The movie wrapped and I felt as often I do at times designated for celebration, peculiarly cold. My first lead role had been a success, Judd and Nick and the studio loved it. Everybody was very excited about its potential, but as usual I had no partner to share it with. And Nobu wasn’t returning my calls.
†
Chapter 21
Bottle Rocket
After the death threats and hysteria that followed the first MTV VMA awards Nik and I swore that, no matter what, we would never, EVER host another award show. It’s too much aggro for not enough reward. But somehow, when MTV offered us the gig again I accepted. Mostly through pride and wanting to slay a few demons, I suppose. I didn’t like the way the previous year had been reported in the UK as a catastrophe, so I saw this as another chance, a way to redemption, a way to rewrite my personal history.
MTV said the awards would be huge, live from New York with performances from Jay-Z, Beyoncé and Lady Gaga and appearances from Madonna, Janet Jackson and Katy Perry. The MTV execs, Van Topfler, Dave Sirulnick and Jesse Ignjatovic, said they would go all out with the promo and my entrance if I agreed to host.
Previously I’d just strolled out into a silent and unseated room, this year the audience would be amped up and I would enter on a concealed hydraulic podium which would rise from beneath the stage with me ascending like a deity on a wedding cake while an as yet unconfirmed pop star introduced me with the Queen song “We Will Rock You”. The show would be coming from the legendary Radio City Hall, a five-thousand capacity venue, but cool and art deco, tiered and raked, a great performance space, certainly better than the mirthless aircraft hangar they held it in the previous year.
Nik and I considered if we could make this work, and we’re both a bit gung-ho and up for glory, so we said yes. From the moment we consented I was immersed once more in terror. What if it goes wrong? What if I say something crazy? I can’t take any more death threats; surely, eventually one of these lunatics is gonna have the integrity to carry out this flimsy vendetta against humour.
The VMAs took place during a busy time in our schedule. We’d finished the Greek but were now into a documentary about happiness and the current generation’s fixation with seeking satisfaction through self-indulgence and the fulfilment of desire. Who better to make this documentary than me? I’d also been offered the lead in a remake of the Dudley Moore movie Arthur which was being scripted by Peter Baynham, who wrote on Brass Eye, Alan Partridge and Borat, making him, in my view, one of the most influential comics of the last twenty years. So aside from barmy hubris there was no reason at all to get involved with the VMAs again. We were all there in New York, Nik, Nicola, Jack, Danny, Tom and Gareth plus lil’ Dan Weiner, a lovely twerp-squad of Brits and nits. Their presence was vital for me to navigate the meteor-scattered starscape of this most unrewarding award show.
We were staying at the swish Soho Grand, yet another of the hotels I stay at that are more interested in being cool than bringing you an egg sandwich, but they’re certainly more fastidious than the openly hostile Chelsea. The penthouse suite I occupied, paid for by MTV, was one of two on that floor, and whilst it wasn’t palatial it certainly made me question my role in achieving social equality. When you get famous, nameless ghosts bleed you of your principles like a pig. But it nags and bugs at the back of your mind, especially if it’s not where you’re from. You can’t drown out the echoes of your past by chinking glasses and slapping arses. Luckily I was much too consumed with selfish fear to worry about the galling inequality of the supposedly democratic Western world. Alfie had come along too, to take photographs and keep me relaxed, his sage-like advice, as ever, conflicting wildly with his ridiculous conduct.
We sat about the suite locked into the incredible amount of prep such events demand: a promotional film, in this case a parody of West Side Story, interviews, rehearsals, writing the script and junkets. Additionally the Vanity Projects team working on the documentary were prepping for our trip to Louisiana State Penitentiary to meet death row inmates and our spell in Fairfield, Iowa, where I would learn Transcendental Meditation. Into the hive came the hotel manager.
“Mr Brand,” he began, “the suite opposite has been booked by Miss Katy Perry, would it trouble you if she were to occupy that room?”
