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Aug. 31, 2023 - On Brand

02:05:35

OB #16 - Russell Brand Primer Part 1: The Man

We get into Russell's biography and history in the first part of the patron-funded primer on the man himself. Support us on Patreon! - patreon.com/OnBrand

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	This is On Brand, a podcast where we discuss the ideas and antics of one Russell Brand.
	I'm Al Worth, and each week I go through an episode of Brand's show with my co-host Lauren B. Hi, I'm Lauren B. That's me.
	And I have no clue what we are getting into today, but we're going to find out.
	Indeed we are.
	So it's a little different because we're not going to do Bright Spots this week and nor are we going to thank our individual new patrons, which we usually do, because this here episode is going to be part one of the Russell Brand Primer slash Primer.
	And it's something that is going to be maintained, updated, and used as a reference throughout this show.
	I decided to split it into two parts, and this first part we're going to cover Bran's history and biography, while in the second part we'll be tackling his main ideologies, narratives, and spin.
	The first part, this first bit, hopefully won't need updating unless I fuck anything up.
	I don't think I have, but we'll see.
	We may not be thanking individual patrons this week, but this Russell Brand primer was a stretch goal on our Patreon and wouldn't exist without our beloved patrons.
	So if you're a patron of any tier or amount, this is for you.
	Thank you.
	Sincerely.
	Thank you so much.
	You're the best.
	Wonderful.
	If anyone wants to support us and what we do become an awakening wonder join the invisible hand or donate on an elevated tier head to patreon.com slash on brand and you will have our eternal gratitude.
	As a patron you will also get a shout out on the show and access to our patron only full length show off brand where we talk about pretty much anything but Russell Brand.
	And please note that while you can easily listen to our audio version anywhere you can find podcasts, you can also watch us on YouTube, or if you listen in the Spotify app, the video should come up there too.
	Okay.
	The format this week will be a little bit different, as there will be many fewer clips and more reading from me.
	And I'll try and kind of take appropriate breaks to places where you're going to want to react, Lauren, because they're going to occur.
	Probably almost immediately, to be honest.
	Shocker.
	Yeah, I'm gonna start where it seems sensible, at the beginning.
	So all the information I'm getting is either from Brand's own words or respectable journalists who have done their homework.
	There was a considerable amount of trawling through Brand's interviews and writing to put all this together, as the Wikipedia page is nowhere near comprehensive enough.
	So, Russell Edward Brand was born on June 4th, 1975 in Orset Hospital in the County of Essex and grew up in Gray's, which is also in Essex.
	He is the only child of Barbara and Ronald Brand.
	Barbara was a secretary who also sold everything from clothes to dishwashers to make ends meet.
	Ronald was a photographer, and by all accounts, a bit of a rogue.
	Russell's parents separated when he was six months old, and so he was primarily raised by his mother.
	By Brand's own estimations, he had an unhappy childhood.
	He describes it as having been lonely and difficult.
	Russell's father Ronald was pretty much absent in Russell's life, periodically showing up in his Porsche at the school gates prior to losing all his money.
	As a little boy, when Russell went round to visit his dad, Ron let him watch Elvis films and porn while he quote diddled birds in the room next door.
	Yeah.
	That's what I just said.
	Let him watch Elvis films and porn while he diddled birds in the room next door.
	That's for people who are aware of Britishisms.
	That means fucking women in the room next door.
	It took me a second.
	So you're clear.
	And letting his child watch Elvis films and porn.
	Fantastic.
	I mean, Elvis films are like fine.
	They're very tainted.
	Probably?
	Probably?
	I don't know.
	I don't know how many.
	I don't know how many of them would be questionable by modern standards, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Well, the code was, it was, you know, the code was in effect where it was very, like.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I'd take issue with the porn, I think, for a child.
	The porn, and also the absentee parenting while you fuck someone next door.
	That's also a problem.
	I'm glad the actual animal, birds, the flying animals are safe, though.
	It took me a second.
	Yeah, no, the literal birds are completely fine.
	Literal birds are completely fine, yeah.
	That's just, that's the way Russell describes it.
	Bran's mother, on the other hand, was and is the apple of his eye.
	He was obsessed with his mum to the extent of thinking they should get married.
	Yeah, they had an intense loving relationship, though a stressful one.
	He's mentioned on his show that she's had cancer seven times, right before seemingly accepting Wim Hof's assertion that he could heal cancer.
	And this had a profound effect on him during childhood.
	So when Brand was eight years old, she was diagnosed with uterine cancer and then breast cancer almost immediately after.
	I'd like to read from Russell's recovery book, discussing his movement through the 12-step program.
	So, during step four of the program, he spent two days writing down everything that had ever fucked him up.
	Quote, finding ways to incorporate this transgression into my understanding of the world, stitching it into the fabric of my understanding.
	Mum is ill a lot.
	They say I am bad.
	My dad does not like me.
	I am not safe.
	I don't like school.
	I don't belong.
	People don't like me.
	I made mummy ill."
	Heavy shit.
	From early adolescence, he was suspected to be bipolar and hypermanic, though he was only ever treated for depression at the time.
	He suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a neighbour, and later at age 11, as an overweight child, he struggled with bulimia.
	He said he found the experience euphoric at the time.
	Here's a clip of Brand in 2018 discussing the concept of forgiveness in general and around the sexual abuse he received specifically.
	Regret and forgiveness, these are hacks.
	This is how it works.
	When someone goes, do you regret anything?
	What they're asking you is, is there something that's already happened that you can't do nothing about that you want to feel that you want to do something about?
	No!
	What's the point in that?
	It's literally impossible.
	Someone's asking you, do you want to be able to reverse time?
	No, I've let go of that because it's beyond my understanding of physics.
	Can I learn things from stuff I've done in the past, never do it again, make amends to people if I've harmed them?
	Yes, I'll do that then, because I don't want to live with the feeling that I've hurt people.
	Now, forgiveness is a similar thing.
	Forgiveness is about not holding on to pain already lived.
	That ain't easy.
	Take the most common example, abuse when you're a child.
	Right?
	It's not your fault, is it?
	You've got no part in that.
	You can't say, oh, well, that guy abused me.
	I was a sexy kid.
	You know, like what?
	You can't Can't take responsibility for that.
	But what you can do is you can say, the mistake I'm making in continuing to resent somebody that abused me when I was a child is, one, it ain't happening now.
	It's not happening.
	Now I'm an adult.
	Now I can protect myself.
	Of course it was bad that you were abused as a child.
	Of course it is.
	It's worse that you are continuing to suffer from that pain now.
