Confessions of a randy dandy (Russell Brand features)

[IRiSHMaFIA]

Dominic Cavendish reviews Russell Brand at the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh

He's only playing a small, 120-seat venue for one week, but he's the biggest comedy sensation at this year's Fringe. Such is the public hunger now to see Russell Brand in the flesh that tickets for his show, a warm-up run for his first UK tour, were gobbled up months in advance, and have been trading for silly sums.

Brand is shameless: 'Single women in the audience, you're thinking, 'He's on telly, he's unobtainable.' I'm completely obtainable!'

After years of bubbling under as a cult phenomenon, Essex's most glamorously debauched, quickest-witted son has finally erupted into the mainstream. He is, as the young female fan sitting next to me says, "the man of the moment".

Just how Brand has attained celebrity at the age of 31 is an object lesson in how names are made in Noughties Britain. As the flamboyant, foppish host of Big Brother's Big Mouth, the daily E4 show dissecting the contestants' doings, Brand showed more force of personality than all the housemates combined.

But it's the media allure of his off-screen antics that have swung it for him: what with his rock-star looks and tales of drug addiction, eating disorders, and compulsion to bed women (including, reportedly, Kate Moss), he's the randy stuff of tabloid hacks' dreams.

Bemused by his newfound notoriety, Brand treats us to a scathingly funny rebuttal of a red-top story that he tried and failed to cadge some eyeliner off Tamara Beckwith at a party - "I've never even been in the same room as her!" he protests, riffing on the absurd mental image conjured by the description of the It girl as a "plum-voiced fox".

An enjoyable detour about his televised spat with Bob Geldof at the NME Awards aside, though, it's not his public misdemeanours, fabricated or otherwise, that form the thrust of this hour-long ramble. Flouncing around the stage in his trademark crotch-hugging tight jeans and half-unbuttoned skimpy shirt, Brand shares a stash of memories that make him blush to the core.

He begins gently, with revelations about the time he attempted to rile a group of oiky blokes at a baggage reclaim with some ill-considered camp cooing. Before long, however, he's frantically simulating masturbatory actions, reliving the embarrassment of verbal "clangers" during sex, and offering "take-home knowledge" on the value of spittle. By the end, he's beyond shame, delivering a collective come-on: "Single women in the audience, you're thinking, 'He's on telly, he's unobtainable.' I'm completely obtainable!"

Seedy, shallow? The risk is that you'll come away feeling soiled. But, right now, Brand possesses such a beguiling charm that his dandyish loucheness comes across as a fearless hankering after a new kind of honesty and a less macho kind of masculinity. What awkwardness there is can't survive those daffy childlike catchphrases - " 'Barrassing, isn't it?", "Excitin'!"

Given his erudite turn of phrase - he relishes words such as "apotheosis", "ritualistic", "nomenclature" - it would be a huge pity if Brand used the sledgehammer of his wit to crack sleazy anecdotal nuts indefinitely. For the time being, though, he's absolutely earned his right to be this year's cock of the walk.

Tour details: www.russellbrand.com

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Ohhhhh I'd love to go see him. He just cracks me up everytime he opens his mouth. Like many have said already, he was the reason BB was worth watching because he put so much fun into it all.

Faceless go see him and take pics for meeee!

[faceless]

[faceless]

EXCLUSIVE: BRAND FACES PARTY RAPE PROBE
By Jane Hamilton

TELLY host Russell Brand is to be questioned over a woman's claim she was drug-raped at a party in Edinburgh. The 20-year-old student says she woke up at the Big Brother's Big Mouth star's rented flat the morning after he threw a party there. She has told police officers she believed her drink could have been spiked with a date-rape drug during the party, which came after flamboyant Brand, 31, hosted a night in a trendy bar.

Brand was renting the flat in the New Town's North Castle Street while doing his stand-up show Shame at the Festival Fringe. The woman says she went to a party at the flat after going to a night Brand hosted in the Tonic bar nearby. She claims she cannot remember anything after she was offered an alcoholic drink by someone at the party.