Obviously not. That would place her right within the sphere of my influence. Geography is destiny, said Napoleon, if she’s in the room opposite I’ll be able to destiny her brains out. She’s like a lamb to the slaughter! “Bring her in, Jeeves!” I hollered at the manager, who had by now departed. Nik had overheard the enquiry and my arrogant response.
“Hey, be careful, mate. They’ve got her down to do your intro, the last thing we need is you ballsin’ it up by givin’ her one the night before the show.”
“Sir,” I countered, “my sperm is an elixir, if I give her one the night before the show she will give the performance of her life!”
“Come on, mate. She’s living in the next room. What if you upset her? You’ll have it off with her and then she’ll see you doing the maid or some groupie or her assistant or make-up person or the bell-boy.”
“Alright, alright!” I conceded. “You have my word as an Englishman, I shall not seduce Miss Perry till after the show.” I was secretly thrilled that Nik thought I’d so easily enchant her, as I’d maintained a flickering curiosity since our kiss the previous year.
The next day at rehearsals in Radio City it was confirmed that Katy Perry would indeed be doing the “We Will Rock You” intro and the entire MTV top brass were frantic with worry that I’d jeopardise the show’s opening with my philandering. “Please, Russell,” they begged, “do not unleash your fierce charisma,” as if it were the Kraken. Rather enjoying the attention I surveyed my nails.
“Gentleman, I promise nothing, for the force that dwells within me is not of this Earth and will not do my bidding.”
By now we were in the auditorium, which the day before the show was a crackling inferno of activity with lights and sets being rigged and crews bustling and the entourages of the many stars, present to rehearse, fretting. Mine laughed at my dopey boasting.
“The thing about me is …” I announced to the assembly, “is I’m a sorcerer with the birds, an alchemist, you put a dame in front of me and I will hypnotise her with my sheer magne …” I was planning to say magnetism, in fact I had a whole brilliant speech to give on the subject of my supernatural ability with women but I had to stop to observe the bottle that was arcing towards my head at some pace from the other side of the room. Thud. Ouch.
The bottle hit me right on the head and although it was plastic, it was half full, or half empty, depending on your perspective, and it hurt. Everyone laughed. What had I done to deserve such insubordination? I surveyed the missile’s trajectory for clues to reveal the culprit – and there she stood. Beaming and pleased with herself, hidden by sunglasses, a beanie and a yellow sweater the sleeve of which was a giraffe glove-puppet concealing her right hand, Katy Perry stormed into the laughter she had created.
“Hey, Brand!” she cockily cawed.
I was aware of my mates and the MTV people watching this exchange – here was the woman they’d been beseeching me not to seduce. I needed to look cool. “Come on brain, let’s go,” I thought, but my brain wasn’t working properly, I think perhaps because of the bottle. Plus my stomach felt odd. Sort of sick.
“Got you on the head there, huh?” she said. “Kind of an easy target, it’s big and you’ve got that ridiculous hair …”
The lads, MY LADS, laughed. As did the MTV folk, plus a few of the crew stopped working to watch.
“Come on,” I appealed silently to myself in a split-second prayer. Wit, don’t fail me now. The audience looked on.
“Yes, your aim was impressive. Particularly as, judging from the fact that you’re wearing sunglasses indoors, you must be blind ...”
A laugh! Yes! Now move in. “Which would go some way to explaining your decision to wear that ridiculous s
weater.”
Double laugh, I’m winning, that’s 2–1! Unbelievably someone even shouts that out, literally keeping score. At this point the expanding audience make that sort of “Whoooooo …” noise that often follows a jibe in Jerry Springer, you know, where they say things like “You go, girlfriend!” or “Kick him to the curb!”
Katy, though, doesn’t miss a beat.
“You know it’s hard to take fashion advice from a man who looks like a lazy transvestite.”
Which I thought was a bit weak, but the crowd loves it. “2–2,” someone says. Bloody hell! This is like 8 Mile.
“Yes, I suppose I do look feminine …” I parry neatly, “… compared to you.” 3–2! Surely that’s enough to win this confounded match. I was doing well, especially given my head injury and the strange feeling in my stomach. I march up to her and command that she remove her glasses.
