Booky Wook 2: This time it’s personal. Russell Brand
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home are probably watching politely. I was already mates with the impeccably English and mindlessly attractive Carl Barât, formerly of the Libertines and at that time with Dirty Pretty Things, so I wasn’t totally adrift socially. What’s more, I had spent the previous ten years taking enough drugs to put most of those present into nappies, so I could connect on that level. I was no stranger, either, to live acts of reckless self-destruction, so was unperturbed when the lead singer of the band Cribs sharded himself up, real horrorshow, on a table full of glasses he’d Iggy Popped himself on to. I was prepared for almost anything. Including being dubbed a cunt by a saint.
When Bob Geldof calls you a cunt, speaking from experience, it is difficult because Bob Geldof comes with cultural baggage, mostly favourable. We’re all aware of Bob Geldof and all the wonderful things he’s done. Bob Geldof had been ever present in my own life as a benevolent, indignant narrator of the story of the possibility for positive change. So as he strolled to the pulpit, beckoned by Bono on VT, in my mind a different film played.
Cut to – 1984 Wembley Stadium, Bob Geldof louchely bounds with stern purpose on to the stage; at home in Grays, Essex, the nine-year-old Russell Brand sits in the square-eyed danger zone staring lovingly at the hobo-knight. “When I grow up I’d like to be just like brave Sir Bob,” he thinks. “Give me the fookin’ money NOW,” growls his on-screen hero. What a wonderful man. Having saved the world, Bob, by now canonised, settles down and has three beautiful daughters with names that many condemn as indulgent but that young Russell thinks are original and poetic. “You leave him be,” he chides his friends. “That man saved the world.” When Bob’s wife Paula Yates tragically dies after the death of her new partner, Michael Hutchence, the teenage Russell notes with teary eyes that Bob took on the daughter the doomed lovers had subsequently borne. “Truly he is the lamb of God.”
“And here he is,” thinks contemporary Russell as wise Sir Bob mounts the stage. “At last I can meet this great man and tell him of his influence and of the hope he’s given me over the years.” As his hero passes, Russell scarcely dares to touch his hand but obediently gives him his deserved reward for NME’s kindest, nicest man of the year.
“Russell Brand, what a cunt.”
Oh. That’s not very nice. Perhaps my mind is broken. I look to Matt in the wings, whose face confirms two things: yes, that actually happened, and yes, your mind is broken. But it is not a mind entirely without merits. Earlier in the day while finalising the script, by which I mean writing it, for nothing is ever written until it absolutely cannot be avoided, I said to Matt that I was worried about Bob Geldof.
“Why? What for? He’ll be alright,” said Matt.
“I’ve just got a feeling that he could be confrontational,” I said. It was not entirely a male version of women’s intuition – my fear was ignited by provocative elements of our script. When me and Matt write scripts our minds depart, our better judgement takes a hike and our combined rudeness struts in with a hard-on and drizzles out what it considers to be funny but is actually offensive – usually to someone important. It did it at the NMEs (Bob Geldof ), it did it at the Brits (the Queen) and it did it at the MTV VMA awards (George W. Bush). I’ll tell you how we erred at these subsequent events in good time, but for now here’s my forensic analysis of what may’ve got up Bob’s nose.
1 I called him “Sir Bobby Gandalph”.
2 I threw to a VT of his close friend Bono with the line, “Here’s Bono, live from a satellite orbiting his own ego.” Maybe that antagonised him.
3 And finally there was this link to bring him to the stage: “The winner of Best DVD is Bob Geldof. My best DVD is Big Natural Tits 10, in a welcome return to form after the lazy and derivative Big Natural Tits 8 and 9. Of course we ain’t really captured the glory days of Big Natural Tits 1 and 2 – don’t be ridiculous – but all this is academic because the Big Natural Tits series has been overlooked. Again. Here’s Sir Bobby Gandalph!”
The moment.
At our script meeting I reasoned with Matty Morgs thusly – “That Gandalf stuff and all this rhubarb about boobs will antagonise him” (although they really are spectacular films), but Matt said, “No, he won’t say nothing, he’ll be flattered.”
“He won’t be flattered, Matt, he’ll be incensed.”
I presumed his response would be “There’s only one big natural tit here” – then, turning to point at me, “that prick”. As it transpired, Sir Bob was much more linguistically efficient.
As my gung-ho writing partner and I discussed the likelihood of a tit-for-tat reprisal from Sir Bob, an incredible thing happened. Occasionally as a comic, a line will appear as if in a dream, perfect, celestial, fully formed. The line I’m about to recite emerged from the mists of my troubled mind like Excalibur. Matt was still busily assuring me that the world’s most notoriously outspoken man would tolerate my childish teasing like a big soppy ol’ sheepdog when I, suddenly St Paul, all smug with epiphany, said, “If he does coat me off I shall simply reply: “No wonder Bob Geldof’s such an expert on famine. He’s been dining out on ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ for thirty years.” Matt has never been one to dole out praise profligately; he responded to my burbled boasts about Kate Moss with the immortal “Her? She’s a bit thin, ain’t she?” – but now he was suitably awed.
“Fucking hell, that’s brilliant.”
“I know, my son,” I said all holy. “Shall we put it into his intro?”
“No. That’d be overkill. But it’s nice to know it’s there if you need it. It’s security – like Clint Eastwood’s Magnum.”
“Russell Brand, what a cunt.” It felt like the nice man from Live Aid, the man who’d single-handedly saved Africa, had speared me through the decades. I felt like a bullied nine-year-old, hurt and defenceless. Well, you may’ve fed the world but you just broke my heart, Geldof. I was eviscerated, up there. I stood at the side of the stage, white and silent with no recourse. Except I had that line.
But Bob Geldof is a hero, revered by millions, the perfect apotheosis of modern philanthropy, a great father, a rebel who stayed true and kept on sticking it to the man even after he made it. Who took his fame and money and power and did something truly worthwhile. There’s no way I can hit back at Bob Geldof. Can I? He did just call me a cunt. On the telly. In front of my mum. What a quandary! My personal pride has been attacked, but by a great man. He has shot me down like a hangdog gunslinger riding a young pretender out of town. Except, I do have that line.
I don’t know what to do. Bob’s over at the pulpit giving his speech and I’m welded to the spot, still trapped in the moment where his curse pierced my flesh. I look over. I can’t hear what he’s saying, only my mind ticking. “Shall I say that line?” it asks. I can’t see the audience, only the glare and Bob’s great past and my mum at home on her sofa with her cat holding a mug, stung. Maybe she’s crying. I don’t know what to do. I’m up there alone, my first big gig and an international human rights campaigner has just dug me out. Do I fight back? Can I use the line?
Then I remember Matt. He’s in the wings. Slowly, so slowly the audience and Bob don’t notice, I turn my head. There’s Matt, and like me he’s motionless. He looks proper pissed off. We lock eyes. Me and Matt are mates. We’ve been through some capers. I’ve dragged him through brothels and made him score me smack. We’ve been in gruesome threesomes and nasty rows. Across the floor and through the silence Matt hears the wordless question.
“Shall I, mate?”
Slowly and with no trace of doubt Matt nods.
I turn. Take aim. And fire.
Now it’s Sir Bob’s turn to reel with stinging shame, the philanthropic Goliath felled by a wise guy slingshot. I don’t get too many opportunities in life to look cool. But in this moment I was an assassin. Now the rest of the show should be a doddle. There is, however, a further challenge.