edinburgh after becoming famous was an altogether different experience. That year Ricky Gervais literally overshadowed everything, he was performing at Edinburgh Castle for eight thousand people and caused a lot of acrimony and jealousy. But I didn’t really mind it myself, I just thought, “Ricky Gervais will be up in that castle, it doesn’t make that much difference, some military thing goes on there usually – the Tattoo, and I don’t mind that either, just bombast and pomp, a needless display of antiquated power.” There’s an easy joke to do here along the lines of “and the Tattoo’s a bit pompous an all” but I admire Ricky and his success. However, the structure of that sentence does demand that I at least draw your attention to the potential for that quip.