“I’m not removing anything I’m wearing around you, I could get herpes.”
The crowd loves it, of course they do, it’s a VD reference, the philistines.
Sensing this slanging match may not be going my way, I expertly sequester her away from the gawping crowd which now numbers about thirty and see if I can dazzle her better without an audience. She takes off her sunglasses, which I thought would give me an advantage, but it just made me feel more queasy. She has very beautiful eyes. Big and questioning, playful and tender. Away from the crowd my wit will surely return to full strength.
“Your bracelet,” I announce, “... is nice.” Thank God no one is keeping score now.
“You think so. Thanks.”
It is an Alexander McQueen bangle, a simple hoop with two skulls facing each other at the ends.
Wordlessly she smiles, removes it and places it on my wrist, gently handcuffing me.
The floor manager bellows that we are needed on stage to rehearse the intro.
We separate, and by now I’m feeling really weird like when you do acid and resist its mercurial pull – when you don’t, as Jim would say, “ride the snake”.
On stage I assume my position on the submerged hydraulic lift. You will get no clearer demonstration of the absurd juxtaposition between the appearance of fame and its actuality than the scenario I shall here outline. When cued by Katy’s introduction, both in rehearsal and “on the day”, as showbiz people coolly say, the lift will rise up through the stage to about thirty feet in height, at Radio City, whilst my name lights up in Gothic font on the huge backdrop and fireworks go off, I then turn wearing a gorgeous suit and top hat and descend the stairs passing Katy and Joe Perry from Aerosmith, who is doing a guitar solo, and begin my monologue.
Wow! How glamorous! The reality is that to be in position for the lift to carry me up I have to hunch in a tiny dark space on a platform under the stage for ages. My posture is further impaired by the top hat I’m wearing, so I have to crouch right down, which in turn means my trousers come half-way down my arse, so Nicola has to stand there hoisting them up and holding them in position whilst I clamp my top hat to my head like a chimney sweep politely doffing to a lady only to discover that it’s actually Medusa and is thus turned to stone in that ridiculous position. Then when I emerge I have to pull myself together in a split second and look all cool, instead of like a man who’s been crumpled up in terror with his pants down. It’s like being launched from a cell in Abu Ghraib straight into the Oscars and having to make your orange boiler suit look snazzy and pretend the dog wee is a fancy new cologne.
Crammed in my glamour pen like a reluctant Houdini I listen as Katy half-heartedly sings, the way they do when they rehearse, like they can’t be bothered, every syllable subtextually screaming, “I’ll do it better on the day.”
“We will, we will, rock you …”
I am shot through the stage, Nicola lets go of my trousers and I release my hat and act like my spine hasn’t been folded up like an ironing board.
“We will, we will, rock you …”
I look at my big daft name on the back wall and nervously come down the stairs. I look at her and it makes the vertigo worse.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she says, “please welcome the biggest queen I’ve ever met, Russell Brand!”
“4–3” I hear someone shout from the dark auditorium. I’m pretty sure it was Gareth.
I smile as I walk past her and sort of want to pull her hair. When I reach the end of the runway from where I will deliver the monologue, the stage that Katy is standing on is being lowered to make room for the next performance set-up. Slowly she descends, the ground swallowing her. My wit returns, like I always knew it would.
“Thank you for that introduction,” I began, then gesturing behind me, “And, before your very eyes, in a chilling foreshadow of the next twelve months, Katy Perry disappears without trace.” Just as her head passed from view.
I win. Or at least draw. But hey, who’s keeping score?
Afterwards I dash over to my mates to check how funny my last comment was, plus we’re in a hurry to get off because England have a World Cup qualifier against Ukraine. Katy and some of her friends are hanging around by the mixer.
I feel the bracelet on my wrist. I really don’t want to give it back but consider it would be ungentlemanly to stroll off with it.
“Erm. I’m going now, so …”
“OK,” she says and smiles.