	There is a way of unravelling it.
	There is a way of releasing it and letting it go.
	It is through forgiveness.
	Now, like, the idea of forgiveness features very strongly in most religious philosophies.
	The very last thing that Christ says is, forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.
	Because just let go of this shit.
	I don't mean holding that when I'm transcending to the next level beyond the material world into pure consciousness.
	And like the Forgiveness Project, a brilliant project that I read about people like mothers forgiving the murderer of their children because they don't want to live with it.
	You can't live with the pain.
	It's a form of acceptance, I think, is you've got to accept, like, this is where I suppose faith starts to help.
	If you can start to love the person that you are, then all that came before were the constitutional aspects Of delivering you to the person that you are.
	So you learn to accept them.
	You learn to understand that a person that abused you is a sick person.
	And whilst you don't advocate, obviously, what happened, you have to let go of it.
	It's vital.
	And this happens up and down the scale, whether it's something as serious as child abuse or difficult relationships, everyone was just doing their best.
	and in fact they are not really separate from you.
	And they were in your life to give you a lesson, whatever that lesson is.
	Now the fact that I was abused, but not as a kid a couple of times,
	and but not to the degree of that I know with some people, it's so severe, I sometimes feel bad even using the word.
	So many people I know.
	So many people I know. - It's totally common.
	I mean, it seems like it's a pretty popular hobby from I Can Work Out.
	But now it means that I'm in a position, if someone talks to me about child abuse,
	I don't sort of start looking out the window I go, yeah, all right, come on in, let's talk about it.
	You know, so that means it's useful.
	It's good.
	I can help other people with their shame.
	What a great gift.
	What a great gift.
	I wouldn't give it up for anything.
	You just explained that so well.
	Yeah, I don't particularly agree with what he's saying there, personally.
	There are a couple of problematic things in there.
	But, you know, nothing as bad as his show.
	Just perhaps views that I would not endorse.
	Well, it's a conflation of acceptance and forgiveness.
	Yeah.
	Those are two different things.
	Yeah.
	To start with, you know.
	Yeah, I have a very strong aversion.
	To me, I feel like forgiveness is weaponized, I'd say way more than it is utilized effectively.
	Yeah, and it's often kind of used as a bit of a cudgel in religious kind of communities, especially.
	Or even just the vibes.
	Good vibes only.
	Get fucked.
	No, that's not how life works.
	And if you insist that that's the situation, then like... Don't even get me started.
	Don't even get me started.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	It's a bad deal.
	That's not healthy.
	And if that's something that he feels individually, I don't think that just, like, the forgiveness part is not the part that is useful.
	The processing is the useful part.
	I don't take a problem, I don't take issue with him taking that away.
	Personally, it's when he's trying to tell other people to do it, that's when I take a problem, to take issue with it.
	Right.
	So, yes.
	Brand and his mum were poor, and when Russell was seven, she hooked up with stepdad Colin, whom Russell hated.
	Brand struggled with his mum remarrying, which is somewhat expected of a troubled only child.
	He would describe his stepfather as, quote, good-looking, with all those masculine energies, just sitting around, drinking tenants, dominating the sitting room.
	He also said, quote, I loved my mom madly, but I had a lot of prohibiting inhibiting things around, unquote.
	At 15, after several expulsions from schools, he played the role of Fat Sam in a production of Bugsy Malone and discovered the joy of expressing himself through performance.
	He said, quote, It was amazing, a blissful epiphany.
	Then at 16, he left home because of disagreements with his new stepfather figure.
	Pretty young.
	He would be accepted to the Italia Conti Academy later on, a theatre school in London.
	After his first year at the academy, he was expelled for illegal drug use and poor attendance.
	He was also accepted to the Camden Drama Centre, but would be asked to leave, in Russell's words, for smashing things up, crying and cutting myself, breaking down in tears all the time.
	It's not clear at which of these two schools it was, but around this time he was sexually assaulted by a tutor.
	Yeah.
	His life up until a certain point was just absolute fucking dog shit.
	It was here he began to delve into drugs such as cannabis, amphetamines, LSD and ecstasy.
	At 17, his father Ronald took him to Thailand on holiday and ordered three prostitutes, two for him and one for Russell.
	He was 17.
	You know, I Yeah, I don't know what to do with that.
	Because at 17, like, you're almost legally an adult in this country anyway.
	Okay.
	But at the same time, I don't think at any age it's appropriate to do that with your dad.
	You know?
	Yeah.
	I think that's fucking weird.
	The element of common, like, because it's common.
	Um, has been common, not so much anymore, because I think we're moving away from that kind of mentality.
	I would find it fucking strange if my dad suggested that to me, I've gotta say.
	Yeah.
	I would run a million miles in the opposite direction.
	Yeah, well, and I think that, you know, even just like comedy conventions around sex that made it into entertainment when I was a kid in the early 90s, 90s time, that I look back on and I'm like, oh my god, that's fucking awful.
	Yeah, no, for sure.
	I just, I don't know.
	This is bizarre to me.
	It is bizarre.
	Yeah, there was one piece of footage I was looking at where he was having a conversation with his dad about it, and said something about one of the prostitutes saying something to Russell, and then it sounds like what he says is, then from the bed over there, you hear, oh, fucking hell.
	So I'm not sure if they were even in separate rooms.
	I couldn't confirm exactly because it was a quick exchange, but that's what it sounded like.
	I was already not feeling great.
	Yeah, I'm not loving Ron, I've got to say.
	You knocked it down a notch with that little tidbit.
	Not loving Ron, he doesn't come off as great.
	That being a common, like, truly like a trope.
	Like, you know, taking your kid to lose his virginity with a prostitute or whatever.
	That's one thing.
	I think it's a different thing being in the next or even the same room while you're fucking to yourself at the same time.
	So from here in 1994, Russell had a couple of acting gigs, a one-off episode of police soap opera The Bill, and six episodes of a children's TV drama called Mud.
	Not much is known about what Russell got up to in the years between 1994 and 2000, other than him working briefly as a postman.
	Which is a hilarious thought to me.
	But what I do know is that in 1999 he first bought heroin on a whim from some boys in the street.
	He said, quote, Finding heroin, it's like God, home, a lover, just this feeling of being engulfed by warmth.
	Everything moving away, your life, everything, and withdrawing into this beautiful sanctuary."
	He would also go on to describe how all other drugs pale in comparison to heroin for him.
	In 2000, Brand performed stand-up at the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year final.
	Although he finished fourth, his performance attracted the attention of comedy agent Nigel Klarfeld.