The next morning she spoke to friends then went to hospital before calling the police to report her claims. The woman has been interviewed by specially trained officers and has been examined for forensic evidence. Officers want to speak to everyone who attended the party and will interview Brand this week after he returns to Britain following a holiday. They will also interview the comedian's BBC Radio 6 sidekicks Trevor Lock and Matt Morgan, who the woman says were also at the party.

There were several other guests who police will also try to trace as part of the investigation. The woman went to the party after attending Brand's show at the Assembly Rooms in George Street last Sunday. He issued an onstage invitation to audience members to come to the bash he was throwing at Tonic. The woman told police she was invited to Brand's flat to continue the party with several other people from the bar in the early hours of Monday.

A police source said: "The woman has said she remembers going to the flat and having a drink but nothing after that. She woke up the next morning and felt very uncomfortable, as if she had sex. She went home and discussed it with a friend, who persuaded her to attend hospital. After she was examined, staff there advised her to contact the police."

The source added: "Brand and the other two men who lived there will be questioned next week. Officers are taking the woman's allegation seriously."

It is understood there were several other people in the flat at the time of the alleged attack. A spokeswoman for Lothian and Borders Police said yesterday: "We are investigating a report of a sexual assault which is believed to have taken place in a flat in Edinburgh. We are carrying out an investigation and a number of people are still to be traced and interviewed. As a result, we cannot comment further."

Camply-dressed Brand, who has been linked to supermodel Kate Moss as well as a number of former Big Brother contestants, has confessed that he could never stick to just one woman. The former heroin, crack and alcohol addict said: "There is always one more beautiful than the last." It was claimed last week that he had been having a fling with rocker Courtney Love, 41, widow of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain.

Essex-born Brand was expelled from a number of schools, including the famous Italia Conti theatre school, where he was thrown out after being found high on drugs during class. He was sacked by MTV in 2001 - at the height of his addiction - after turning up for work dressed as Osama bin Laden the day after the September 11 atrocities in New York and Washington. Brand is reported to have been arrested 11 times, once for stripping off at antiglobalisation protests in 2001.

Comedians Morgan and Lock are best known as Brand's sidekicks on his BBC 6 radio show. Lock - nicknamed Cocky Locky - became known for his Lock's Sonic Enigma in which he challenges listeners to identify pop songs from a series of clues. He is set to feature in Brand's new project for Channel 4, Now O'Clock Show. Morgan is one of his closest friends and he, like Lock, has shared the stage with Brand during his live show. The comic and his flatmates have already come under fire from the owner of the flat who said they had left it looking like a 'pigsty'.

Brand is on holiday in Marrakech but is due back this week. His agent, John Noel, did not respond to messages left by the Sunday Mail yesterday.

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The idea that Brand would need to use drugs to get some groupie in bed with him is pretty laughable! Also, the line from the cop that went "She felt uncomfortable, as if she had sex" got me thinking...

[pirtybirdy]

It probably wasn't Brand that did it, but it could have been someone else at the party. I guess we'll see.

[faceless]

'I know nothing about any rape'
Brand's statement over alleged assault

Russell Brand has denied any knowledge of an alleged rape said to have occurred at the flat he rented during the Edinburgh Fringe. Police are investigating claims that a 20-year-old student had been drugged and raped at a party in the comic?s temporary New Town accommodation.

In a statement, his managers said: ?Russell Brand has no knowledge of, let alone any involvement in, the alleged assault of an Edinburgh woman. Mr Brand understands that a woman who, with a number of other people, visited his rented flat during the Edinburgh Fringe, has made a complaint to the police. Mr Brand has no knowledge of what the complaint is about other than what has been published in the press. As it was Mr Brand's flat, the police have asked to speak with him on his return from holiday and he is happy to assist the police with their inquiries. ?Mr Brand now asks that the deeply offensive, untrue and unfair press speculation should stop.?

Police plan to talk to everyone who attended the party, held on the last weekend of the festival.

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[IRiSHMaFIA]

[faceless]

so it turns out that Brand's sidekick on his radio show, Trevor Lock, has been charged with rape... I didn't think it would have had to do with Brand, but it's not any better that there actually is enough evidence to charge anyone.

