Sleazy, sad and self-obsessed: Russell Brand, a hero for our times
By ALISON BOSHOFF
Last updated at 00:20 17 November 2007
Convinced he is irresistible, Russell Brand is holding court among 400 fans at a signing event at Waterstone's book shop on Wednesday night.
The comedian is very much in his element, posing for pictures, cracking stupid jokes and signing countless copies of his autobiography.
The publishers even have to turn people away.
It is a triumphant moment for Brand because he revels in attention of any sort and has been determined that his autobiography should cause a sensation.
The volume - titled, with a juvenile flourish, My Booky Wook - is mostly a rehash, sometimes word for word, of material which he has already used for his stand-up shows.
It's all there in unedifying detail - the time he performed a sex act on a man in a gay pub for a TV show; his heroin addiction; introducing Kylie Minogue to his drug dealer at MTV; going to work dressed as Osama Bin Laden just after September 11 and so on.
It is incredibly sordid - chiefly because of the sheer number of revoltingly grim incidents which he recounts, all of which The Guardian newspaper featured with wide-eyed admiration this week in a three-part serialisation.
It is hard to believe that two years ago Brand was completely unknown: now he is nationally famous and instantly recognisable - even considered a big enough star to front the Brit Awards for ITV last spring.
He has been thoroughly embraced by the liberal establishment, with a weekly football column in The Guardian and a prime-time Saturday night show on BBC Radio 2.
He was named Best Newcomer at the British Comedy Awards and Most Stylish Man at GQ's Men of the Year awards.
But
in his book, Brand, 32, tells stories of numerous encounters with prostitutes - one with enormous breasts "like bin bags filled with lard" whom he visited during his lunch break when working on a TV series.
He makes it clear that this was a regular part of his life, "hilariously" describing the pitfalls of sleeping with more than one prostitute at a time, with a world-weary air.
He talks about watching hard-core porn at his father's house when he was in primary school, and of looking through Brand senior's pornographic magazines when he was hardly old enough to read.
He says that, as a small child, he contrived to watch his Auntie Josie, a friend of his mother, washing her "glorious breasts" in the bath - she had reasoned he was too young to notice.
"I really was quite manipulative, even at that early age."
Later, he describes picking up a young prostitute in Istanbul, making her cry when he broke her mobile phone against a wall while they were having sex.
The following night he went to a lap dancing club and describes how much he enjoyed it in graphic detail.
On another occasion,
he tells how he spat in the face of a girlfriend who annoyed him. And these are the mildest of the anecdotes.
These tales - and dozens more like them - are coated in a thick layer of his campy prose style.
His loveless sexual encounters are generally described as "a sexy adventure". His home is a "snug suburban barracks".
But
these literary flourishes fail to disguise the fact that this behaviour is horribly depressing and blackly misogynistic.
At times, Brand breaks into the chaotic narrative to exclaim just how awful he is.
He seems terribly proud of what he has done. His tone throughout is one of simple-minded delight in showing off his own "bad behaviour".
More than once, Brand has spoken about dreading what his mother ("the most important woman in my life") will make of his story.
Indeed, Barbara Brand seemed pretty shocked earlier this week when the Mail pointed out a story he tells in the book of being abused by a neighbour who was giving him after-school tuition.
Mrs Brand certainly had no idea of what else was in the book.
"I don't know anything about this - nothing at all,' she said.
Shown the contents, she put her hand over her mouth, saying repeatedly: "Oh my God! What has he done?"
Indeed, the truth is that after wading through 335 pages, one wonders how anyone could regard this peculiar young man as a sex symbol.
"The thing about Russell is that you are never quite sure where he has been," said one of his conquests, student Amy Blackburn.
What an understatement! One can only imagine that she - and other former girlfriends such as Kate Moss and Laura Gallacher, daughter of golfer Bernard - will feel rather sickened when they read the full story.
But
as one colleague remarked this week: "I'm not surprised his book is like that, because Russell is almost certainly the most self-centred person I have met.
"He is incredibly self-absorbed, which you often find with people who have had a lot of therapy. He does not really connect with people.
"I think he is fundamentally lonely. He spends a lot of his life just sitting around at home, thinking about comedy and reading books."
Of course, the money for his book - a £500,000 advance from Hodder & Stoughton - must have been tempting.
Brand casually admits there is nothing really new in the book, apart from the chapters on his treatment for sex addiction in 2005.
The other important point is that it ends just as he is getting famous.
Readers who might hope to know about, for instance, his infamous brief liaison with Kate Moss or his friendship with Sadie Frost will plough through all 335 pages in vain.
"I'll write another book one day about how it feels to become famous," he chirps towards the end.
And it must be said that Brand, an only child from Grays, Essex, has been highly adept at milking his fame so far.
Under the able guidance of PR supremo John Noel, he has parlayed his cult status into hard cash.
As well as releasing a DVD of his work, undertaking a series of lucrative live shows and appearing in the Channel 4 programme Ponderland, Brand has a dedicated online store flogging keyrings (£5), signed DVDs (£19.99), signed photos (£10) and Tshirts (£15) - some of which bear charmingly the phrase "dinkle" on one side and "ball bags" on the other.