	That year he also made his Edinburgh Fringe Festival debut as one-third of the stand-up show Pablo Diablo's Cryptic Triptych, alongside ventriloquist Mark Felgate and comedian Shappi Korsandi.
	In the same year, he got his first TV presenter role on MTV, helming Dance Floor Chart, Which in between playing the latest EDM bangers, toured nightclubs in Britain and Ibiza, and spent most of its time taking the piss out of how drugged up everyone was while Brand himself was high.
	So here is an example of what he spent his time getting up to.
	You're Natasha.
	I am Natasha.
	You needn't peep up at me under hooded brows, that'd be no good.
	Do you know what you want to train mice to enslave, enslave mice, enslave mice and get them to run around, get them to run loops round in your earrings.
	Would you feel guilty if you did that?
	No.
	Borrow me that top, borrow me that top.
	Go on, borrow me that.
	No, I wouldn't want to because it probably would look better on you.
	Do you think so?
	Yeah, I think it would.
	That's the kindest thing anyone's ever said to me.
	I'm sure that's a lie.
	Are you lactating at the moment?
	Because my baby's starving.
	I'm not actually.
	They're growing but they're not lactating.
	It needs to scoff up knocker muck.
	It needs to scoff up some knocker muck.
	Julia's got a load of knocker muck.
	Get your knocker muck over here, Julia.
	We're at Manumission sampling knocker muck.
	Hmm.
	Pretty grim by modern standards, I think.
	He was 25 here.
	So at this point, Russell was also hosting MTV Select, which was a music request show which aired in the UK from 4pm to 6pm.
	In 2001, Brand was fired from MTV, and I'm going to read an excerpt from an interview he did with Time Out Sydney to explain what happened in his own words.
	Quote, the dealers keep the bags in their mouths.
	When you buy one, they spit it into their hand, and you have to put it directly into your mouth.
	Even though you want the heroin, a little bit of you is thinking, ugh, he's had it in his mouth.
	After a while, though, you stop thinking that.
	It's a bleak day when that happens.
	You know that's another little boundary that you've crossed, another principle chalked off to experience, another thing you've put behind you because there's so little in front of you.
	Not content with damaging myself physically, I set about dismantling my career.
	Gritty was the main dealer I used to get heroin off when I worked at MTV.
	He seemed a nice sort of man, though.
	He had quite a caring side to him for a drug dealer.
	One day, Gritty asked me once if he could bring Edwin, his eight-year-old son, into MTV to have a bit of a look around.
	I said, sure, why not?
	What could possibly go wrong?
	We could call it Bring Your Drug Dealer to Work Day.
	The date that the inaugural Bring Your Drug Dealer to Work Day happened to fall upon was September 12th, 2001, the day after the destruction of the World Trade Center.
	Oh my!
	With typical restraint, I decided to go into work dressed in a camouflage flak jacket, a false beard, and a tea towel on my head, held in place by a shoelace.
	I had been aware of Osama Bin Laden for about a year.
	He wasn't someone people of my age group generally knew about, but he'd been involved with some other bombings and he was top of the FBI's Most Wanted list and I was fascinated by that sort of stuff.
	That day, I was going to present this program called Select, where kids phoned in and chose videos for us to play and pop stars would come on to flog their records.
	Our guest was to be Kylie Minogue.
	Me, Gritty and Edwin went into the toilet and the two older members of our party smoked some crack.
	Edwin, the eight-year-old, didn't have any.
	He was just a little boy and seemed quite upbeat about life anyway.
	Children don't need drugs because they have sweets.
	We blearily swaggered out of the disabled toilet.
	On the other side of the foyer, with its round console, banks of TVs, trendy turnstile and endless parade of beautiful young people of both genders and every sexual persuasion trundling in and out, I saw Kylie Minogue, all famous and everything.
	Somewhere in my mind, the artist within me, the situationist within me, thought, I can create a moment here.
	When am I ever going to get an opportunity like this again?
	Before I knew it, I'd walked across that foyer, made a kind of woo sound in a mom-across-a-neighbor's-fence sort of way, and said, Kylie, meet Gritty.
	Then I just stood back to watch it unfold.
	What were these two gonna talk about?
	It's the day after 9-11, and Kylie and Gritty are having a sort of awkward chat, with Gritty trying to be polite, and Kylie asking, what do you do?
	Sort of like the Queen would.
	And there's me, standing beside them, still dressed as Osama Bin Laden.
	I thought, doesn't get any better than this.
	And it didn't, because they sacked me about two days later.
	So yeah, that's the day that got Russell Brand fired from MTV.
	It was primarily the dressing up as Osama Bin Laden thing, actually, that did it.
	Yeah, do you think that Kylie Minogue doesn't talk to drug dealers?
	Like, she's been famous since the early 80s?
	I think she's met plenty of people like Gritty.
	Yeah, I'd say so.
	Calm down, Russell.
	She's really famous and talented and pretty, but she's not stupid.
	No, no, and she's also, you know, very experienced.
	Yeah.
	I never want to hear her stories.
	I'm sure they're terrible, like her tribulations in her career.
	Oh God, no, no.
	I'm sure it's a nightmare.
	I think Kylie's kind of presentation as well as that she has more grace than to ever kind of expound upon them.
	She will keep that to herself because the comparison to the Queen is kind of apt in that respect.
	There is that kind of, I'm going to keep all of this shit below a certain kind of you know. Well, but also nobody ever know. Nobody asked.
	That's the thing is like Russell made this assumption that he was being very edgy when really he was
	just introducing probably a person that has at least some people skills because they're in sales. So
	like you got you got to work out a They're both people with immense social skills, I imagine with with people skills, you know, as a as an artist, as a musician, you definitely have to have that.
	That sounds like the the conclusion of a high person thinking they're doing something really edgy when really what you're you you're wearing a racist costume.
	That's the problem, buddy.
	There's plenty of that.
	So anyway, that's the first time that Russell was fired for a scandal, but it's by no means the last.
	After being ousted from MTV, he starred in a show called Rebrand, a docutainment-type program that aimed to take a challenging look at cultural taboos.
	It was conceived, written, and hosted by Brand with the help of friend and comedian Matt Morgan, and it aired in 2002.
	Though I mercifully can't find it anywhere, one of the episodes featured Brand masturbating a man to orgasm in a bathroom stall to ascertain whether Brand was fully straight or not.
	He later said that it wasn't for him, and that scene was probably a byproduct of his drug use.
	Yeah, completely fair.
