Confessions of a randy dandy (Russell Brand features)

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Russell Brand Interviews Morrissey On New Album
John Doran , January 28th, 2009

Despite his re-engorged popularity Morrissey is what you might call 'a bit of a handful' in PR terms, so what better way of allowing him to hit back at critics than including a filmed interview as part of the deluxe edition of his new album Years Of Refusal? And who is grilling the bequiffed god of intro-pop? Jeremy Paxman? Noam Chomsky? Tomas de Torquemada? No. It's bearded piratical sex case Russell Brand, the man who can't spell 'book'.

To be fair to the OAP upsetter - when he's not on the telly or trying to get teenage Top Shop goths into bed he's a pretty good writer and funny to boot. Just don't expect Morrissey's dear friend to ask him any awkward questions. His label Polydor have the following to say: "The Deluxe edition of the album will feature a DVD with exclusive content including Wrestle with Russell, a revealing 20 minute filmed interview with Russell Brand recorded at the comedian’s home in LA in November ’08. The friends talk candidly about music, lyrics, image, fame and hair in a piece that is both serious and highly entertaining. Morrissey’s performances of 'That’s How People Grow Up' from Friday Night with Jonathan Ross and 'All You Need Is Me' from Later With Jools Holland will also feature, as will the video promo for the single 'All You Need Is Me'. iTunes have an exclusive digital booklet for those who purchase the standard album version via their site."

New studio album Years of Refusal released February 16 preceded by single 'I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris' on February 9.

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I'm sure this will be an excellent feature - here's hoping any Morrissey fans out there have the ability to get the daffodils out of their arses and upload it!

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Russell Brand Descends on COMEDY CENTRAL in his First-Ever COMEDY CENTRAL Original Stand-Up Special
'Russell Brand in New York City', Sunday, March 8 at 10:00 P.M.*
February 18, 2009

From the theatre at El Museo Del Barrio in New York City comes the latest COMEDY CENTRAL stand-up special featuring the winner of "Best Live Stand-up" at the 2008 British Comedy Awards, comedian, actor and author Russell Brand. From Brand's scene-stealing performances in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and Adam Sandler's "Bedtime Stories" to hosting the incredibly successful "2008 MTV Music Awards" and his run of sold-out shows at the Montreal Just for Laughs comedyfestival, Brand has taken the United States by storm. "Russell Brand in New York City" is a truly original, witty and gritty hour of stand-up viewers won't want to miss!

Next, Brand will be seen in Julie Taymor's "The Tempest" and in May 2009, he will begin production on "Get Him To The Greek," a new Judd Apatow-produced comedy, in which Brand reprises his role as Aldous Snow, when the once-sober rock star falls off the wagon before a major gig. Brand's much anticipated award-winning and bestselling biography, "My Booky Wook" will finally be released in the United States on Tuesday, March 10.

"Russell Brand in New York City" was executive produced by Jesse Ignjatovic.

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Should be a larfff.

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Russell Brand Confirms His Radio Return With Noel Gallagher
Comedian reveals news on his Twitter account.

Noel Gallagher is set to host a one-off radio show on football alongside Russell Brand. The Oasis mainman, and winner of the Best Blog award at last week's Shockwaves NME Awards 2009 (February 25), featured as a regular guest on Brand's old Radio 2 show.

Brand revealed the news over his Twitter account, writing: "It's true, myself and Britain's favourite swearer are doing a radio special on football. Let's hope Noel doesn't get me in trouble/twouble. Me and Gallagher will turn Talksport into the fulcrum of the revolution.If we can just get Wossy [Jonathan Ross] to come on as a guest a new dawn will rise."


Internetrumourmill reports -

"Brand, who resigned from Radio 2 last October the middle of the Sachsgate furore, is understood to be in the advanced stages of negotiations with the UTV-owned network about the show.

Details of the new programme are being kept under wraps, with only three TalkSport executives understood to be involved in the talks. However, an announcement could be made this week for what promises to be a weekly show, one station source said."

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that's quite a coup for talkSPORT!

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Russell Brand: interview
He says he's vain, a sex addict and an egocentric ex-junkie. Time Out gets to the bottom of Russell Brand's obsession with poo, his self-destruction, the price of fame and what really happened with Sachsgate
By Tim Arthur.
Photography Ellis Parrinder
Mar 31 2009
timeout.com

Russell Brand crosses the corridor from his room in an exquisite luxury hotel in the middle of Dartmoor and looks around thoughtfully at the smart suite in front of him. ‘Is this where we’re doing the interview?’ I nod. ‘I like it in here. It’s calm. In fact I might do a poo in here. Tom, would you fetch my wipes?’ This is to his personal assistant. ‘I can’t go in my room, there are girls in there. Seems a bit rude.’

He’s taller than I expected, and disconcertingly handsome, his kohl-blacked eyes intense yet benevolent. There is no hint of the hyperactive faux-fop we’re all now so familiar with. He speaks eloquently and intelligently, avoiding his customary archaic grammatical flourishes. Perhaps the suite is in fact having a calming effect.

‘He comes from Essex and he could be the real deal’ were Time Out Comedy editor Malcolm Hay’s words when he saw you in the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year in 2000.

How important was it to get that feedback early in your career?
‘It was hugely significant. It was the catalyst that brought about the change from small pub gigs to getting signed with an agent which led to being on MTV and then on to Edinburgh. You forget that you would scour Time Out for any kind of mention, even just to see your name in the listings. To be singled out, particularly after the disappointment of only coming fourth, was an incredible boost. My pre-fame existence was like a kind of madness. I often felt I was one of those guys reading the Bible out loud on the tube or screaming “The end is nigh!” in Leicester Square. I knew I was good. But at the same time I was ill – a drug addict and an alcoholic – and it was a long, self-destructive slog. Whenever I’d get near to success I’d fuck stuff up. I badly needed someone to believe in me and Malcolm was one of the first people to understand what I was trying to do.’

That must seem like a lifetime ago.
‘Sometimes. We’re going from here to New York and then to LA and then to Australia with this tour, which is selling out fast. We’re also doing a documentary with Albert Maysles, who made “Gimme Shelter” with the Stones, which Oliver Stone is exec producing, documenting the next year of my life. And I’m doing another film with Judd Apatow, “Get Him to the Greek”, where I’m playing Aldous Snow, the character I played in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”, again. And then after that we’re remaking [the Dudley Moore hit movie] “Arthur”. However, because of those years and years of crying in the wilderness and of relentless dogged pursuit, I am aware of trying to stay in the moment and understand how transient all this is.’

How do you ground yourself?
‘I regularly attend Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings to keep me balanced and on track and I’m surrounded by people who are respectful and supportive of me but who are very quick to point out “That’s mental, what you’re saying there, you’ve just crossed the line into madness”.’

