I interviewed Russell Brand in mid-October. 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 cozy chat with Russell about his new book and DVD seemed as relevant as rabies.
Now Russell has fled to Los Angeles; 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 offense.”
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’ granddaughter). What he wouldn’t take responsibility for was the furor.
“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 newspaper 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 program won’t hinder that.
But Ross’ 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 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 we 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 — accessorized with diamante belts, clunking chains and enormous 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 who fancies himself despite his ludicrous hair. He knows all this. He makes jokes about it. Plus, he’s been in Narcotics Anonymous since December 2002 and so does that tedious 12 Steps thing of spending hours analyzing 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 apologize, 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 Brand 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 US President George W. Bush as that “retarded cowboy feller,” Russell launches into a reply which, when I transcribe it, is more than 1,500 words long. To summarize: at the actual awards, he went down better than he’d expected, no matter what happened afterwards. He realizes 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-a-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 radio station (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 US$100-million 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.”
How to interview Russell without his mad flamboyance stealing the show? Let’s take time out for a recap of his life. Born on June 4, 1975, in 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 poor, Barbara suffered cancer three times during her son’s formative years, and when Brand was 7 she hooked up with stepdad Colin, whom Brand hated. Brand’s dad, Ron, had left when he was 6 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 color-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 recognize 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.”
There’s an incident in his autobiography where an elderly neighbor, 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 neighbor 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.
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