	I mean, in a way, props to you for trying it to find out, but maybe not on national television and maybe not in a public place next time.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Now, I have managed to find some of a different episode, however, and there's a brief specific clip I want to play for you from episode two of Rebrand, entitled Nazi Boy, in which Brand is hanging out with the leader of the Young British National Party.
	We thought if we couldn't talk you out of fascism, we'd just thrash it out of you.
	Unlikely.
	Who's this dude?
	That's Ian Stewart.
	He used to sing in a band called Screwdriver, but sadly he's dead now.
	Somebody cut his brake cables.
	Who do you reckon did that?
	Lefties or government, depending.
	Why would the government do it?
	Well, every time nationalists get a bit of a following, they always pull something naughty out of the bag.
	Somebody does, don't they?
	I mean, like, look at Mr Fortune in Holland.
	Pin Fortune?
	Was it Holland?
	Yeah, he was Dutch, wasn't he?
	Bang, you know what I mean?
	Six times in the head, battered.
	Because you think it could be a conspiracy, Mark, from the government against... Well, every time... Look, the media and the government go hand in hand.
	Your radical left, your media, are basically just tools of the government.
	Every time we start doing well, the radical left come out and they start screeching from the sidelines and the media slag us off.
	Come on, you know what I mean?
	They claim to be revolutionary.
	They're not revolutionary, they're just stopping popular advance of other parties.
	That's not very revolutionary, is it?
	I mean, when Le Pen's just about to go up against the...
	What's his name?
	Shirak.
	You know what I mean?
	You think all the revolutionaries would do the revolutionary thing, instead they went
	and voted for a corrupt Tory boy.
	How revolutionary is that?
	Not very.
	They just gotta uphold a, um, a dying system.
	So you believe there's a general conspiracy in favour of the left?
	Not a general...
	I'm not saying anything about a conspiracy.
	Basically, the corporations and the media have got everything tied up for profit.
	Bled is what they tell them.
	It is a conspiracy.
	So he gets his pocket full.
	And the left just protect the system by going around doing their silly little marches.
	How come near marches are silly?
	Well, we don't have marches.
	You don't have marches?
	Why's that?
	Well, it's just unproductive.
	I mean, the last thing you want is trying to get to Marks and Spencer's to get you a sandwich and a bottle of wine.
	There's a load of people marching down the street stopping you from getting there.
	Instead of just going to knock on people's doors and speak to them, because that's how people like to be treated.
	I think so.
	And I suppose that nationalism's history has got bad connotations with the old marching front, hasn't it?
	Nuremberg, etc.
	If you see a bunch of youths marching down the street, it gives an intense impression.
	Especially if they're all wearing brown shirts.
	Yeah, it's good to keep the wardrobe white and the ethnic policy white.
	What a wacky guy you are.
	Thank you very much, man.
	Britain first.
	Put British people first.
	Cut down on crime, stop racist anti-white violence.
	Do you think that's quite a prevalent thing?
	If you actually look, go to the Home Office website, you'll find out that there's 150,000 racist attacks every year in Britain and 111,000 against white people.
	Really?
	Have you ever felt that you've suffered racism yourself?
	Not that I'm aware of.
	There may have been secret racism!
	It's because it's simply like, if you go for a job or whatever, you might not know that you've not been selected, but a lot of firms have to meet ethnic quotas, so you might not get the job, you might not know directly why you didn't, but you might have been qualified for it but not got it because they had to give it to an ethnic.
	You never know when you're a victim of positive discrimination.
	It's just a log in someone's book.
	I'm not talking about conspiracy or anything, I'm just talking about sensible what it is, you know what I mean?
	England expects.
	What do you think England expects of you, mate?
	Well, England should probably expect more people to join the BNP.
	the BMP.
	Really?
	Fucking hell.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	So in case it's not clear to audio listeners as television is a visual medium, Russell
	is kind of baffled by this guy and later in this episode gets into a shouting match with
	him saying everything he believes is wrong.
	Yeah.
	However, one of the comments underneath the video said, I'd love to see them do a reunion 20 years on, and it really made me consider just how much of the stuff Nazi Boy was saying that Russell would take at face value these days, and how different a conversation this would be.
	That felt like the Russell I thought we were going to at least interact encounter to some degree.
	A little bit.
	You know, like being facetious, like pretending to agree with someone to get them to keep talking and make fun of them.
	Really?
	That was the Russell that was impressed upon me before we started this project and had come to expect.
	Like, as a person, as an entity, and as a figure, like, that's who I thought Russell was.
	Nope!
	Yeah, that's who he was.
	And yeah, it's fascinating to kind of think that had this guy been on Russell's show today and been rattling off, oh yeah, 110,000 of those are against whites, now he'd just be like, oh really?
	Wow, fuck!
	I didn't know that.
	Oh wow, yeah, we need to protect the white people.
	That would be his line these days.
	He's just a yes-ans to all of it.
	So yeah, it's a fascinating view.
	This guy's a real piece of shit, by the way.
	They were talking, they were sat in a pub discussing like things that his young BNP, young British National Party kind of things do and like one of the things they do for like local kind of impoverished kids is they'll take them away paintballing and canoeing for like a whole weekend for just £10 and where else can you get that?
	And Russell said, well, what if like a little black kid wants to do it?
	And the guy laughed and said, well, he just couldn't.
	Like, okay.
	Okay.
	Not even trying to, fair enough.
	Okay.
	Not even trying to hide that.
	Fine.
	Fine.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it's a lot.
	It's interesting.
	I do also want to throw in a brief personal aside about the BNP.
	For anyone wondering, they are an overtly white supremacist nationalist party.
	I want you to imagine if Alex Jones ran a political party, and that's pretty much it.
	They're now basically defunct with an estimated 500 members.
	But in the 2010 general election, though, they got half a million votes out of the total 26 million and something who voted, which was not nothing, right?
	That's not great.
	No, no.
	And this clip we just watched was from 2002.
	Yeah, 2002.
	2002, yeah, 2002. And yeah, they got nearly 300,000 in the 2005 election.
	So then, after 2010, the rise of Nigel Farage and UKIP happened, which was a kind of a more
	palatable version of the same thing.
	And around the same time, the leader of the BNP for 15 years, Nick Griffin, resigned and was then kicked out of his party for quote, fabricating a crisis, whatever that is supposed to mean.
	The personal part is that I've met Nick Griffin a couple of times because I went to school with his kids.
	That's weird.
	Yeah, no it is weird.
	It's something that has only been weird to me in hindsight.
	Yeah.
	You know, at the time, perfectly normal.
	The oldest ones seemed to be the most troubling in following in their father's footsteps.