Does it annoy you that every journalist who writes about you seems to want to psychoanalyse you?
‘I don’t mind what people do as long as I’m being true to myself and not disingenuous. I don’t mind my stuff being analysed because I’ve put a lot of it out there in the public domain. They’re not telling me anything I don’t know. I’m coruscatingly self-analytical. I’m incredibly self-involved. Vain. Compulsively addicted to sex. There’s not much that someone could say that would make me respond “How dare you!” I’ve been through so much therapy I’m more aware of my own failings than anyone else. Although I prefer it when the verdict comes out as “He’s unquestionably a genius” rather than “He’s a neurotic fuck-up”.’

You’ve written that you created ‘a papier-mâché version of myself to send out into the world’. Is there still a private and a public Russell Brand?
‘Yeah, there is a distinction. I think all of us have façades and coping methods. People think I’m very confessional on stage and it’s true, you do use yourself, but it’s not really that personal. It’s sort of become this product – sterilised by that process, and certainly abstracted. In my current show I’ve been talking about why I don’t have girlfriends but have endless promiscuous encounters. Why can’t I commit? Is it because of the template of love my mother imposed? I know that’s a deeply, personal thing to share on one level, but I think loads of people can relate to the things I’m talking about. Unlike if I were standing on the stage going “I really need to fuck cats, dogs and toddlers.” I have uncontrollable impulses, like when you want to throw hot tea in someone’s face, and I have to be especially careful now because of the way things can be interpreted. I did a joke in Nottingham about these unsuccessful sex attacks in an underpass. I was being sort of glib and flippant and ended up phoning the police, which was probably a mistake. But the room was exhilarated, the audience was alive and buzzing. On that night, in that room, we had consensus. However, once wilful misunderstanding had been applied by the Daily Mail, they’d reduced it to: “What, you think rape’s funny?” I don’t; that wasn’t what I was saying at all. I was making fun of the way it was written in a local newspaper. But that doesn’t fit in with the way they wanted to tell the story.’

And did the media do this with the whole Radio 2, Sachsgate affair?
‘Yes, to some extent. They’re not interested in the whole situation – that would be a bit complicated. They judged us as if me and Jonathan Ross – while smoking roll-up fags and wearing fingerless gloves – went: “ ’Ere, let’s phone up Andrew Sachs and say I fucked your granddaughter. I hope he kills himself.” What actually happened was a slow and incremental process. The joke was, “Oh no, what a terrible thing we’ve done.” And if you actually listen to the tape we spend most of the time actually apologising for having done it. Obviously, it went too far and we apologised and everyone knows what happened after that, but what I think is more interesting, more relevant and says more about our culture than that particular isolated bit of stupidity is the way that it was used culturally. Whether or not there’s an explicit agenda, the Daily Mail wants people to be scared. It doesn’t want anything to be taken lightly, everything has to be taken seriously. And I resent that.’

Wasn’t it the case that Andrew Sachs was actually invited to be a guest that night specifically because you’d already talked about the relationship with his granddaughter several weeks before when David Baddiel mentioned it on air? He wasn’t able to take the call when you rang so you left the message on his answerphone.
‘Exactly. David said “I was round your house the other day and there were those two girls there, the Satanic Sluts. And isn’t one of them Manuel’s granddaughter?” I think the joke would have been us chatting on the phone and skirting around the topic. And it could have been fun. But it’s not convenient to look at the full story, because [the media] want to believe that I’m the sort of person who’d phone someone for no reason and say “Yeah, I’ve fucked your granddaughter.” It’s this deliberate removal of nuance that I think is a form of tyranny. This in microcosm demonstrates the mentality of that form of media. They use words like “totty” and “love nest” because they have to use abbreviations because they haven’t got the physical or ideological space to relay complex ideas. They just want to simplify things. Like with the Jade Goody situation. I personally think that poor young woman would not have developed cancer had she not been the focus of such intense hatred – malevolent hatred – for such a long period of time. And now, it’s convenient for the narrative to like her again. It just sickens me.’

Is this ‘simplification’ at the heart of the media’s obsession with your sex life?
‘Absolutely. They’d like to portray me as some loner constantly trawling the night-time streets. The truth is I’ve got a legitimate and also quite thorough interest in sex. But when people say, “Oh, he’s obsessed with sex, it’s all he ever goes on about,” 99 per cent of the time I’m responding to a question somebody has asked. I’m not obsessed with sex, I’m just fulfilling my biological destiny evolved over millions of years. Rather well!’

Are you worried that as you become more famous you might have to compromise who you are?
‘As long as I don’t compromise to the point where I’m grinning with a tin of brown carbonated water in my hand or endorsing things that I don’t believe in I think it’ll be all right. I have clear objectives. Running parallel to my success is a narrative of scandal and anti-establishment ideas. It’s good because I think there’s gonna come a point where that becomes the story. It’s not going to be “Oh, he’s made a dodgy phone call.” Instead you could alter the narrative of the way the world is going. I could change the world – make everyone be nice to one another [he laughs]. That’s what I want to do. But it has to be absolutely authentic – if I was secretly thinking that I could fuck all their daughters, it wouldn’t work at all.’

It would be easy to mock Brand’s near-messianic mission statement had it not been delivered with such sincerity and genuine warmth. Our time is up and before I go he gives me a huge hug. For some reason I’m worried about him. He seems childlike, naive. I think he’s far more vulnerable than he lets on. ‘Are you happy?’ I ask.

‘Happier. But that’s as close as you’re likely to get. I feel better now than I’ve ever felt, mostly because of the thing that I keep returning to – working with people who are in good alignment with each other. We’ve got a good overview, interesting plans, a bright future. I still have a constant awareness of mortality, but overall, I’m much happier. This is much better than being a penniless junkie in Finsbury Park.’ He walks me to the door and gives me another hug. ‘I’ll leave you here if that’s all right. I still need to do that poo.’

Russell Brand plays the O2 on April 17. A four-disc box set of highlights from his Radio 2 shows, ‘The Best of What’s Legal’, is out on April 13.

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Brand Power
British comedian Russell Brand is renowned for the shock factor - and Channel Seven, having bought his new show, is banking on it, writes Melissa Kent.
April 19, 2009
theage.com.au

As part of his rehabilitation from heroin addiction, Russell Brand kept a diary. In it, he jotted down a number of goals: "Keep radio show" was one. "Don't fuck up the jobs I have" was another. Brand, the infamously naughty British comedian, has spectacular form when it comes to screwing up. He lost his first radio gig after reading out pornographic material on air. He was fired from MTV for turning up to work the day after 9/11 dressed as Osama Bin Laden and introducing Kylie Minogue to his drug dealer.

