On Forgetting Sarah Marshall

From his 2010 DVD The World According To Russell Brand

More Russell Brand videos

Brand was born in Grays, Essex, to Barbara and Ron – who separated when Russell was just six months old. He was brought up by his mother, to who he has always been close, but had a difficult relationship with his father.

He made his theatrical debut aged 15 in a school production of Bugsy Malone, before going to the Italia Conti stage school, appearing in an episode of The Bill in 1994, and further study at the Drama Centre in Camden where, at night, he began performing stand-up on the London circuit.

He reached the final of the Hackney Empire New Act Of The Year competition in 2000, and that same year made his Edinburgh debut as one third of the stand-up show Pablo Diablo's Cryptic Triptych alongside ventriloquist Mark Felgate and Anglo-Iranian comic Shappi Khorsandi.

Following that show, MTV gave him his own series, Dance Floor Chart, in which he toured the nightclubs of Britain and Ibiza, and the teatime request show Select. However he became addicted to heroin, which understandably affected his work. He was fired after coming to work dressed as Osama Bin Laden immediately after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

In 2002, he landed his own show Re:Brand, on the now defunct satellite channel UK Play. The show took a candid view of cultural taboos and his own hang-ups. But while it was daring and provocative, it was also unfocussed, given Brand's addictions at the time. In one show about sexuality he masturbated a gay man, in another he challenged his own father to a boxing match to settle old schools.

In 2002, he appeared in the Channel Four’s adaptation of the Zadie Frost novel White Teeth and the Steve Coogan vehicle Cruise of the Gods – though he was thrown off the set for bad behaviour. It was clear by this point that his drug-addled lifestyle was ruining his career and his agent, John Noel, forced him into rehab for his addiction to heroin and sex.

In summer 2004, Russell was given a second chance, hosting E4’s live Big Brother discussion series Efourum and Kings of Comedy for E4. The gamble paid of for Channel 4, and Brand was on the road to becoming a star. Two more series of the Big Brother show, retitled Big Brother’s Big Mouth, followed.

In 2004, he also took his first one-man show, the confessional Better Now, to the Edinburgh Festival, giving an honest account of his heroin addiction. He returned the following year with Eroticsed Humour, and in 2006 with Shame.

In 2006, he as welcomed back to MTV with his own chat show, 1 Leicester Square. This led to an E4 show Russell Brand’s Got Issues, which later transferring over to Channel 4, despite disappointing ratings. He was nonetheless given his own Channel 4 chat show, but again it registered disappointing viewing figures over its five-week run. In 2007 he was given another chance by Channel 4, with the video clip/stand-up show Russell Brand's Ponderland. Again ratings were poor, but it was recommissioned in 2008, and returned with a more solid audiences.

Other notable TV appearances include a BBC Four documentary retracing Jack Kerouac's On the Road and his role as recovering crack addict in the 2007 broadcast pilot of ITV1 comedy The Abbey.

Brand simultaneously developed his radio career, starting with in 2002 on London alterative music station Xfm – another job he was sacked from. After cleaning himself up, he landed a Sunday morning show on BBC 6 Music, and was quickly promoted to Radio 2, upsetting some of the show’s traditional listeners. The decision backfired in October 2008 when, with guest co-host Jonathan Ross, Brand left filthy messages on the answerphone of Fawlty Towers star Andrew Sachs, boasting about bedding his granddaughter. He resigned in the ensuing media furore, which raised questions about the very purpose of the licence-funded BBC.

Controversy seems to surround Brand. In July 2008, he was roundly criticised for making a hoax call to police during his stage in Northampton, claiming he had spotted a man responsible for a series of sexual assaults. In 2006, he began a feud with Bob Geldof at the NME awards; and his political comments about President George Bush at the 2008 MTV awards also divided opinion.

On film, his first major role was as Flash Harry in the 2007 remake of St Trinian's, and the following year made waves in Hollywood playing outrageous rock star Aldous Snow in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. He will reprise the character for the 2009 comedy Get Him To The Greek, in which a straight-laced chaperon tries to get him safely to a gig.