[faceless]

An homme fatale always has the last laugh
PROFILE: Russell Brand
Sunday Times

Russell Brand first got a name for notoriety when he was fired from MTV. It was probably a mistake to introduce his drug dealer to an unsuspecting Kylie Minogue, but what really cooked his goose was turning up for work dressed as Osama Bin Laden the day after 9/11. Since then the 31-year-old hellraiser has kicked an 11-year drug habit, clawed back his career as the star presenter of Big Brother's Big Mouth and reportedly had his evil way with scores of women, including Kate Moss. On Tuesday, exactly five years after his sacking, he begins his own television chat show on E4.

The award-winning comedian delighted the tabloids last week by goading the singer Rod Stewart into defending the virtue of his daughter against Brand's amorous intentions. The old rocker, a legendary swordsman in his day, challenged Brand's boast that he had tried to seduce Kimberly Stewart, and extracted Brand's lame admission that 'I never touched that girl'.

The occasion was an award ceremony at which Brand was named most stylish man of the year in honour of a flamboyant fashion sense that he has characterised as midway between a Victorian pimp and a sadomasochistic Willy Wonka. Brand has a talent for inducing apoplexy in girls' fathers and the spat with Stewart was reminiscent of his verbal horse-whipping by Bob Geldof at the NME awards, hosted by Brand in February. Receiving his award, Geldof began his speech: "Russell Brand . . . what a c***."

Whereupon Brand demonstrated his dexterity as a stand-up comedian with the cruel riposte: "Geldof's the best person to speak about famine, seeing as he's been dining out on "I Don't Like Mondays" for 30 years." Geldof, it seems, was worried about the honour of his daughter Peaches. There's no doubt the mans a devil with the women. He's a beguiling 6ft 2in confection of Cuban heels, tight jeans, snake hips, Byronic shirts, hollow cheeks and eyeliner that gives him the look of a hungry angel, all topped off with a floating bird's nest of hair. Alternatively, he's been described as a mixture of Dot Cotton and Kenneth Williams.

Given all the grooming and narcissism, it would be more convenient to be gay, he has confessed. He tried homosexuality once during an orgy but decided it just wasn't him. 'He wasn't even a good-looking man,' he recalled. 'But I have this kind of roaring heterosexuality. Traditional, uncomplicated heterosexuality, an almost clich'd Robin [Confessions of a Window Cleaner] Askwith thing. People have always said, 'Are you gay'' But it's just not in me.'

His liaison with Moss began when he picked her up during one of his gigs with the memorable words: 'I know you want to shag me but you're just going to have to wait a couple of hours until I've finished the show.' Moss's fury after he crowed to the press has left him coy about mentioning her. It did not stop him from claiming that he had entertained five women in a day and observing that three at a time gets 'logistically difficult'. It seems he can't avoid controversy. A woman claimed she was raped in his rented Ediburgh flat last month. She alleged her drink could have been spiked with a date-rape drug. Brand denied being involved and it was reported yesterday that another man had been charged.

He's not just a pretty face in his own mirror. He's a really funny guy who has wrung superlatives from the critics. One said: 'He is an original talent, a rare break from the steady stream of solid comics with solid jokes and solid laughs and no aftertaste at all.' His frenetic humour drove his devoted audience into hysterics on his E4 show Big Brother's Big Mouth, in which a studio audience discussed the misdoings of the most recent Big Brother housemates. The show's guests have included Tom Cruise, Uma Thurman and Christian Slater. Its success has led to his new television debate show, Russell Brand's Got Issues, in which he will conduct personalities and a studio audience in comic discussion of contentious and topical issues.

Then there's his acting. He appeared in the made-for-television movie White Teeth and won a part in Mark Palansky's film Penelope, with Reese Witherspoon and Christina Ricci. He morphs into darker, more confessional mode for his stand-up routines, which mine his degenerate past of drugs, mental illness, a dozen arrests and sleeping with prostitutes. His recent eight-night show, Shame, at the Edinburgh Fringe was a sell-out, eclipsing the memory of his ejection from the city's Gilded Ballroom for abusive behaviour in 2004. The Times called it 'a fitfully brilliant show'. He was named best stand-up of 2006 by Time Out magazine.