	Ellen, who was in my year, didn't seem that way inclined, but having said that, I've no idea what she's up to now.
	Nick Griffin was effortlessly charming, by the way, in an almost disarming fashion for someone who has previously called the Holocaust of the hollow hoax and would regularly say things like there's no such thing as a black Welshman.
	So, you know, lovely guy.
	Just just absolutely tremendous.
	One of my favorite drag queens is a black Welshman.
	I reject the premise.
	Yeah, no, no.
	She's a model.
	She's stunning.
	Get with the program.
	Get with the times.
	You could always see him around the place because, you know, in mid Wales, in the middle of nowhere, a kind of a black SUV with tinted windows with the whole thing was bulletproof.
	Like you could see him coming.
	So the same year as Rebrand came out, he was fired from a TV film made by Steve Coogan, which also starred Rob Brydon, James Corden and David Walliams.
	Details are somewhat sketchy, but he seems to have been fired for soliciting prostitutes during filming.
	Also in 2002, Bran's radio career began on London's indie rock station XFM, securing an afternoon slot with fellow comic Matt Morgan.
	He was fired almost immediately for reading out pornographic materials on air and regularly bringing homeless people into the studio.
	He has said elsewhere that he used to go and solicit drugs with many homeless people, so it's possible there was an overlap and these people were part of his crew.
	That is, however, speculation on my part.
	But also kind of makes sense.
	Also kind of probable.
	On December 13, 2002, Russell was found using heroin in a bathroom during an office Christmas party.
	Brand's then-manager, Chip Summers, stepped in, telling him he'd wind up either in a prison, a lunatic asylum, or a graveyard, which instigated a trip to a 12-step program.
	It's my feeling that the 12-step program Brand undertook began him down the path which leads to his current-day Christian zealotry.
	Nonetheless, after 11 years as a daily hard drug user and four years as a heroin addict, which also involved many, many times of being arrested, Brand got sober.
	And has remained that way ever since.
	I've been given no reason to doubt Brand's sobriety at any point, and I don't find footage of him acting either manic or sluggish convincing.
	He's inherently a man of extremes, so please don't send us any of that, because, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I'm gonna believe him.
	In 2004, Russell took his first one-man stand-up show, Better Now, to the Edinburgh Fringe, which was a roaring success.
	He mostly spoke about his time as a heroin addict and kind of dealing with that.
	So very raw, very honest.
	The same year, he also began hosting Big Brother's Big Mouth, during which a studio audience of fans and a couple of celebrity guests would talk about the latest goings on in the Big Brother house.
	Just for the record, are you familiar with Big Brother and what that is?
	Okay, great.
	For anyone who's not, bunch of strangers trapped in a house for, what was it, like a month?
	It was a while.
	I remember it being a while.
	At least a month.
	But y'all film faster over there than we do.
	I don't know why.
	Well, I do.
	But like, it feels like y'all can get the same amount of work done in a shorter amount of time.
	We get it done!
	Well, it's publicly funded, you see.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Though this was Channel 4, I think.
	But that means less torture for reality TV show people.
	They have to do like challenges for food and that kind of thing.
	It started out as a social experiment and ended up kind of just a game show.
	And yeah, they each get voted out and then someone wins at the end.
	Well, it's like a blueprint for what most reality TV has kind of become.
	In a way.
	Has evolved into, yeah.
	Yeah, so the show was another big success for Brand and he ended up hosting for three years, during which time he continued with his stand-up and acting careers simultaneously.
	Russell actually auditioned for the role of Super Hands in the sitcom Peep Show.
	Yeah.
	I mean, crack addict, so you know, Russell was also taking crack at the same time as heroin, saying that it made him more sociable.
	So have the heroin, then have the crack to kind of liven him up a bit.
	Okay, that makes sense.
	But yeah, thankfully the role eventually went to Matt King, the super hands we all know and love.
	I think he's doing a DJ set around here soon, actually.
	He does them as super hands, which is great.
	That's a move.
	That's a move.
	That's his character.
	He made it.
	No, it's great.
	It's great.
	Everyone loves it.
	Everyone.
	Absolutely.
	I think he does normally have like a snake around his neck or something as well.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	A fake one, I think.
	Because, you know, trying to DJ with a real one around your neck would be insane.
	Anyway, 2006 would be a big year for Brand's stand-up career.
	He won Best Stand-Up Award at the Time Out Awards, Best Stand-Up Award at the Loaded Laughters, and Best Newcomer at the British Comedy Awards.
	He would also launch his first nationwide stand-up tour, Shame, which was recorded to DVD.
	He began co-hosting the Russell Brand Show on BBC Radio 6 Music, and due to its success, it was moved to BBC Radio 2.
	The show regularly drew around 400,000 listeners, which in this country is quite a lot.
	This same year, he would be a part of the Big Fat Quiz of the Year for the first time, alongside Jonathan Ross, Rob Brydon, David Walliams and Jimmy Carr, joining Noel Fielding in becoming part of the Goth Detectives, as they would henceforth be known.
	I know.
	We all of a specific kind of era, we loved them.
	We did at the time.
	His first autobiography, My Bookie Wook, was released in 2007 to critical success and he was in his first major motion picture as Flash Harry in the film St Trinian's.
	He hosted the Brit Awards, sort of our equivalent to the Grammys, the same year.
	He hosted Comic Relief, presented the UK leg of the Live Earth concert that happened, and presented a documentary about Jack Kerouac's On the Road as well.
	Yeah, big Kerouac fan, so I'm fine.
	Okay.
	Yeah, whatever.
	Okay, college.
	Yeah.
	2008 came around and Brand was catapulted into greater international fame by his role in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, playing rock star Aldous Snow.
	Brand was later announced as the host of the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards, the VMAs, which drew skepticism from the American media as he was relatively unknown to the American public.
	Brown's appearance led to controversy for numerous reasons.
	He said the night, quote, marked the launch of a very new Britney Spears era, referring to it as the resurrection of Spears.
	This was, of course, after her very public mental health crisis.
	So, great.
	He also said, quote, if there was a female Christ, it's Britney, unquote.
	I remember most of the stuff being said about Britney at that time.
	That is comparatively mild.
	No, I know it was a fucking rough time and I have nothing but respect and love for Britney Spears.
	Yeah.
	She's done a lot, that poor fucking woman.
	She deserves some grace, I think.
	She deserves to be left the fuck alone, is what she deserves.
	So, Brand also implored the audience to elect Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, and later called then-US President George W... It's funny how that opinion's changed.