Brand has written a football column in The Guardian since 2006, and the articles have been published as two anthologies. His autobiography, My Booky Wook, was a 2007 Christmas bestseller.

Give It Up For Comic Relief
Live Review
Wembley Arena

Like so many things involving Russell Brand, Give It Up For Comic Relief was morally ambiguous.

The evening was raising funds for drug and alcohol addiction centres, yet seemed to be a veritable advert for consumption - from Noel Fielding’s tongue-in-cheek ‘Don’t Do Drugs’ reggae number, to Brand saying: ‘Many people watching this at home will be out of their minds on drugs, and that’s fine...’ Even unlikely narcotic advocate Simon Amstell, who needs little chemical help being paranoid or self-analytical,urged: ‘If you’ve never had magic mushrooms, you really must.’

How much of the pro-drugs message made it to BBC Three screens, I don’t know. But abstinence was not a popular option in Wembley Arena itself, which is odd considering the tie-in with Comic Relief. The skips full of drugs consumed by the likes of Noel Gallagher, Kasabian and Brand himself over the years are hardly likely to be Fair Trade, doing damage in the sort of Third World countries that the rest of the Comic Relief organisation works so hard to put right.

But such considerations were not for tonight. Brand wants a change in attitude to drug addiction so it’s akin to the approach to alcohol, that it’s fine to indulge as long as it’s not a dependency. That was one message of the night, the other was that viewers should text ‘give’ to 70005 and donate a fiver to treatment centres, as they watched the entertainment unfold.

And there was certainly a hell of a lot of entertainment for your £5... or £50 if you brought a ticket to the gig, which ran for three-and-a-half interval-free hours. OK, it’s not Mark Watson’s 25-hour effort of last week... but a long time to be passively viewing music and comedy. Wembley’s plastic seats weren’t built for that.

A ridiculously long running time is a hallmark of any big benefit, of course, as too is an eclectic booking policy, to maximise the appeal. There can’t be much Venn diagram overlap between fans of Kasabian and fans of Rizzle Kicks, but here they are sharing a bill. The former were the musical highlight, alongside Gallagher’s High Flying Birds , delivering a welcome reminder of just how impressive they can be with an awesomely epic version of Fire... which proved an entirely inappropriate introduction to Amstell’s low-key introspection.

Other musical acts on the bill were Emeli Sande, Paloma Faith, Jake Bugg, Jessie J and Nicole Scherzinger. The former Pussycat Doll rather gave away one reason for her involvement in the show by announcing the track Domino as: ‘This song is a positive, inspirational song. It’s also my next single.’

Besides the clumsy plug, surely you can’t tell people your own song is inspirational. I’ll decide what inspires me, and generic, club-friendly, R&B/pop sung by a girl in her pants, isn’t it.

As host, Brand warned against such ungenerous thoughts, pointing out that all the acts were performing for free. Throughout the night, he was playful about both the cause, and his own bad-boy reputation, from flirting with the girls to borrowing a female audience member’s mobile to demonstrate how to text a donation and suggesting: ‘This is the BBC and I’m playing with a phone. It’s already risky territory.’ Then turned to the woman and asked: ‘What’s your grandfather’s phone number?’

Later in the show Brand took a messianic walk among his followers in the audience, finding the most funny in banter with a young lad called Alfie, which he knew would never make the TV. ‘They’re not going to show a BBC presenter getting anywhere near a fucking kid,’ he said knowingly.

Brand was at his best, though, when padding for time from backstage as techies were setting up for bands, ad libbing like crazy yet consistently finding the funny. His banter with pal Fielding, especially, was priceless.

Fielding appeared on stage, uncredited, as hard-ass New York cop Raymond Boombox, delivering his ‘anti’-drug message, which might have been more weird than hilarious – an epitaph for much of his output – though it was entertaining watching people figure out who was behind the gaffer-tape ’tache.