He was "let go" from a Steve Coogan comedy for being almost permanently drunk and high on drugs. For his next and most famous act of self-sabotage, he called up Fawlty Towers star Andrew Sachs and left lewd messages on his answering machine about a tryst he'd once had with Sachs' granddaughter. Britain was outraged. The BBC received 40,000 complaints. That time he wasn't fired - he resigned before they got the chance.

But like an overly-confident cat with nine lives, the notorious pantsman with the big hair and grandiose turn of phrase has emerged from it all with his career unscathed. In fact, it's going swimmingly, thank you very much.

On the eve of his successful stand-up tour of Australia last month, Channel Seven announced that it had acquired his latest television venture, the BAFTA-winning series Ponderland. His success Down Under is all part of his plan for world enlightenment, as he explained to M magazine in a recent surreal, Foucault-quoting interview.

"I like to align people with things that are beautiful," he mused, his gaze settling - ironically - on an arrangement of fake flowers on the hotel table. "If you look at the idioms and nomenclatures that surround comedy, the phrase MAKE people laugh - that's good, isn't it, like you MAKE them? Like they're laughing and they don't even know why. I like that and I like the phrase 'sense of humour'. It's so vague and mystical. For me, comedy is a complete escape and I love it."

Ponderland, which debuts on Seven this week, takes us inside Brand's anarchic mind via a series of amusing archive clips which serve as a starting point for his chaotic, exotic commentary. This week's subject is pets and their peculiar owners. He introduces a series of clips including one about an American woman who had an affair with the family dog and is now eyeing up the horse. Brand muses on what the dog might be saying when the woman's husband takes it for a walk: "This is awkward for me as well," he offers, then, pointing out that he is about to defecate, the dog tells the husband (Brand says): "Legally, you are obliged to pick that up."

For many, it will be their first taste of Brand's off-centre humour and it probably won't be for everyone. Putting it together involved a team of researchers trawling through mountains of archival footage for funny material and whittling it down to a manageable amount for Brand's perusal.

"You know when you're watching telly and something makes you crack up? That's the sort of stuff we were looking for," he says. "Stuff that was not necessarily immediately amusing, like someone falling off a chair or things that would make it on to a blooper show, but things that might have a peculiar subtext. The show is really funny and I love it, I'm proud of it. It's kind of gentle, it's cool, it's not like subversive, right, where you'll watch it and go out in the streets and smash up the homes of the rich. Not mine anyway."

The first episode of this series screened in Britain just a few weeks after "Sachsgate" blew up, when the anti-Brand campaign was at fever-pitch. The tabloids were calling for his head and even his staunchest fans predicted the scandal would spell the end of his career.

Speaking of it now, Brand is unapologetic. In fact, he is the first to admit the "hullabaloo", as he calls it, did wonders for his image. "What I got was a great big marketing campaign that merely confirms that I am a subversive commodity," he says with a wicked grin. "The reaction was 'Look at him, he's dangerous.' 'What did he do that was so dangerous?' 'Oh, he left a phone message that was a little bit rude.' 'Oh.' It's not like a child ended up in intensive care or, you know, that was the last panda that we had."

Certainly the scandal has increased his profile in Australia, where pre-Sachsgate he was merely a mildly famous actor-comedian, known mostly only to Anglophiles and filmgoers as the libidinous rocker Aldous Snow in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Seven was sufficiently seduced. "Like everyone, we were just overcome by his raw sexuality," jokes Brad Lyons, Seven's head of program development. "We just succumbed to his might. You can quote me on that."

Surely, though, Brand must occasionally consider self-censorship, just to save himself a whole lot of hassle? "No, never," he says, semi-serious for the first time in our conversation. "Normally other people do that. I just think I'll do whatever I want and let other people say 'Don't do that, it will catch on fire, you've broken it, you're reckless, you're dangerous, stop it, aaaahh, it's not even your dog.' I just do whatever I want and leave other people to curtail it and then I'm free to express myself."

Ponderland debuts on Channel Seven, Wednesday, at 10.30pm.

ON GEORGE BUSH

"But I know America to be a forward-thinking country because otherwise why would you have let that retard and cowboy fella be president for eight years. We were very impressed. We thought it was nice of you to let him have a go, because, in England, he wouldn't be trusted with a pair of scissors."

ON MEETING THE QUEEN

"A little part of me was thinking, 'Grab her boobs!' "

ON THE DAILY MAIL

"The Daily Mail want us to be scared of everything - even the weather. Remember when it snowed? SNOW, there is SNOW! Immigrant snow! Immigrant, Gypsy snow! Immigrant, Gypsy, pedophile snow! Don't make a snowman, it will come into your house and fuck you."

ON BOB GELDOF

"Really it's no surprise he's such an expert on famine. He has, after all, been dining out on I Don't Like Mondays for 30 years."

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Russell Brand, The 02, London
Russell Brand's stand-up is funny enough without having to drag poor Andrew Sachs into his routine
Reviewed by Charlotte Philby
Sunday, 19 April 2009
independent.co.uk

If any single person should be able to fill such a massive venue as London's 02, it is Russell Brand; after all the man has enough energy to fill a small island. In this respect, at least, Friday night's performance was an outright success. In relatively demure attire – black long-sleeved T-shirt, tight (but not the usual groin-throttling) black jeans, white trainers, and a sparkling necklace – the Essex-born comedian swaggered through infinite aisles lapping up the attentions of his adoring public, before taking to the stage in effervescent fashion for the last night of his three month Scandalous tour.

Attention is not something Brand has been short of over the past three years. Since arriving on our screens as presenter of Channel 4's Big Brother's Big Mouth in 2006, 33-year-old Brand has established himself as one of Britain's most talked-about personalities. His appointment as an unlikely Lothario has helped to draw a headline or two. Then there is his astounding talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

He called George Bush a "retarded cowboy" who "in [this] country wouldn't be trusted with a pair of scissors" in front of a bewildered American audience at the Video Music Awards and was widely lambasted Stateside. We Brits chuckled; the stunt saw him gain a few extra fans over here, but it wasn't until the Sachsgate disaster struck on 18 October last year that Brand really made his mark. When the BBC broadcast an offensive message Brand and Jonathan Ross left on Andrew Sachs's, answerphone during a pre-recorded Radio 2 show, Brand became a household name, and not for the right reasons.

It was a low point in his career; one imagined he might have accepted a helping of humble pie and attempted to draw a line under the whole sorry business. Not likely. After a brief self-imposed exile in the US, Brand – ever one to defy convention – decided to turn the affair into material for his latest tour. Consequently, last Friday night, not long after a mildly sheepish Jonathan Ross returned to the BBC, Brand swaggered on stage in front of a vast audience, presided over by two wide screens running edited clips from news coverage of the event.

"Thank you," he addressed his doting audience. "Thank you for coming to see me in the last medium in which I'm allowed to flourish."