	And later called then-US President George W. Bush a retarded cowboy fella who in England wouldn't be trusted with scissors.
	I don't disagree with that one.
	Borrowing the use of the R word, I don't disagree with that one.
	It's a sliding scale!
	Guess what?
	Guess who I'm always gonna hate more?
	Any bush!
	Any of the bushes!
	Americans were not pleased at those comments.
	He also made several references to the purity rings worn by the Jonas Brothers, but he apologized for those comments later in the show, so eh, whatever.
	However, by this point it had been six years since he'd been fired for a scandal which was far too long and so came Saxgate.
	In a pre-recorded episode of the Russell Brand Show broadcast on BBC Radio 2 on Saturday 18th of October 2008, Russell Brand and presenter Jonathan Ross made prank calls to 78-year-old actor Andrew Sax who was best known for playing Manuel in Fawlty Towers.
	I'm first going to play a part of the show that, well, some of it didn't make it to air, and then after that I'm going to play a part that did.
	messages on his answering machine. I'm first going to play a part of the show
	that, well, some of it didn't make it to air and then after that I'm gonna play a
	part that did. So here's the first part.
	Sorry, I can't answer at the moment.
	Please call again or leave a message.
	Speak after the tone.
	Thank you.
	I'll blur something out.
	Don't blur something out!
	Not on the answer phone, Jason!
	Sorry, I can't answer at the moment, but please call again or leave a message.
	Speak after the tone, thank you.
	So lonely.
	When you've left your message, just hang up or for more options, press one at any time.
	Oh, hello, Andrew Sacks, this is Russell Brand.
	I'm a great appreciator of your work over the decades.
	Uh, you're gonna be on me show now, uh, mate.
	I don't know why you're not answering the phone, it's a bit difficult.
	I'm here with Jonathan Ross.
	Hello, Andrew.
	That's Jonathan Ross speaking now.
	Uh, we understand.
	Anyway, I can still do the interview to his answer phone.
	Let's do it, let's do it.
	I think.
	Uh, Jonathan, I mean, Andrew Sachs, you will be appearing in a documentary, The Bill Made Me Famous, with Martin Kemp, Roger Daltrey, Paul O'Grady, Pauline Quirk.
	Yes.
	Did the bill really make all those people famous, Andrew Sachs?
	I maintain it didn't, Andrew Sachs.
	That's Jonathan speaking now.
	I maintain you rose to fame with your own talent in other performances, not just a guest appearance on the bloody bill.
	We thought you was better in Forty Towers.
	I don't even remember you being in the bill.
	I didn't know you was in it, nor Pauline.
	I don't remember you in Forty Towers, I remember your singles.
	I've got all four of them.
	Well, there were four great singles.
	Now, Andrew Sachs.
	Don't call him Andrew, that's really bad manners.
	Call him Andrew Sachs!
	I apologise.
	I said Andrew Sachs!
	He's an idiot.
	Look, Andrew Sachs, I've got respect for you and your lineage and progeny.
	Never let that be questioned.
	Don't hint.
	I wasn't hinting!
	Why did that come across as a hint?
	Because you know what you're talking about.
	That wasn't a hint!
	Now when you were doing- He fucked your granddaughter!
	That's his answer phone!
	I'm sorry, I apologize.
	Andrew, I apologize.
	He's on the answer phone!
	I can't help it, you were talking about it and it was in my head, I apologise.
	Jonathan!
	I got excited, what can I say?
	I'm coming on your... It just came out!
	Right, you wait till I'm on your... Andrew Sachs, I did not do nothing with Georgina.
	Oh no, I've revealed I know her name!
	Oh no, it's a disaster!
	Abort!
	Abort!
	Okay, so that's part of it.
	In total, they called his answering machine four times.
	That's a little desperate, but okay.
	Content.
	They were little boys having a riotously good time, and I'm going to play a part of it that definitely did make it to air.
	Right.
	Yes.
	Yes!
	We'll just sing to him.
	Gift of song.
	What song shall we sing?
	Well, I'll make up something as I go along.
	And I'll do the bum bum bum bum.
	Yeah.
	I'll be Bing Crosby and you'll be David Bowie.
	That's what I've always seen our relationship as.
	A Christmas themed hit.
	Lovely song.
	Lovely song.
	Wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah I'd like to apologise for these terrible attacks, Andrew Sachs.
	I'd like to apologise for these terrible attacks, Andrew Sachs
	I'd like to show contrition to the max, Andrew Sachs I'd like to create world peace between the yellow, whites
	and blacks, Andrew Sachs I said some things I didn't have order, like I had sex with
	your granddaughter But it was consensual and she wasn't menstrual, it was consensual,
	lovely sex It's full of respect, I send her a text
	I've asked her to marry me.
	Andrew Sachs.
	If you deign it, this natural pact could be me.
	Oh, Andrew Sachs.
	Will you marry me?
	Will you marry Jonathan?
	No, no, that's a different poem.
	Sounds like he wants to now.
	This has made it worse.
	I feel it's made it worse.
	You trivialised the whole terrible incident.
	It started fine and then you went on about nonsense.
	So, calling up a mild-mannered, well-beloved actor and saying, he fucked your granddaughter is pretty gross and definitely ill-advised, and I don't think either of them expected what came next.
	It may seem quaint by today's standards, but the entire country kicked the fuck off.
	To illustrate the point, I'd like to play a clip, a news clip from GMTV from that time.
	Good evening.
	The Prime Minister has waded into the furore surrounding the BBC stars Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross after their now notorious Radio 2 phone prank.
	Gordon Brown has attacked the highly paid pair, describing their behaviour as inappropriate and unacceptable after they left lewd messages on the answer phone of the elderly Fawlty Towers star Andrew Sachs.
	10,000 people have already complained about the programme and the media watchdog Ofcom has launched an inquiry.
	Well, tonight has called Grow for both presenters to be fired.
	The BBC apologised and said an investigation is now underway.
	Paul Davis reports.
	He's already apologised and by the sounds of it, Russell Brand has been meditating on those things he probably shouldn't have said.
	Good morning.
	Hare Krishna.
	Please, I must go to the car.
	Are you going to resign?
	Hare Krishna.
	Hare Krishna.
	Some say it's just risque humour.
	Others believe Brandon Jonathan Ross should be sacked for this.
	I said some things I didn't have oughta.
	Like I had sex with your granddaughter.
	This was part of a series of messages left on the answer phone of actor Andrew Sachs and later broadcast on Radio 2.
	Andrew Sachs' granddaughter is the singer and aspiring model Georgina Bailey.