Performing comedy, he discovered, was like drugs 'an instant addiction. The first time I took drugs, I took drugs every day until I stopped 11 years later,' he said. His first experience of heroin, bought from some street boys, was divine. 'Finding heroin, it's like God's home, a lover. Just this feeling of being engulfed by warmth, everything moving away, your life, everything, and withdrawing into this beautiful sanctuary.' Heroin and cocaine crowned a pile of drugs that had included grass, acid and amphetamines. Which is perhaps why his Bin Laden stunt misfired so badly.

Brand says he wouldn't do it now, but maintains it had a point: 'There's a distinction between those poor terrible people dying in those towers over there and me doing a joke about it over here. I think one function of comedy is to expose and unravel fear.' He claims to have been drug-free for four years and is patron of the rehab charity Focus 12, which treated him. The doctors pronounced that if he didn't stop immediately he would be dead, in prison or in a mental hospital within six months. His substitute for heroin is the spiritual feeling he gets from looking at a beautiful valley, being up a mountain or falling in love, which he claims to do 'every day for eight minutes'. With equal frequency he denies to the tabloids that he is a sex addict.

Brand did not have an auspicious start. He was born on June 5, 1975, in Grays, Essex, an only child whose parents divorced. His mother Barbara was a secretary who struggled to make ends meet. Her three bouts of cancer while he was growing up left him with an abiding sense of nihilism. 'You've only got yourself, haven't you,' he said. 'That's the only thing you can hold on to. For me, I find it hard to motivate myself to keep breathing.' Treated for depression, he was thought to be bipolar, a state compounded by the binge-eating and vomiting syndrome of bulimia. It was a rare condition among boys, but he found it 'euphoric'.

He did not get on with his stepfather and felt lonely, fat and inadequate. Then at 13 he fell in love with the stage while performing in a school production of Bugsy Malone. 'Things started going horribly wrong and I had to improvise my way out of it,' he told a magazine. 'And people laughed, and I felt this sudden rush of adrenaline surging through me. It was like a drug.' He was accepted into the Italia Conti stage school and the Camden drama centre, but his disruptive behaviour ' 'smashing things up, crying and cutting myself' ' got him expelled from both. By then he was smoking, drinking and experimenting with drugs.

An urge for self-destruction has never left him. 'I've had this thing in me, a bacchanalian impulse. The thing that says there's only this, there's only now, there's nothing else, so f*** everything. I have to say to myself, 'Remember, you've got all these things to do, don't ruin it just for the moment'.' Inspired by his comedy idols Reeves and Mortimer, Eddie Izzard and Richard Pryor, he tried his hand at stand-up and won a nomination as the Hackney Empire's new act of the year in 2000. He got work with MTV on Select, Jackass and Re:Brand, as well as Xfm radio. But he bought drugs with the money and his '100-a-day slide to oblivion began. After he was dumped by MTV, Xfm let him go because he read out pornographic letters on air. He lost a role in Cruise of the Gods, a Steve Coogan comedy, and parted company with his agent.

He has a vague memory of a night when he accepted an invitation from two girls to go back to their room. Then he was prodded awake and found himself on a bed surrounded by an old woman, several children and an angry man in a sarong.
'Evidently I'd got up in the night in this girl's hotel room, gone to the toilet and ended up in another room,' he recalled. 'What I love most about it is that there must have been a point when I got in bed with them naked.'

The turning point came when his new agent, John Noel, sent him for rehabilitation treatment. Slowly, all the television and radio work returned. With his star in the ascendant, he plans several new shows, including a sitcom for Radio 2. Brand claims to be seeking a woman who can help him to end his libertine ways. He has even tried chastity, albeit as a television experiment. The experience was, he declared, 'awful'.