Now Brand can get away with saying a lot, but we can't let that one slide. He has just announced a new job co-presenting a Talksport show with his mate Noel Gallagher; he continues to write a weekly sports column; he has just finished another series of his Ponderland for Channel 4, and has a run of lucrative Hollywood acting roles secured. It would seem that there is now no medium in which the comedian/actor/presenter/writer/columnist is not allowed to flourish.

To his credit, he is pretty damn impressive in all that he does. But Friday's material didn't really do his original talent – stand-up – much justice. This isn't to say that he wasn't funny. In between self-indulgent references to his harsh treatment at the hands of the "meddling media" he was extremely funny. As he says during his act, referring to the absurd, literal interpretation of his comedy by certain aspects of the right-wing press: "A lot of what I say doesn't work right on paper." So I won't attempt to relay specific passages here. But it is worth mentioning that his list of "favourite death threats" from those received in reaction to his comments about Bush is one of the funniest things I've heard in a very long time.

I had come to expect so much from Brand: his improvisational skills are unrivalled. But here these were sidelined by a rather outdated script. For someone who has had their fill of the Sachsgate episode, being dragged back through the whole sorry event, six months later, felt a little tedious. But his intermittent banter proved that Brand still has a hell of a lot to give. Now that Scandalous has come to its conclusion, I look forward to him embracing the absurd, observational comedy for which he is much loved.

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Here are the talkSPORT shows

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Russell Brand to remake Drop Dead Fred
'...in the tone of Beetlejuice'
The 1991 Rik Mayall comedy film Drop Dead Fred is to be remade – with Russell Brand in the starring role. Dennis McNicholas, a longtime writer on Saturday Night Live, is reworking the script for Universal Studios.

The decision to remake the movie might raise eyebrows, as the original was a critical and box-office flop. However, it has gained some cult status, and trade magazine The Hollywood Reporter says it ‘is considered a film that fell short of its full potential’. The magazine adds: ‘The take for the new Fred is to make a film in the tone of Beetlejuice, building a universe around the concept of imaginary friends. Brand would play the trouble-making pal.’

The original starred Phoebe Cates as a meek woman who revives her childhood imaginary friend after losing her job and husband. Brand is currently shooting Get Him To The Greek – a spin-off from Forgetting Sarah Marshall – also for Universal; and he has also been lined up to star in a remake of Arthur.

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That seems an odd thing to do, but who knows...

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haha, another one in the eye for all those moaning arses who thought he was just some frail old man...

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Rory Bremner lampoons Russell Brand in new show
4 Jun 2009

Rory Bremner becomes Russell Brand, cheekily grinning by a microphone and looking uncannily like the long-haired comedian as he made his prank calls to Andrew Sachs, in his new show; a brand-new three-part series featuring the satirical skills of acclaimed trio Rory Bremner, John Bird and John Fortune, starting this Sunday.

Those behind the show said: "From greedy MPs to media scandals, the cult of celeb chefs and the Sachsgate affair to financial disaster and the PM's much-derided YouTube grin, modern Britain is in meltdown." They claim the team will "cast their collective sardonic eye over the chaos engulfing our culture to learn how naming and shaming may be the next best thing to a recovery, and the one thing in which we can still lead the world".

Bremner, Bird and Fortune: The Last Show Before The Recovery is on at 7pm on Sunday, June 7 on Channel 4.

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Prankster pushes Brand in fountain
By RHODRI PHILLIPS
8th August 2009

RUSSELL BRAND was shoved into a fountain by a prankster as he filmed a movie last night. The comedian was doing a "drunken" dance routine in London's Trafalgar Square. But an onlooker dodged security guards to grab him by the throat and push him underwater.

Guards hauled the man to the ground and cops also raced to the scene. But Brand, 34, insisted he would not press charges. He spent half an hour recovering with crew in a tent before reappearing - as crowds cheered. A witness said: "It only took a nudge, but the bloke used a bit of force. Brand was completely underwater. I expect he will have some bruises."

The star is playing rocker Aldous Snow - his character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall - in film Get Him To The Greek.

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I'm not sure if that sounds funny or mental... hopefully some video will turn up

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Russell Brand: Seeking salvation
His amazing sexual prowess, his obsession with Helen Mirren, his recovery from addiction, his radio shame — Russell Brand confesses all to Chrissy Iley. Then he tells her he’s seeking redemption. Will we forgive him?
Sunday Times
1st November 2009

Russell Brand’s handsome assistant, Tom, is there to meet me in the lobby of a fancy hotel in Paris, telling me Brand will be about 20 minutes late. I don’t want to wait as I could be shopping, and anyway I hate waiting. So to disperse any potential mood I shop — demonically. In 20 minutes I buy very expensive black shoes — platform, peep-toe — and a moss-green top from Vanessa Bruno.

I feel better. I think not about Brand’s lateness but how my life will be transformed by shoes that are both incredibly high and incredibly comfortable. Now Brand is there waiting. A polite kiss on the cheek hello. Perched by him is a plate of mixed berries and an espresso. He orders some for me. Neither of us speaks French and both of us are scowled at.

He notices the purchases — it takes an addict to spot an addict. “The object of addiction is almost irrelevant. It’s just the condition itself. Drugs and alcohol might be the easiest way. As I’ve written in my book, I think heroin is a fantastic drug; all of us have this sense of yearning and longing. I need this woman, this car, or those shoes. If I have them it’s all going to be okay.”

Brand asks to see the shoes. He has looked at his own addictions with such scrutiny he’s now able to look at other people; he looks at me and the shoes as if he’s seeing a brain scan with all the neural pathways flashing. He started off in his early teens with bulimia, then alcohol, then drugs, then sex; for a while each worked as a salvation that eventually turned on itself and destroyed a piece of him.

From his book My Booky Wook you get the impression that his overriding addiction was getting famous and that he could channel all the other addictions away if only he could get worldwide fame — being loved by many obviously being so much easier than being loved by one.

The film Forgetting Sarah Marshall won him fame in America, so much so that his character in it, the rock star Aldous Snow, has had his own film written for him. It is called Get Him to the Greek, the Greek being a famous venue in LA. He’s also filmed a documentary about happiness with Oliver Stone, and is soon to begin filming Arthur, reprising the Dudley Moore role.

Now — today anyway — he is not too bothered about being famous. As it happens, fame was not his salvation: it made a lot of people not like him and others chase him obsessively. Fame made him a tabloid entity and he hated that.

He’s questioning all his old obsessions. He hasn’t eaten chocolate for ages. I tell him I love the comfort of chocolate. “Yes, but there’s a regret afterwards. I always think of that Damien Hirst title, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living. The impossibility of post-chocolate in the mind of the pre-chocolate. I am not going to run then eat a Twix — all that stupid running just for one Twix. As I am with chocolate, I am with everything. It’s better to not do it at all, because if I begin I’ll go as far as I can.”