	There's no suggestion that the comedian's comments are anything but a joke in questionable taste, one that appears to break several broadcasting rules.
	Ofcom will now be studying its own Code of Conduct, which covers areas like offensive language, as well as humiliation, distress and violation of human dignity.
	It was pre-recorded, that's the bit that gets me.
	That's kind of wild.
	That went through a fucking editorial team, and the controller of Radio 2 had to resign in the wake of this.
	So it was such a national scandal, even the Prime Minister was forced to comment on it.
	That's a bit much.
	It's crazy!
	And Ofcom, the television regulator mentioned there, received over 18,000 complaints in the end.
	Brandon Ross was suspended from the BBC, after which Brand immediately resigned.
	Ross, who was at the time one of the BBC's biggest and highest paid stars, and host of Friday Night with Jonathan Ross Film 2008 with Jonathan Ross and his Saturday Morning Radio 2 show, was suspended without pay for 12 weeks.
	Considering his contract was for about six million a year, I'm betting he was pissed.
	Uh, in terms of scale of talk show hosts, like before Graham Norton, there was Jonathan Ross.
	So like, oh yeah, big fucking deal.
	Yeah.
	Jonathan Ross.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And I used to watch his show.
	I, yeah.
	Uh, anytime we, we watched, we rewatched Big Fat Quizzes and he's, he's a hoot.
	No, no, no, he's great.
	He's great.
	I also I really love his voice.
	He's got a great baritone.
	Totally.
	Yeah.
	Well, OK, what is a little difficult and challenging is like I will.
	And again, this is from a lens that's across the pond and is mostly Big Fat Quiz informed because Big Fat Quiz always deals with like the scandals, right?
	Right.
	And it does seem Inconsistent?
	What British people get upset about?
	So it's a little confusing.
	Oh God, yeah.
	Yes, no, no, no, 100%.
	This was in some ways blown out of proportion.
	I think the response to it was extreme in some ways.
	I think from the public, I think the response from the BBC was correct and I think the response from Ofcom was correct.
	Yeah, you sign a contract and then you have to follow the rules.
	Yeah, yeah.
	That's kind of what jobs are.
	Exactly, and I think Georgina Bailey was incredibly correct to be upset, as was Andrew Sachs, but both of them later accepted the apologies that were given and would have been fine with them being reinstated, etc.
	So yeah, the British public, I mean in this case there wasn't much of a fuss initially until, I can't remember which newspaper it was, but one of them picked it up and ran a story on it and then snowball effect.
	Yeah, context doesn't really help either.
	I'm glad we listened to a lot of it, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Because just that clip?
	To help try and understand what the, yeah.
	I think you could excuse a little bit of, it was just that one clip, but like they called four times.
	Called four times.
	And they kept talking about it.
	And it was, yeah.
	Yeah, no, it was a lot.
	And it was, yeah, like I said, two little boys just having a hilarious time by their own estimations.
	The BBC's watchdog, BBC Trust, found the phone calls to be, quote, a deplorable intrusion with no editorial justification that the very offensive programme should never have been recorded.
	Ofcom fined the BBC £150,000 for breaching broadcasting code and broadcasting explicit, intimate and confidential information about Sax's granddaughter, Georgina Bailey, without her consent.
	Brand was quoted at the time as saying, despite all the fuss, it's essentially meaningless.
	Worryingly, he would be proven correct.
	The response to the scandal was not entirely negative.
	Brand's show, Russell Brand's Ponderland, a comedy series of monologues and musings from Brand interspersed with TV footage, was in its second season, the debut of which would be October 30th that year.
	It drew a million viewers, which was a marked improvement from its first season.
	Brand went on to win the British Comedy Award for Best Live Stand-Up Performer that year and dedicated it to Ross.
	After Jonathan Ross's suspension, Friday Night with Jonathan Ross returned in January 2009 with guests Tom Cruise, Lee Evans and Stephen Fry, and drew an audience of 5.1 million, compared to the 3.74 million of the last season.
	Shortly after, the show was nominated for a BAFTA, the British Academy Film and Television Award, in the Best Entertainment Performance category.
	There is no such thing as bad publicity.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it seems like Russell has benefited massively from quote-unquote cancel culture.
	So I can see why he's such a fan of talking about it.
	Not hiding that.
	Nope.
	2009 was mostly focused around Brand's stand-up tour Scandalous, the DVD of which was filmed at the O2 Arena, which has a 20,000 capacity.
	The same year began another famous reference point for Brand, which was his relationship with pop star Katy Perry.
	They began dating after meeting a second time at the 2009 MTV VMAs in September and were engaged on New Year's Eve.
	So, three months in and engaged.
	That's quick!
	Some of this stuff is really impressive to do sober, honestly.
	It's kind of impressive.
	No, no, when you, yeah, when you consider he's been sober while he was doing all of this, completely fucking sober.
	That might be the biggest surprise, that like drugs have not been on the table for like a minute.
	No, exactly.
	The stuff, jacking off a guy on a TV stall, when you're on drugs, oh, a TV stall, a thing, you know, fair enough.
	Like, okay, I'm not going to judge him too much for his antics pre-2002 because, you know, When you're in an addict headspace, there's some crazy shit going on, right?
	But since then, many fewer excuses.
	That's buck wild.
	I'm feeling unsteady within myself.
	Putting this into context, again, surprising.
	Very surprising.
	Yes.
	Okay!
	In 2010, Bran's second autobiography, Bookie Wook 2, this time it's personal, came out.
	Artwork by Shepard Fairey, by the way.
	And reviews seemed generally positive.
	The same year, he would feature in a film version of The Tempest, opposite Helen Mirren.
	He voiced Dr. Nefario in Despicable Me, and would reprise his role as Aldous Snow in Get Him to the Greek, alongside Jonah Hill.
	This film was a roaring success and is absolutely one of the main reference points people have for Brand today.
	Russell was also in an episode of The Simpsons.
	In September 2010, Brand was arrested on suspected battery charges after he allegedly attacked a paparazzo who blocked his and then-fiancee Katy Perry's way to catch a flight at Los Angeles International.
	In October 2010, Brandon Perry married in a Hindu ceremony in India near the Ranthambore Tiger Sanctuary in Rajasthan.
	Yeah, Hindu ceremony, right?
	The lengths this woman has gone to to piss off her pastor dad are impressive.
	Bran's wedding gift to Katy Perry was in fact a tigress at that sanctuary.
	I knew you were going to say a tiger!
	The tiger stayed there.
	The tigress stayed at the sanctuary.