The next phase in his career will come when his two new movies are released.
One is a remake of St Trinian's, with Brand playing Flash Harry; the other, a low-budget American movie, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, was filmed in Hawaii earlier this year.
Brand's father Ron says that being a movie star is really what his son has wanted all along.
It will be interesting to see if Brand, who appeals to a distinctly niche taste to say the least, translates onto the big screen.
The main reason for the book (priced £18.99) is, one suspects, simply the attention it will bring.
Time and again Brand confesses that, steered by his ego, a desire for the spotlight is the driving force in his life.
"Having the knowledge that I'm being self-destructive and then doing it anyway; I'm still trapped in that pattern," he writes.
Even his spell in a clinic for those with sexual addiction turned into one big joke.
Brand describes his time there as a "stretch in the winky nick" and talks about his "poor famished dinkle".
When he is asked during therapy to name all of the women he has hurt, he explains that he felt "like Saddam Hussein, trying to pick out individual Kurds".
He seems oblivious to just how cheap and nasty the joke is.
Brand claims his sex therapy was: "Just to shut everyone up really and, for the same reason, I finally gave up drink and drugs, because my ambition is the most powerful force within me.
"Once people convinced me my sexual behaviour might become damaging to my career I found it easier to think of it as a flaw that needed to be remedied."
Not, it seems, because he felt any remorse for the pain his behaviour had caused.
And so, Brand graces BBC Radio 2 on Saturday nights.
Aunty is keeping faith with him, no matter how distasteful the skeletons in his closet are.
A spokeswoman for the station brushed aside questions about his drug abuse and extreme sexual behaviour, saying he was "one of the country's most talented performers" who pushed "the boundaries of entertainment in the tradition of talent such as Kenny Everett and Chris Morris before him".
She added that his ratings on Radio 2 remain impressive - and it's clear he is loved by a certain section of the public.
She also said that the podcast of his show often topped the iTunes podcast chart, as well as being in the top five performing BBC podcasts.
They should not, though, get too attached to this bizarre-looking creature in drainpipe trousers with kohled eyes and bouffant hair.
For one of his friends reveals to me that he is planning to walk away from his outrageous public persona.
"He wants to change and bury the old Russell Brand.
"He does not want to be (as one downmarket red-top newspaper called him) the "shagger of the year" - he wants to become known as a serious comic artist.
"Writing this book is his way of getting out of it. He thinks if he finally talks about all that part of his life, he will be able to leave it behind.'
Despite this, his attempts to be faithful and to have a relationship with Laura Gallacher - sister of TV presenter Kirsty - seem to have failed.
One wonders what the nice Ms Gallacher made o
f his liaison with rock wild woman Courtney Love earlier this year.
At present, he says he is "dating" but has been celibate for 22 and a half days, which he presents as a record - once again promoting a view of himself as a "sexy wild beast".
His lovers paint a rather different picture - and one which is considerably less glamorous. Without exception, they describe him as an oddball loner, who pads around his Hampstead flat in a white dressing gown and slippers, talking only to his cat, Morrissey.
Apparently, he doesn't know what to do with a woman, other than to sleep with her.
Imogen Thomas, a former Big Brother contestant, who had a six-week affair with Brand in the summer of 2006, said
he had lots of mirrors around his bed and was chiefly interested in his own reflection.
She added: "He only has a few friends. I got the impression he didn't like being on his own. He would talk to his cat like it was a real person."
Another lover, student Hannah Gregory Soskin, said that Brand would say to Morrissey: "Have you had a nice night? Have you found any mice?"
She added that he slept in a gum shield to prevent him from grinding his teeth and snored like an elephant.
When she contacted him after their encounter, he sent her a text saying: "I don't remember you. Can you send a photo?"
He is, it should be said, aware enough to know that this is all rather depressing, describing his encounters as "some loveless bit of smut".
Russell's father Ron also has a role in My Booky Wook.
Russell repeats the story that he has told to audiences - of his father taking him on a trip to the Far East and hooking him up with a prostitute, while he hired two for himself.
The pair were sharing a hotel room and the episode is sordid in the extreme.
Ron Brand, who runs a telecoms company in Farnborough, Hampshire, and cuts a respectable figure, may be rather embarrassed by his son revealing this to a national audience.
He certainly was not willing to talk about the book this week. Perhaps he does not share his son's love of the spotlight.
Another person who may not be feeling entirely thrilled with the publication is Brand's ghost writer, Ben Thompson, who receives no public credit for his "editorial supervision".
Thompson, who helped Vic Reeves write his recent book, is not among the 52, including Brand's PR and drama teacher, who receive a name check on the back page.
A spokesman for Hodder & Stoughton says: "He was hooked up with Ben Thompson initially and then Russell really wanted to write it himself, so there is very little of Ben Thompson's work.
"He just gave him some initial help and Russell has completely rewritten it since then."
But then again, it's no surprise that
Brand, arch- egotist and compulsive show-off, should want to hog every bit of the limelight just for himself.
As he writes: "If you strip away the self- effacement, charm and the spirit of mischief - qualities that make determination and ambition tolerable - you're left with a right ******