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[faceless]

SEX, DRUGS AND... SMARTIES
By Jules Stenson

SKINNY superstud Russell Brand is one of the coolest men in the country, even after coming clean about romping with a vacuum cleaner. The Big Brother's Big Mouth star has mouthed off to the News of the World about his greatest loves, and his biggest turn?off...a bowl of Smarties at an orgy!

His new show, Russell Brand's Got Issues, has been running on digital channel E4 and will move to Channel 4 in November. "It's good at the moment, but we're still perfecting it. When it's on Channel 4 it'll be really good," he said. "Jonathan Ross is on next week's show and the topic is sex." The pair talk about periods of abstinence in their lives. "I went without sex for ages once," said Russell. "It was from birth until the age of 15. But since then it's pretty much been constant.Once I went to a ghastly orgy in a tower block in Paddington. Of course I'm comfortable in the company of naked women, but naked men was another thing entirely. I felt obliged to canoodle with a few women, but it was hard to relax with all those dangly bits around. What stuck in my mind the most were the refreshments, though. The people organising it had put saucers of nibbles here and there. I won't eat peanuts at a bar because they're supposed to have 20 types of wee on them, so who's going to eat Smarties at an orgy?"

Russell prides himself on being able to turn any activity into a sexual escapade and even managed to bed an estate agent while she showed him round a flat. "I was still on drugs at the time so I'm not sure how I did it," he laughed. "But it was because it was unexpected and flirty that it worked. She was dark, in her mid-20s, very tasty indeed. We ended up doing it in the bed in the flat?it was ever so exciting. Didn't take the flat in the end, though. There was a strange smell and the duvet was a bit odd."

But Russell can't be classed as a cad. "I always ask early on whether the girl is single," he said. "I'm very keen to avoid any emotional entanglements. And violence."

So far Big Bro's Kate Lawler, Becki Seddiki and Makosi Musambasi have all been Branded. He's also been linked with supermodel Kate Moss. "As far as I'm concerned, sex with celebs is a wonderful thing. There's a certain glee to the act of having sex with someone and thinking, ?Hey! You used to be on my telly, and now you're in my bedroom.'"

But despite his success in the sack?or perhaps because of it?there are still plenty of famous faces on Russell's ?to-do' list. "I see loads of girls on telly and in magazines and think I'd love to meet them," he said. "I do have a thing for Caroline Aherne, I definitely fancy her. I think she's wonderful, sexy, intelligent and hilarious." But his sex life has its unglamorous side too. Russell revealed in his BBC Radio 6 podcast this week that while working in a double glazing plant as a teenager he had a close encounter with a Henry vacuum cleaner.

"Henry was very powerful and very noisy," he said. "It was beautiful, a romantic expression of one man's feelings for a vacuum cleaner. But afterwards I was overwhelmed by guilt. Men are biological machines programmed to have sex? Henry was a machine programmed to clean floors." Russell trained for showbiz at the Italia Conti theatre school, but left after he was found using drugs. "Between the ages of 16 and 27, I didn't know what it was like to not be high," he confessed.

On September 12 2001, he turned up at work at MTV dressed as Osama Bin Laden?and was sacked. By then he had interviewed a string of A-list stars, including Kylie Minogue, while high on crack and heroin. "I watch tapes of those days with a mixture of embarrassment and amazement," he said. "I introduced Kylie to my dealer before the interview and I spent the whole time gabbling to her. Now when I watch it I just think, ?Come on, people want to hear what Kylie's got to say, not you.' In the end she had to sit on my lap just to shut me up. Hear'Say, Liberty X, Mel Blatt from All Saints?I interviewed them all through a fug of crack and smack. Half the time I didn't understand what they were saying. I didn't even try to chat any of them up."

After being ordered to get clean by his showbiz agent John Noel, Russell has been drug free for four years and is patron of rehab charity Focus 12. Now the wildest comedian on the box is looking forward to a future at the top of his profession. His first love is stand-up. "My dream is to do Richard Pryor-style massive live shows," he said.

Russell has started work on a sitcom for BBC Radio 2, is gearing up for the release of a live DVD for Christmas and is planning a trip to Africa for Comic Relief. He's also got a benefit gig for Focus 12 at London's Koko club in November and he's penning his autobiography, which he hopes to finish by April next year.