“Well. We should stay in touch,” I mumble like a twit even though I’m going to see her the next day at the award show we’ve just rehearsed.
“Oh. Yes?” she replies. “And how are we going to do that? Smoke signals?”
She’s flirting. I think this is flirting. All my instincts are being affected by the head wound and stomach disruption. Plus now I’m getting short of breath and hot.
“I could give you my phone number?” I say. She takes it.
“Right. Bye then.” I go to leave, the football’s starting plus it is very hot in here.
“Oh, I forgot to give this back,” I say, flimsily attempting to remove the bracelet, but she interrupts.
“It’s OK. Keep it. To remind you of me.”
And I begin to understand what all these symptoms are. I look at her and it makes me feel still. Then looking into her eyes, quietly I say, “I don’t need anything to remind me of you.”
That is how I fell in love.
The next day we did the show, I was so nervous I tried to convince Nik to call the theatre claiming to be a terrorist and say he’d planted a bomb there.
“I’m not doing that, mate.”
The show went great. Kanye West took a bullet for me, his reverse stage dive on Taylor Swift meant we overran and I cut gags that would’ve seen me lynched.
Throughout I carried the bracelet in my pocket. Even though she was there.
The next night we went on our first date and she was so funny and pretty but more importantly she emits some gentle power that makes me want to be good. You’ll think it frivolous of me to say I knew I’d marry her on that first date, but the truth is I fell in love with her when she hit me with that bottle. Like Cupid in a riot.
From the first date I changed. No more women. Well, actually, thousands of women. I wake up to a different one each day, but they’re all her.
She’s sleeping next to me now, tranquil and silently beguiling, it’s impossible to ally her with the incandescent girl that blazes through the day. Her hand rests on her shoulder and I can see the ring I gave her when I asked her to marry me, at midnight on New Year’s Eve in India, under a full moon, a blue moon. Once in a blue moon. She said yes. She chose me, bottled me and cuffed me. And now this is my life, my girl, this beautiful woman.
Just her and the revolution.
†
Picture Section
In Malaysia I became a rock’n’roll writer.
Wearing the hat I would soon dazzle Puff Daddy in, I relax with my social conscience, John Rogers, and my ball-breaking patriarch, John Noel.
Me and Nik as Christ before and after crucifixio
n. (I am in make-up not post-traumatic stress.)
Panda-eyed Mick, Havering Hulk Danny O’Leary, me and Nik on tour.
My view from the back of Mick’s motor. “Watch out for the bus, Mick,” Danny is hopefully saying.
We went clay pigeon shooting and realised immediately posh people do it. It’s fucking great. I wish I wasn’t a vegetarian – I’d go on a rampage.
We picked this photo of John Rogers because it makes him look mental. Just to be cruel. He’s done nothing to deserve it.
This one makes Gareth look like a ponce. He does deserve it.
Me and Gee fighting with the lightsabers I bought him for Christmas. He literally loved them. Like a child.
Me and Jack – both Irons – in the Hammers dressing room. That slogan is NOT sarcastic.
My adored godson Ollie is tickled into submission in Leytonstone.
His little brother Joey – Baby Brian Jones – hangs out in the garden. No swimming pool – thank God.
Me, Nicola and Minnie in our West Hollywood home. I ruined that photo – but, hey, they ruined my life.
I fell in love with Helen Mirren during Arthur. I bought her this bear, which she refused to have in her house because in her words, “He has an unsavoury look in his eyes.”
Set list on fist, in San Francisco.
Me and Puffy on our way to Hatton vs Pacquiao, probably discussing that girl’s bum.
On a jet with Puffy. Yep, that’s my life.
Alfie took these shots around the 09 VMAs. Big Dan makes me feel like a natural woman.
Tom, Jack, Gareth and me hang out in the room opposite a girl who would soon make me hot, then cold, then hot again.
Alfie – my sponsor, photographer friend – took the photo from which the genius Shepard Fairey illustrated the amazing cover, by which you should judge this book.
Booky Wook 2: This Time It's Personal Page 26
