Booky Wook 2: This time it’s personal. Russell Brand
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I’d look through the wrought-iron gates and imagine what marvellous excesses went on behind the frosted glass. Now Noel Gallagher had come looking for me. I quizzed the barman. “It was definitely him, was it? I mean we ain’t that far from London Zoo – phone and check they’ve done a roll call at the monkey house.”
Noel has got a brilliant sense of humour (I hope), he came that night and we hung out with his partner Sara (too good for him) and my dad (about his level), we talked about football mostly and I was touched by his awareness of the impact of his persona. People that famous can obviously be intimidating, and sometimes instead of speaking I’d just stare at him and run out of stuff to say. Noel would fill these gaping junctures with the sort of questions a hairdresser might ask just to keep the chat going – “Been on holiday this year?” or “Do you want some mousse for that?” But I shan’t forget his surprising social dexterity and compassion in what could’ve been an awkward situation – certainly if left to me. Because as he spoke and smiled and swigged, my mind strolled down memory lane to five years earlier, to Drama Centre in Camden. I was transported to the drunken 3am vigils I’d observe when staggering back from some crack-shack. Noel’s gaff and Oasis represented hope and escape for a lot of people, that’s why it’s a fucking good name.
I asked him to come on 1 Leicester Square and the 6 Music show and he came on both and was well funny. I saw a side to him that I was unaware of – I think we all know he can be a bit of a wag and can dart out a one-liner when required, but he was funny in a daft way – he did voices, VOICES. Plus he was camp and silly. He obviously enjoyed coming on the radio show and, ridiculously, became a regular feature. He’d just stroll over from his nearby home and join in. He elevated the radio show and effortlessly made it more special. He stayed involved to the very end.
From the get-go that show had a propensity for aggravation. It was oftentimes daft and gentle, with music-hall banter and light ribbing, but Lesley loved me and gave me lots of room – so I took that room. We began to wind up the newsreaders, throwing to the news in a childish fashion, goading them into including daft words in the news. I went too far and started claiming that during the news I’d be under the desk, interacting in an intimate manner with the newswoman as she racily recited massacres and football scores. She was a bit upset. Another time, my mate Ade who’s in a wheelchair was refused entry into a nightclub and I mounted an on-air campaign to condemn them – which, while good hearted, put the BBC in a difficult position legally as the club could not respond to Ade’s allegations.
These skirmishes were minor – nothing was to get in the way of my inexorable rise, everyone was talking about me, I was living like a teetotal Bacchanalian. It was time for me to make a pilgrimage, for all this success was built around comedy and I am a comedian. Yes, there is an unusual degree of tacked-on glamour and pelvic thrusting, but under the hairspray and hysteria I am but a joker, and it was time for me to return to every stand-up’s Jerusalem – the Edinburgh Festival, the festival at which I’d been arrested, attacked and hospitalised, where I’d fought it out at late-night bear-pit gigs and gouched on smack on stage, and once employed, Fagin-like, a tearaway gang of local children to promote my show. Where, once clean, I’d toiled to earn the respect of my peers and laboured over my craft till I could go toe to toe with anyone. Now it was time for me to take Edinburgh by storm, to stand above it like the castle, to light the sky like the Hogmanay rockets. I was returning as a star, to show them what rock’n’roll comedy is all about. I was going to tear it up, show ’em where I’m from, go crazy. I was ready for anything they could throw at me.
†
They complained about those kids. And they weren’t crazy about the heroin either.
GILDED BALLOON
To Russell Brand
Pablo Diablo
22 August 2000
Dear Russell Brand
I have been made aware of several incidents involving the children you have working for you. Firstly I must point out that it is against employment law to employ minors in any capacity and that the Gilded Balloon does not allow children to work in any of its venues or areas.
There was an incident on Monday when items were taken from the Production office. You were informed of this and those involved have been barred from the administrative areas.
I have now had further complaints from Venue Managers of the same children causing a nuisance in and outside of venues. This has involved the throwing of items at people queuing for shows and abuse being given to staff and customers of the Gilded Balloon. This is unacceptable.
I must therefore insist that these children are no longer admitted to any Gilded Balloon venues or public areas and that you cease to employ them - illegally - to do flyering for you.
I am sorry to have to take this action, but they are causing a great nuisance to staff and customers alike and I would appreciate it if you could advise them to no longer come to the Gilded Balloon.
I hope that I do not have to take this matter further
Yours Sincerely
Mick Bateman
General Manager
cc. Karen Koren, Artistic Director
Chapter 6
No Means NOooo
There’s nothing more tragic than being in Edinburgh on 1 September, the day after the festival, or indeed in the first few days of August before it starts. Because of my inability to be punctual, my unmanageability and my lack of planning, I’ve experienced both the bookends of the month of August when Edinburgh pulls you into its cultural embrace; a cerebral carnival, not a carnival of just decadence. There is such a strong sense of unity in the city, a common manner of purpose, ad hoc venues hastily formed from dentists’ waiting rooms and people performing on street corners. But “the day after”, like the post-H-bomb TV movie that goes by that name, Edinburgh is bereft and eery or like Emily’s shop when Bagpuss has gone back to sleep – still nice, but where’s the magic? Edinburgh in its post-festival slump probably doesn’t have the agonising pathos that Bagpuss had– nor does it raise so many questions, like: why was a little girl trusted to run a second-hand shop? How come Bagpuss could turn inanimate objects into dancing mice and pompous woodpeckers just by waking up? I don’t want to get all “Joseph Campbell”, but that’s what Jesus did with Lazarus. Where’s Bagpuss’s gospel? Probably never penned because, as Matt once wisely observed, the woodpecker bookend Professor Yaffel is a handicraft doppelgänger of that Godless stick-in-the-mud Richard Dawkins. Whenever Bagpuss was delighting the gallery with some unlikely thesis on a bottle or a ballet shoe, claiming them to be rocket ships or Minotaur mittens, Yaffle would coldly high-jack these flights of fancy – “Rocket ship? Why that’s nothing but an old bottle. A Minotaur’s mitten? It’s a dirty old shoe. Islam? It’s inherently violent.” Why can’t Professors Yaffle and Dawkins just let us all enjoy a nice story? I expect Dawkins would say that it’s because he opposes ignorance, especially where it causes war and bloodshed. Well, I happen to think people cause wars, not ideologies, and were we to be united by one, drab godless dogma we’d be murdering each other over who ate the last croissant within an hour.
The first time I went up to Edinburgh I arrived two days early, which is embarrassing, like arriving at a party early or misjudging the mood and touching a date’s thigh or calling your teacher “Mummy”. If I call a teacher “Mummy” now, it is a part of a cheeky little sex-game – not a kindergarten blunder – I think sometimes my sexual pursuits are like time travel: I Quantum Leap back into my past to try and unravel some perceived slight or wrong. “Hmm, those teachers didn’t respect me – I’ll drag a few back to my chamber, that’ll remedy the wrongs of the past.” I’m like Marty McFly hurtling “Back to the Future” to paint in a new present. He seemed to have an unusual interest in sex with his mother for the protagonist of a children’s