He’d been preceded by Jack Whitehall, who seems to be channelling a lot of Michael McIntyre with his upper-middle-class observational incredulity. After something of a slow start, he found his pace with some material about bullying, an old and obvious gag about the campaigning wristbands notwithstanding.

Amstell injected a bold note of cynicism into proceedings. Reverting to his Pop World snidery, he questioned Jessie J’s motives in shaving her head for Red Nose Day – and even whether charity was the best way to combat the complicated problems of poverty. It was nicely contrary, but he could have used more time to expand, especially after dealing with the gear-change of following Kasabian.

After his tumultuous week at the hands of The Sun, Jason Manford delivered a solid but unspectacular observational set that probably won’t be remembered on such a packed night. Eddie Izzard was far more successful. Even if some of his initial flights of fancy into the topics of human sacrifices and Charles I’s reign didn’t quite land, his unique thought processes are always fascinating, and after padding around a while, he finally found the vein of wit, to use an entirely inappropriate metaphor.

Jimmy Carr did what Jimmy Carr does, pointed if unprincipled one-liners – some that he’s been doing for a while, and some new – accompanied by his distinctive heehaw laugh. He set a high gag-rate in the limited timeslot, and if he was setting the taste bar low, so Frankie Boyle could stomp it down through the ground.

‘I’m genuinely surprised to be here,’ he said, surely echoing the thoughts of many a BBC executive. And indeed, he was cut from the ‘almost-live’ broadcast after being brutally offensive with every perfectly-crafted line. Criticising the hypocrisy of Comic Relief while much of the West profits from Third-World strife might have touched a nerve, but it was an harsh anti-Queen setup that provoked the greatest boos of discontent among a surprisingly monarchist crowd. ‘A joke is just a proposition, a “what if”?’ he explained, as he’s probably quite used to doing. But it’s the quality of the punchlines that determine whether real offence is caused, and unlike most low-aiming wannabe shock comics, his sharp writing scores on that count.

Doc Brown, despite being the lowest-profile act on the bill, showed why he deserved to be there with a brief set featuring his boldly political comedy rap about poor tea-making technique, before the comedy was closed with John Bishop making reference to his own, more strenuous, fundraising efforts of last year. Despite spending most of his set doing the admin of emphasising the positive aspects of the night, it was Bishop, not Boyle, who caused the evening’s biggest controversy... by dissing Man Utd, since football is far more important than who rules Britain.

Still, if there was a Champions’ League for comedians, all of this line-up would be in it, ensuring the quality was maintained even if the viewer’s concentration ebbed and flowed over the long night.

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Seems to have based his persona/act entirely around Timothy Claypole from Rentaghost. And he was shit.

Ken, August 2007

Patrick Kielty in drag; without the laughs.

Mark Jobling, March 2007

It doesn't matter how many poor-quality shows he's given, or how many awards are engineered in his favour, or many drug added starlets and hookers he shags, or how many semi-developed students find him cool or how many comments he writes for himself: The bottom line is this: RUSSELL BRAND IS NOT FUNNY. And no amount of media garnish is going to alter that fact. Peter Stringfellow anyone?

Richard Bell, March 2007

Brilliant stand up. Don't judge him til you have seen him live

buppon, February 2007

Legend

mac, February 2007

He is one of the funniest stand-up comedians i have seen

steph, February 2007

The most unique and individual talents usually polarise opinion, and personally I think that's what has happened with Brand. Like many people I hated his TV show, but subsequently changed my mind about him after his radio shows and appearance on the Big Fat Quiz of the Year. After Christmas I saw his new DVD and was fully converted. I can even put up with his zany, loudmouth TV persona now that I can see it masks some excellent comedic delivery. I think it's a mark of his talent that he is competent at both wacky, immature low-brow comedy and intelligent, articulate, high-brow material too. At his best, he's somewhere in between. Obviously not everyone's cup of tea, but if he pandered to everyone he wouldn't be half as good.

Harri, January 2007

Russell Brand is the most amazing, talented, gifted and hilarious performer of today

h, January 2007

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