It's a wonder he has any time left for womanising.

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[IRiSHMaFIA]

Russ like a playboy on crack

Dermot O'Leary has hit out at Big Brother rival Russell Brand, dismissing him as "like a playboy on crack". Insiders say his astonishing outburst shows Dermot has been rattled by Russell's rapid rise to fame. The two men hosted rival BB spin-off shows in the summer. Now womanising Big Brother's Big Mouth host Russ, 31, has got his own chat show on E4. Meanwhile, Little Brother presenter Dermot, 33, is set to defect to BBC1 to host a new Saturday night Lotto show.

And there is obviously no love lost between him and his Big Bruv rival. O'Leary snapped yesterday: "Russell's like a playboy on crack. Not literally crack, but you know what I mean. I wouldn't want to live his life at all." A telly insider said: "Dermot's such a nice guy, but his attack is out of order. Russell's a rising star. He's made no secret about his battles in the past with drugs, but he's cleaned up his act."

It was revealed yesterday that E4 chat show Russell Brand's Got Issues, saw viewing figures rise by 35,000 to 118,000 on Tuesday night, thanks to a guest appearance by Jonathan Ross, 45.

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I'm surprised Dermot would say that. He always seemed to get on with him, but then again that was for the viewers sake I reckon.

The thing I loved about watching BBLB and Big Mouth was the different approaches to the shows. Dermot is sqeaky clean and Russell was more abrasive and actually makes people laugh.

I think he was a bit foolish to come out saying this as it's most likely jealousy. Russell's show made the whole thing worth watching as far as I'm concerned.

[Kezza]

[faceless]

RUSSELL'S BIG GUNS QUIT SHOW
By Lara Gould Tv Reporter

SEX-MAD Russell Brand's chat show has been plunged into crisis after the exit of two key players behind the series. The host's much-hyped discussion programme, Russell Brand's Got Issues, launched on digital channel E4 last month. The show had been a hotly-anticipated follow-up to Brand's summer hit Big Brother's Big Mouth. But the show is in turmoil after director Dave Skinner and a producer left last week.

A TV insider said: "The show hasn't taken off as expected. The departures have come as a shock. It's not a happy ship."

TV bosses are holding crisis meetings before the show - which attracted just 156,000 viewers in its first outing switches to Channel 4 next month. A spokeswoman said: "Changes were made for editorial reasons." Skinner refused to comment.

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I'm surprised it's getting the move to the main channel to be honest, but it's good to know. But I wonder why the two in charge left?

[Griffo]

Haha, just read all them. No matter how much i red about Brand i never get bored!

He should release an autobiography.

[faceless]

Russell weds
10/10/06

Russell Brand has broken thousands of girls' hearts and finally tied the knot. But comedy goth Russell has not actually walked down the aisle, he has been ordained as a "net vicar" and was on hand to perform the marriage ceremony of a couple of his pals on their big day in Italy, it has emerged.

Sex-mad Russ, who claims to have bedded 2,000 women, went through the easy steps of getting his dog-collar qualification over the internet. The Big Brother's Big Mouth presenter, 31, used one of the many offers available from organisations such as Christian Glory Church and Universal Life Church and months after his certificate arrived in the post he jetted off to marry his mates. Russ told a pal: "That's how I spent my 30th last year. I married my friends at their wedding in Italy. I thought it was a good way to celebrate my birthday and a nice thing to do. They asked me and I thought it was a great idea and said yes."

Russ is not the first celeb to become ordained. Pop hunk Robbie Williams, below, became ordained over the net four years ago by the Universal Ministries of Los Angeles. The chart-topper, 32, wanted to be able to marry his mates Billy Morrison, from rockers The Cult, and girlfriend Jennifer Holliday. Basic Instinct actress Sharon Stone, 48, has also admitted she was ordained over the internet. And former I?m A Celeb winner Joe Pasquale, 45, is another.