Brand believes he is putting distance between himself and addiction. “I’m living in a disciplined way, do lots of yoga, exercise and transcendental meditation. It’s not half good. They give you a mantra… You feel attuned to a consciousness that is beyond your identity and beyond life.”

So now that fame is no longer his salvation, is he less driven? “I’m less neurotic and I’m easier to work with. When one is addicted one becomes accustomed to a certain amount of undulation in life. In the past I courted chaos; not a deliberate courtship, just inadvertently. I feel happier, and I don’t feel I need that same kind of attention.”

He offers to share his berries as mine haven’t arrived. “I’m becoming spiritually idealistic. We are physical beings while we have access to the divine and,” he says, not missing a beat, “I still love these boots.” He is wearing pale blue-grey Chelsea boots in suede. “They are comfortable in spite of being stylish. If I lost them I’d be really pissed off. I’m not ready to let them go.” Slightly bewildered, I say he doesn’t have to. “But at some point, Chrissy, and this is my concern. I don’t want to be chained to these ideas. I don’t want to be chained to wanting fame.”

The previous night Brand went to the Galliano show with his new girlfriend, the quirky pop star Katy Perry, who he met at this year’s Video Music Awards (VMA), and whose most famous hit is the attention-grabbingly-titled I Kissed a Girl. The Galliano show seems to have symbolised aesthetic beauty and excessive theatricality, just the kind of stuff you would have thought Brand loved. “Glorious on one level. An incredible spectacle. But on another level I thought the fact that this fashion show exists on our planet during the current ecological and economical troubles, it’s like visiting someone with cancer and finding them having a facelift. Stop the madness.”

Brand himself doesn’t seem mad. He seems vulnerable but accepting of his vulnerability. Therein lies his strength. He is tall, toned and seems happy in his yoga body. His hair is so clean and shiny it could be in a L’Oréal ad. His face has stubble, but not the full beard of a few months ago. He is very handsome, in a young-George-Best-performing-in-a-goth-rock-band kind of way. I wonder if the chubby teenager still lurks inside. He is polite and attentive. In his book he describes himself as “feminised yet hysterically heterosexual”. That makes him a winner with women. He likes women. They too have played a part in his salvation, but it seems he’s had enough. For now he’d like to try monogamy. Everything is “one day at a time”. That’s a mantra he repeats. Maybe he just knows himself or just knows life, that nobody can really make promises.

Brand grew up in Grays, Essex, never feeling he fitted in. He was an only child. “My personality was defined by solitude. A lot less now, but especially when I was a drug addict. I was always on my own, sat right up to the telly. I’m only now making friends with people. I’m only really happy when I’m performing. I’m like Judy Garland.” A performance as Fat Sam in Bugsy Malone when he was at school seems to have been an epiphany. “When I performed I thought, ‘Where’s the furthest that this can go?’ ”

His father left when he was a baby and they have had a hot-and-cold relationship ever since. His mother, who he adores, has survived cancer three times: uterine, breast and lymph. The last bout was when he was 17. He is now 34. “A lifetime away.” Brand is childlike and wise; people always come to him with their relationship problems — and he turns to Noel Gallagher with his. Gallagher, Oscar Wilde and Morrissey are the unlikely triumvirate of heroes he says saved him. He called his cat Morrissey.

He is sad about the cat just now. He came back to London after filming in the US and has so far been unable to reconcile their relationship. “He just uses the house as a place to get food. He comes in the middle of the night like a truculent teen. In an attempt to win him back, I put a trail of Madagascan prawns, starting with one by the cat flap, on espresso saucers leading up to my bedroom, like some ghastly Grimm fairy-tale hell for felines. The next day they were still there, tragic reminders of a broken-down relationship. It might as well have been an affidavit on the stairs. I feel sad about it because it was my most successful relationship with an animal… It was straightforward: I love that cat and he loves me. But there must have been a moment where he thought, ‘He’s not coming back, fuck it then.’ ”

My berries still haven’t arrived. Both Brand and I are completely ineffectual in making the waitress do what we want. He is extremely polite, and that doesn’t seem to work. Apart from in hotel lobbies, in most of the rest of his life he is confrontational.

The night before we met I watched his new DVD, Scandalous, which confronts the Sachsgate scandal (he calls if Manuelgate). The DVD starts with news footage describing Jonathan Ross’s and Brand’s behaviour as offensive. Sachsgate’s reverberations mean that the BBC is scared of its own shadow. Programming post-Sachsgate is entirely different from pre-Sachsgate. In all this enormity it is easy to lose sight of what actually happened. Andrew Sachs, then 78, who played Manuel in Fawlty Towers, had been booked to do a telephone interview on Brand’s Radio 2 show. When he failed to answer, Brand left a string of messages on his home voicemail. The BBC Trust later called this “a deplorable intrusion”. In the background is Jonathan Ross calling out, “He f***ed your granddaughter” (23-year-old Georgina Baillie, a dancer with a burlesque outfit called Satanic Sluts). This was in October 2008, and people still talk about it.

Brand and Ross say they didn’t know it hadn’t been edited out. The Radio 2 controller, Lesley Douglas, was forced to resign. Brand resigned, and Ross was suspended for 12 weeks without pay. Brand says: “I felt I didn’t have any choice but to resign. I thought, ‘I don’t have to do that radio show, I’m only doing it for a laugh and it’s become not a laugh.’ And then it was a relief.”

In his stand-up show Brand says it wasn’t as if he were Harold Shipman or Fred West. “There was no menace. Even a prank implies some kind of menace. I just did it and it escalated. ‘Let’s leave a message. Oh, let’s leave another message apologising for the message.’ It was just daftness. I read about the anger and vitriol, and it felt alien to me. I thought, ‘What are they talking about?’”

He has a history of intemperate behaviour. As a “befuddled lad”, Brand made a film with the BNP protégé Mark Collett. But of the BNP leader Nick Griffin’s recent appearance on Question Time, he said: “The more people who witness him equivocate on myopic loathing, the better.”

Around the time of Sachsgate, Brand was hosting an MTV awards show in America where he called George W Bush “a retarded cowboy fella” and discussed the Jonas Brothers wearing promise rings to symbolise their virginity as being like Superman taking the bus. He was more upset about America’s reaction to that because he thought his film-star dreams were over. But it turned out to be the most successful Video Music Awards for a decade and did nothing to impede his film career. It may even have helped.

Googling himself was another addiction that became satiated because everything he read was horrible. “It’s the most unrewarding, pointless activity, googling yourself. I’m doing a lot better. It’s like picking a scab. I have gone a few weeks without looking at it and it divorces you from the slurry of casual vindictiveness.”

He survived it because worse things have happened to him. Like his mum having cancer. How did he confront that? “I don’t know that I did the first two times. I confronted it the third time by leaving home. I thought, ‘She’s going to die, so I’m going.’ It’s very strange to have the closeness with my mum and confront the idea, the heartbreak, of losing her.”

How has your relationship with your mother affected your relationships with women?

“I’m an only child of a single mother — it probably meant that I’m demanding and have high expectations of women. I look for salvation and redemption, to be utterly embraced.”

Did you get that from your mother?

“Probably. Yes.” So, looking for redemption again, you had to look for lots of different women? “I don’t think you can find it in another human being. It’s a ridiculous, romantic and tragic idea that there’s someone who’s going to save you, that we need our own personal Jesus. Salvation comes from within.”

Do you think you were looking for salvation through sex? He smiles, a nostalgic smile.

“On the one hand, it’s bloody good fun. On the other I have addictive tendencies. And on another it’s a biological imperative. One of the keys to understanding life is the ability to hold opposing thoughts simultaneously, to never have one ideology that answers your questions.”

Are you saying that if sex saves you it also destroys you? “Well, there you go. I’ve stopped all that. One day at a time. I’m feeling a lot better. It’s nice not to be chained to something.”

Is that how it felt, being chained? “Sort of. If you are born in a tin helmet you barely notice the parameter, but once it’s been removed and you relax… Also, once somebody is in the sphere of your domination they can no longer be a channel of salvation. If a woman is under your spell, how is she going to be the one who saves you?

“When Britney Spears was on the VMAs, between takes, hair and make-up people would come over. We didn’t need hair or make-up, it was just like monkeys comforting us, grooming us in a primal way, and I think a lot of my liaisons were just like that, grooming… I am trying not to be glib about it. It’s not like there’s been an endless carousel of strippers and lap dancers, but there have been times when I have been in the company of prostitutes and they were the most wonderful women in the world.”

Do you think monogamy is possible?

“It is if you want it, and value something.”

You have said you were very good at sex, is that why you wanted to have it a lot, to be validated?

“Especially because I’m not good at any sport. It’s a pity there’s not some forum where you can do it publicly.”

How do you test being good at it?

“A requiem of screams.”

How do you know it’s real?

“There’s eye-rolling ecstasy, the bacchanalian loss of self where they’re ready to tear up the trees, the grapes are being ripped from the vines, animals are being strewn across the forest. I think the roots of misogyny are in the unity women have with universal forces when they come. Men go, ‘What are they doing?’ They become goddesses with oceanic pleasure that looks like it may never end and could devour us.”

Are you scared of the orgasm? “I was a bit scared of them, when I was younger.

It’s a bit frightening, this transformative quality, an orgasm in women. I imagine that it looks better than the miserable squirt men issue. It seems different, though, when there’s an emotional element — transcendent.”

I’m wondering if this transcendence has been recently observed in his shiny new relationship with Katy Perry. Happy to rip layers off himself and talk about anything, Brand suddenly doesn’t want to say much. “She’s lovely and I don’t want her to read anything about herself. The other day a journalist from a tabloid in a ludicrous fedora said to me, ‘Russell, are you in love with Katy?’ And I said, ‘You look like a character from a Graham Greene novel. I think I’m in love with you.’ I said that to defuse the situation. But what do they print? They print, ‘I think I am in love.’ ”

Of course since they met, a few weeks before my meeting with Brand, lots has been written about them. It’s hard to guess who is more smitten, who is the chaser and who is the chased. Her parents are churchy, both ministers. Perry is cattish in interviews, arch, motor-mouthed, conflicted, given to hyperbole. If they had met earlier, things might have been different. He concurs: “I am living in a different way at the moment. Regardless of what happens in my current situation, I am unlikely to be satisfied with the calamitous promiscuity of the preceding five or six years.” It’s as if he’s afraid to think long-term. It’s the teachings of all the recovery programmes not to. “I still dream about drugs but I’m never allowed drugs in the dream. I dream of smoking, drinking, former decadence, but I always wake before I get what I want.”

I wonder if he dreams the drug dream about women. He doesn’t want to answer, but later on we talk about him being in The Tempest with Helen Mirren. He has talked before about her overripe sexuality and how he fancies her. She gave him a book.

“She wrote in it, ‘Russell, to a genius from a mere mortal, love Helen.’ So I look at it sometimes when I’m wracked with doubt.” About your genius? “No, I just w**k over it. Already the genius page is stuck together. I squandered it on day one as soon as I saw it.”

It strikes me that he made a documentary with Oliver Stone about happiness because it is still what he is looking for. They filmed it at Louisiana State Penitentiary.

“It’s this beautiful Louisiana countryside — somehow bleak when you can feel the vibrating souls of the 5,200 inmates, 92% of whom will die in there. The governor is a Southern Baptist and if you’re in Louisiana State Penitentiary, you’d better bring a Bible. The prisoners I was exposed to had accepted Christianity and found happiness through that.”

I wonder if Brand’s stand-up self is an exaggerated version of himself or a different persona. “I wouldn’t behave the same with my mother as with a woman I wanted to seduce. I think one modulates one’s behaviour according to circumstance.” Despite Brand the soon-to-be-movie-star persona, Brand the stand-up is a hard act to follow because it is the place where he is most himself. “There isn’t a filter, and it’s easier to achieve success than it is through acting.” By this he means nobody else is making the decisions, he is not waiting for the call back. He is just being himself and unstoppable.

In real life though?

“I protect myself emotionally where possible. Last year at the VMAs there were death threats, so obviously this year when I did the VMAs it was deliberately designed to not cause anyone any bother, but be funny and confident. There was a very deliberate removal of self-destruction. I didn’t take the risks I’d have taken in the past.”

His hair isn’t backcombed, he is wearing no dangly jewellery. It’s a metaphor. There is less clutter, more purity, more control, lots of yoga. In fact, yoga is about to happen. We take a break while he goes to exercise. When he returns he’s still worrying about the fashion show last night.

“Girls might be subjected to more pressure on how they look. The fashion industry makes an elite few feel better about themselves and most people feel worse about themselves. It makes them bulimic and anorexic. It’s stimulating a desire that could never be fulfilled. It’s decoration on a dreadful wedding cake at a marriage between us and the demise of the planet. The doubts I’m currently confronting is that I’m part of this as long as I’m attending one of those events. I’m endorsing those ideas.”

Perhaps this rankles particularly because he himself was aspiring towards a role model that didn’t exist when he was a bulimic. “I wanted to feel thin and gorgeous. My dad was a good footballer, my stepdad was a good footballer. The culture was defined at my school by being good at football or fighting, and if you were chubby and feminine doing daft voices, you don’t realise until you encounter the Smiths or Oscar Wilde that it is cool to be different and not to fit in.”

Yesterday he went to Père Lachaise, to Oscar Wilde’s tomb. “Littered with kisses, it is — the pilgrimage of the dispossessed that he has inspired to go to that place. I was strange, awkward and peculiar and I would listen to the Smiths for the first time and think it’s the best thing in the world. Oscar begat Morrissey.”