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[faceless]

Russell Brand: Shame

If you want a perfect example of celebrity culture gone bonkers, look at Russell Brand. He?s a hugely famous comedian, but not because of his comedy. His randy exploits fill tabloids read by millions, but fewer than 100,000 watch his TV show. Although the column inches he gets for his sexual exploits can be measured in miles, ask his publicist to officially review his stand-up and the request repeatedly falls on deaf ears. But then coverage of what you are actually supposed to do for a living is hardly crucial when you?re already as theatre-fillingly famous as Brand is.

He might have slept his way to the top, but Brand is a real rock and roll comedian, a stylish, big-haired, drainpipe-trousered wildman who although clinically forced to put his days of narcotic-fuelled excess behind him, still manages to feed another addiction, to women. He?s so rock and roll that, like all the best bands, he keeps his audience at the Shepherds Bush Empire waiting an age before he takes the stage, with only the meagre pickings of a 20-minute set from his 6 Music radio sidekick Trevor Lock to pass the time. Lock?s cold delivery, tedious misunderstandings and stilted non-sequiteurs whip the audience up in to a state of listless, embarrassed silence. He?d be the perfect warm-up for the National Pin-Dropping Championships, but is so useless here that Brand is pretty much reduced to doing his own warm-up.

Taking to the stage to an invigorating and apt blast of Morrissey?s Last Of The Famous International Playboys, Brand engages in a bit of mild banter with a lairier member of the audience before embarking on an ill-thought-through perusal of the local paper, untroubled by any thoughts of preparation. He?s very much in his ?presenter? mode here, hoping to wing it on his considerable charm rather than sharp material.

He just about gets away with it, too, thanks to a sharp self-awareness, and a willingness to always mock himself even when things are flagging. Well, it keeps the focus on him, and like many a comic, Brand is nothing if not self-absorbed. As he rings one of the prostitute?s numbers from the newspaper, I note down that there?s something very exploitative about a louche entertainer playing such a studenty prank on some poor immigrant sex worker. But before I finish writing the sentence, he draws attention to that very fact himself.

But this was all a preamble to the show itself, which he makes a deliberate point of starting afresh, possibly for the benefit of the director who?ll be cutting a live DVD from the night?s footage. Shame is the topic, but barely touched upon. Most the things of which Brand might rightly be ashamed, thanks to his previous penchant for a dab of heroin or two, have been covered in earlier, less well-attended shows. When he talks about the ?shame? of falling out with his childhood hero Bob Geldof over his much-reported gag ?He should know a thing or two about famine, he?s been dining out on I Don?t Like Mondays for 30 years? you know he?s just enjoying the retelling of such a good line.

Aside from his near-generic opener about Neanderthal lad culture, Brand pretty much talks about what he knows: sex and being in the tabloids. Well, fair play for him for not pretending there?s a great deal more to him behind the image. On the former, he?s unashamedly frank and remarkably original. You might have thought there was almost nothing new to be said about masturbation or talking dirty, but Brand finds something ? and illustrates it wonderfully.

His diatribe against made-up gossip column mentions and bizarre kiss-and-tells is enlivened by his genuine outrage at the nonsense they print about him. However this is not just an angry rant against an impervious enemy, as Brand manages to surgically rip apart tabloidese writing with a winning mixture of smart-arse pedantry, righteous indignation and digs at both the writer, and himself.

The effect of all his material is enhanced by his uniquely elaborate delivery. It?s an affectation, for sure, but his exaggerated combination of Victorian street-urchin accent and the arcane high-falutin vocabulary of a well-read dandy is charmingly endearing.

He employs such ornate language expertly to create distinctive rhythms of speech; then uses repetition of phrases and ideas to build up a head of steam. We?re back to rock and roll, using the stand-up equivalents of bassline hooks and recurring choruses to reel in an audience and crescendo the energy towards a climactic punchline. It?s artful, even if he overdoes the repetition.

Brand may appear a prancing fop, but there is a keen intelligence behind it, and a finely-tuned instinct for comedy pace and timing. And he lives the sort of life that?s likely to provide a rich source of material. He might have found an unlikely shortcut to the top, but Brand could just have the aptitude to stay there for a while yet.

www.chortle.co.uk

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