The bulimia, though, was about wanting to fit in. “I was eating all those Penguins. I couldn’t leave them. Blue followed yellow followed green. An army of Penguins, marching into my mouth and out again. They didn’t stay long. Terrible state they were in. They went in all proud and came out bewildered, like Vietnam vets.”

When did you get confident? “It’s an ongoing process. I fluctuate in confidence and doubt, but probably as soon as I got out of my podgy teens and into drama school in my early twenties I did feel there were things that I was good at.”

I leave Paris on Eurostar and Brand is doing his yoga. Tabloids report more on the Brand/Perry love nest in the fancy hotel. We meet again the next day at the Sunday Times Magazine photoshoot in north London. He is in skinny jeans and a loose-knit mohair jumper. He tells me his nipples are pointing out. He looks groomed and handsome and quiet.

After our meeting he must talk with LA about Arthur. He says it’s a beautiful script. Some bits are from the original. “Arthur is still an alcoholic billionaire playboy and I’ll be getting a bit of a haircut for that.” Are you worried about that? “You have to move on. I have dreams of my hair being short and I wake up in a Samson-like panic, but I think I’m ready for transformation.”

The Liza Minnelli role has yet to be cast. “I figure Minnelli was a kind of kookie pop star then, so we’d have to look at the kookie female pop stars of the current age.” He’s laughing a little bashfully. You mean you want Katy Perry to play it? He doesn’t answer, but he blushes. “Am I blushing?” His silky, olivy skin looks a little burnt around the cheeks, and we move on to talking about prospective directors for Arthur and how he met Baz Luhrmann in a lift and talked to David Lynch about transcendental meditation.

Which one of his parents is he more like?

“Good combination of both. My mum is sensitive and tender, and my dad is very funny.”

How is your relationship with your dad?

“It hasn’t always been an easy relationship, but I want to be loving and generous. I know he is very proud of me, but we’re sort of in different places. It might take a while.”

When Brand was growing up his father was a fluctuating presence. They bonded when he was 16 and his father took him on a holiday to the Far East and they ended up picking prostitutes in Thailand. It seems an extreme way to bond. When you saw him last were you on good terms? “No, it was a difficult, but it’s something I could mend. I’d like to mend it.” He talks about his father with love but I’m not sure he really knows him.

His phone rings and he’s asking after a little boy. “I love that little boy. He’s one of the loves of my life, a gorgeous child.

I knew his parents before he was born and now he’s six. Brilliant, challenging, obnoxious. The last time I saw him I was at his house at bedtime. I was talking to him and he was absent-mindedly playing with my hair. It was precious.”

So you’re feeling broody? “I am, actually. It’s seven years since I took drugs. I’ve made a film. I don’t think I have to fight so much. I’ve grown weary of the carousel.” He’s also stopped working so compulsively. “I am more into having jaunts. It’s been a while since I’ve done terrible things like shoplifted or threw a phone…” He’s almost doing okay. Only the fact that the cat won’t talk to him is a source of unresolved pain. He is really upset about it and hopes he might have returned when he gets home. The next day I get a message: Morrissey was lured back with some Greek yoghurt. Brand’s life is replete, at least for today.

The Russell Brand DVD Scandalous — Live at the O2 is out on November 9

[faceless]

'The squad has turned into a Caligulan sex fiasco'
Russell Brand writes for the News of the World on footie-sex, fighting and the Cup
By Russell Brand,
28/03/2010

LIKE most people, when I pop to the lavvy during a football match something important happens. I missed Gazza's yellow card against Germany in 1990 because I was in the loo. Michael Owen's goal against Argentina in 98 - I was unwell that year and by the time Beckham scored a penalty against Argentina in 2002 I had quite a serious drug problem and never really left the toilet.

So now that I've been away from home for a few months, living with my future wife and squinting at football on the internet, I shouldn't be surprised that the National game has gone berserk.

Oddly, I suspect that my absence has been an influence, in fact I feel like that bloke in Gremlins who entrusted the lad with the Mogwai with very simple, if mysterious, instructions only for bedlam to be unleashed when they were ignored.

Not that I offered the FA or the Premiership any guidelines before I departed. I didn't say for example "Keep Wayne Bridge's ex missus well away from Stamford Bridge" or "You might wanna confiscate Ashley Cole's phone" or "Don't feed Peter Crouch after midnight." But after all the chaos that's ensued I wish I had.

Not that Crouch has done anything weird yet, but I've a hunch that he is going to self subdivide into a tribe of malevolent Goblins and wreak havoc on a small American town any minute now.

Which in my view would be no more peculiar than Manchester City's Roberto Mancini's preppy sideline assault on grizzled Everton boss Davis Moyes. In history few men with great hair have been decent fighters and Mancini's glorious silver summit looks like it could manage City without him and still find time to pick up chicks on it's Vespa at the Trevi fountain. David Moyes on the other hand, comports himself as if he's always on the precipice of nutting someone.

If I was gonna kick off against a premiership manager it would not be Moyes - he looks like a biter, plus he's Iggy Pop wiry and them fellas can normally pummel ribs with whippety abandon.

I suppose Mancini, who along with Arsene Wenger, has too many letters of the side he manages in his name, is new to British football and probably hasn't sized up who it's wise to have a crack at yet, like a new kid at school trying to make a rep for himself. Yes, I was once that new kid and foolishly elected to establish myself by "offering out" Jeff Dawkins, who it transpired, was a man-child warlord for whom fighting was a kind of hobby, like Subbuteo but without being able to glue the broken legs back together. Mancini also ought to have considered removing his scarf before embarking on his boffin squabble, which I notice he'd tied in a Brit-Pop Chris Evans style, resembling a prefect afraid to leave Sixth Form and thus loitering in quads into his late forties.

Wenger with his intellectual continental airs and graces (by which I mean glasses) would actually be a more befitting opponent if Mancini does want a row, unless he's one of those blokes who looks a bit nerdy but then is surprisingly good at martial arts - like Spiderman.

What is more surprising than the fracas itself (and my presumed ability to induce the absurd bout by being in America) is the ridiculous punishment meted out by the officials at the match. "Gentleman! Stop fighting! You're grown men and you're behaving like schoolboys! Now go and wait in the changing rooms. When you're ready to apologise you can come back out and play."

I bet Moyes gave Mancini a right kicking in the tunnel: that scarf wrenched tight around his perfumed neck till his face was as red as Moyes' is when relaxed. And none of this would've happened if I'd been watching - just like Gazza's yellow card.

I know it's daft to believe in these superstitions: sods law (my Dad calls it c**ts law, he loves swearing), knocking on wood, and toilet rituals but how else are we to cope with the chaos in the world around us generally and football specifically?

My team, West Ham, on current evidence seem like they would benefit from crossed fingers and lucky charms even if that were in the form of some novelty breakfast cereal and severed arthritic digits as the Championship plummet has begun at an eerily inconvenient time.

New chairman David Sullivan wrote an open letter to Hammers fans on Wednesday morning in spite of admitting "not having slept." Never write anything that can be broadly read when exhausted. I'm writing this while buzzing on coffee and morning glory, when I write things late at night, mostly love-letters, I'm always incredibly relieved to see them on my pillow in the morning if I don't send them. They're always desperate and tear-stained (or worse) and are better off in my possession than tormenting their intended recipient.

The best thing about getting married is that now I only have one person to write to and we live together: in the past there were a lot of people to correspond with - I had to resort to spamming. I suppose I could've done a Sullivan-style open letter "I was disgusted by last night's performance against Wolves" is a direct quote from Sullivan's rant and directly applicable to a scenario I became involved in after once getting locked up after hours in London Zoo. The letter doesn't cover all of the indiscretions committed that drunken night though, I'll have to learn sign language to apologise to that chimp. Again, thank God I'm getting married.

It seems marital and conjugal relationships are destined to have an impact on England's success in the South African World Cup this summer. Which is a pity because it seemed that when I left the shores of Albion all was well with the forthcoming campaign. The moment my back was turned and I embraced a life of cherished monogamy the England squad became a Caligulan sex fiasco.

Flirty texts, affairs and spurned handshakes, that's no way to lure back the Jules Rimet to Blighty. Jules Rimet actually sounds like the sort of kinky move that Wayne Bridge's ex, Vanessa Perroncel might enact.

I for one hope that Wayne Bridge changes his mind and joins the squad. The World Cup is once every four years, during that cycle a half-decent Premiership player could go through nine marriages.

Sadly David Beckham won't be playing at the tournament due to his Achilles injury. It's a bit ironic that his Achilles heel turned out to be his Achilles heel, we should've seen that coming. That's like discovering that Chernobyl was caused by someone literally throwing a spanner in the works.

I don't know if Beckham should accept FIFA's offer to "Play some part in the opening ceremony". The opening ceremony is always rubbish, usually some combination of releasing balloons, spelling out words by getting people to hold bits of coloured paper above their heads or worst of all "Majorettes". I can't see David Beckham wanting to be involved in that: "David would you mind holding this purple card above your head? It dots the I in the 'Kick Racism Out Of Soccer' sign. No? Well could you twirl this baton? What do you mean you'll drop your crutches?"

If something interesting does happen you can rest assured that I'll miss it, although now that I'm a "fiancé" and happily engaged if I'm in the loo it won't be for a fix or a threesome, I'll be checking that I put the seat down.

If I wipe it as well and maybe arrange a little dish of Potpourri it might buy us enough time for England to win the World Cup.

[faceless]

Let flops die of drugs
16th April 2010

OUTSPOKEN RUSSELL BRAND has called for "teenybopper" pop stars to take heroin - so some of them DIE. The comic said the idea would "weed out" those who did not have true talent and save the industry.

Brand, 35, who has battled drugs himself, said: "The hit parade would look very different. We'd be spared their awful music. It's Darwinian, the law of natural selection." Brand told Rolling Stone magazine he mostly listens to music "by the dead and the dying".

Last night anti-drug campaigners called his comments "idiocy".

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I'm more offended that he's basically played on Bill Hicks bit over this!

[faceless]

Russell Brand Talks Sex, Barbies and George W. Bush in Playboy
Crude comedian demonstrates his no-holds-barred schtick for men's magazine.
By Hollie McKay
FOXNews.com

It’s no secret that English comedian Russell Brand is well, pretty promiscuous, but let’s just hope his fiancé Katy Perry really knows what’s she in for. After all, Brand still classifies the time his father bought him a prostitute in Hong Kong when he was just 16 as one of the most “exciting” moments in his life.

“I can still recall everything about that night—the women in their high heels clinking across the floor and the smell of perfume and booze. I’ve had a strange attraction to prostitutes ever since,” Brand told the new issue of “Playboy” magazine, obtained exclusively by Pop Tarts. “I just liked hanging out with them and talking to them. Prostitutes are some of the most fascinating women I've met in the world.”

However, the “reformed” sex rehabber feels pretty confident that he’s overcome his addiction and no longer has that strong appetite for group sex.

“When I was at my most promiscuous, I was like a charging locomotive…I had a team of experts who took care of finding women for me. They had very specific instructions. It was as if I was talking to a wine steward. ‘I’m looking for something French, a bit fruity, smells of oak.’ I’ve reached a point in my life where I understand empirically that this is not the answer. When you sleep with loads of women, it becomes a bit pointless and futile."

As you may have noticed, Brand is definitely missing the self-censorship gene. His raw sense of humor came under fire in 2008 when he hosted the MTV Video Music Awards and took several digs at the Jonas Bros and their “purity rings.”

“I’m not morally opposed to the idea of sexual abstinence. It’s just not practical for me; because I’ve got to have sex…It’s the public nature of it that I find interesting. Michel Foucault, the poststructuralist French philosopher, said that in Victorian society, the preeminence and celebration of chastity was in fact the mirror of hedonism,” Brand explained. “In other words, if you’re constantly drawing attention to your abstinence from sex, you’re also drawing attention to sex. With somebody like Mick Jagger, it’s all about sex, sex, sex. But with the Jonas Brothers, it’s no sex, no sex, no sex. You see what I mean? The emphasis is still on sex.”

When he wasn’t making fun of virginity during the show, Brand was making fun of then-President George W. Bush, referring to him as “a retarded cowboy fella” – which he says sparked an array of death threats.

“It was meant as a compliment. I wasn’t remarking on Bush’s mental retardation but the fact that Americans are so forward thinking they wouldn’t object to putting a man with his limited intellectual capabilities into political office. It’s quite a compliment that you let Bush run things for as long as you did. In my country he wouldn’t have been trusted with a pair of scissors,” Brand said, adding he was “surprised” that his agency forwarded along the many death threats toward him.

And just in case you weren’t already charmed off your pants by the “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” star, it turns out he also stuck a Barbie Doll where the sun doesn't shine during a stand-up routine in London to protest consumerism.

“I chose the Barbie doll because it represents the oppression of women, the stereotype of femininity, the commercialization of sexuality, blah blah blah. But what I learned from the experience, at least in hindsight, is that if you’re going to make a satirical point involving putting things in your rectum, be selective,” he added. “Don’t take requests from the audience.”

You can read the full "20Q" interview in the June issue of Playboy, on stands and online May 14.

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Fox News reporting on Russell Brand... and the best they can do is suggest that his fiance doesn't know who he is and that he's crude. On that basis I'd imagine Fox journalists are all paragons of virtue if it weren't for the fact they're Fox journalists.