	It's not one they brought home with them because that would have been completely fucked.
	And before anyone kind of emails me or messages us or anything, I know Stuart Lee has a very funny song about Russell Brand's wedding.
	I know.
	It comes up regularly.
	I can recommend people go and watch it because it is very funny.
	A Hindu ceremony!
	A Hindu ceremony, right!
	It is strange.
	Neither of them are practicing Hindu, like, Practicing that religion.
	I don't know them ever to be.
	No, no.
	From a legal sense, it doesn't matter.
	But yeah, it is weird.
	Yeah, I guess you're right.
	But still, appropriative?
	Smells like appropriation.
	I don't know.
	The whole thing, really.
	At the height of his fame, Russell reportedly had sex with up to five women a day before going to sex rehab.
	Yeah.
	Speaking in 2010, shortly after his wedding to Katie, he admitted of his single days, quote, I was having sex with different women three, four, five times a day.
	In Ireland, nine in one evening, unquote.
	It's tough to find specifics of the sex addiction rehab he went through, but suffice to say, I don't think anyone was surprised.
	2011 saw Brand star in animated movie Hop and a remake of the 1981 movie Arthur, both of which were a complete flop at the box office.
	He hosted Saturday Night Live and produced another stand-up DVD called Live in New York City.
	It was this year he turned vegan.
	On December 30th, 2011, Brand filed for divorce with Katy Perry, citing irreconcilable differences.
	On December 31st, New Year's Eve, he sent her a text message to notify her of the fact.
	I don't think much of breaking up via text, but divorce via text?
	How low do you have to be?
	That's a lot.
	That's insane.
	That's big yucks.
	That is that is insane.
	Also, it's not like you're going to get away with it.
	It feels like a stunt.
	Like you're married to Katy Perry.
	Everyone's going to know what like that's the thing that you do in secret because you can get away with it if you want to be a sneaky snake.
	You want to be a snake in the grass to people.
	That's something that you do as a secret.
	You know what I mean?
	And like he knows he's not like Yeah, no, people would find out that he had just texted, you know?
	Yeah!
	Yeah, so Katy Perry's documentary slash concert film Part of Me revealed that conflicting career schedules and Perry not feeling ready to have children led to the end of their marriage.
	The documentary shows much of Katy trying to make an effort to break from her international tour To fly to wherever Russell is at any given moment, while he literally doesn't come out to see her at all.
	Wow.
	She said the footage wasn't edited that way, it's just there was no footage of him being there because he wasn't there.
	Perry later said in an interview, quote, at first when I met him, he wanted an equal.
	And I think a lot of times strong men do want an equal, but then they get that equal and they're like, I can't handle the equalness.
	He didn't like the atmosphere of me being the boss on tour.
	So that was really hurtful and it was very controlling, which was upsetting, unquote.
	I identify with that.
	Yeah, no, 100%.
	Brand blamed Katy Perry's commercial success, having become restless with a Hollywood lifestyle after a charity trip to Kenya, and said, quote, we were going in different directions, possibly opposite directions, unquote.
	My guess is it was probably both of those things.
	Yeah.
	This same charity trip, I think, by the way, is the one referenced in our first episode where he goes to the garbage dump.
	Sounds like it.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yep.
	Post-breakup, Katy Perry went through a mental health struggle, even feeling suicidal, and by 2013 hadn't spoken to Russell whatsoever since that text message saying he was divorcing her.
	Holy shit.
	There was not a single communication between them.
	How fucking crazy is that?
	But also, that's controlling.
	Like, that's a manipulation game in and of itself.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And it's just insane.
	How much of a piece of shit do you have to be?
	She later said, quote, I felt a lot of responsibility for it ending, but then I found out the real truth, which I can't necessarily disclose because I keep it locked in my safe for a rainy day.
	I let go and I was like, This isn't because of me.
	This is beyond me.
	So I have moved on from that."
	Very curious.
	Very curious.
	I have just become green with envy.
	Who knows?
	What's the real reason?
	I want to find out the real truth.
	Baby, pop that safe.
	Open.
	Let's party.
	There's a possibility that at some point it's all going to come spilling out, which one can only hope.
	My curiosity is peaked!
	Yeah, right?
	She's now happily married to Orlando Bloom and they have, you know, several kids and everything, so one can only think she's fucking traded up in the world, right?
	That's exactly it.
	Those were the exact words that popped into my head.
	Did you ever see the nude paddleboard pictures of Orlando?
	I think so?
	Yeah, fucking hell.
	There's him and Katy Perry on a paddleboard and he is completely stuck.
	He hangs dong and you know, he's there with a six pack and I've got to say, you can see why he's not shy as well.
	Yeah, he's a babe.
	They're babes.
	With a massive dong.
	Yeah.
	Like, yeah, okay, fair enough.
	And you know, I've never heard a bad thing about Orlando Bloom.
	I've heard he's a sweetheart.
	Plus it's Legolas, you know, I mean, come on, you've already won.
	You've already won.
	Good for her.
	And fucking Will Turner, yes.
	Yeah, absolutely good for her.
	Good for both of them.
	Good for everybody.
	Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
	Very, very happy for them.
	I also feel like Russell was probably edging into his like I want to be a public figure that could be mistaken for a cult leader moment and I can see how that would not work out well with Katy Perry's vibe.
	Like kind of for like good reasons and like not so good reasons but still just like I don't know like I don't I don't hear Orlando Bloom cult God no.
	God no. God no. From the impression I got of their relationship, because Katy Perry was younger than
	Russell Brand as well, the impression I got was that she was bending over backwards to make sure
	he was happy at every available turn and to try and keep things going. And it's
	It seemed like she was doing anything that she possibly could, whereas he on the other hand was being a grumpy prick sat at home not fucking doing anything.
	Yeah, like, go have fun.
	Your wife is Katy Perry.
	Go and see her!
	Go, you know, like... That's what I'm saying.
	Why not join on the tour for a little bit?
	That'd be great fun.
	Like, they were going to South America and all kinds of cool places.
	Yeah, and it's not like he doesn't travel.
	It feels obstinate.
	No, it's not like he's not used to that.
	You know what I mean?
	Exactly.
	Yeah, there's... it's like, that's your wife, man.
	Like, go hang out, right?
	What's the problem?
	Yeah, and if you look at the footage from that documentary as well, she was gravely upset throughout that entire tour.
	That sucks.
	Yeah, no, it's awful.
	There's her breaking down in her dressing room every five seconds.
	Fucking hell.
	I'm so glad they got lost.
	glad anybody that's especially been like in a long distance kind of like tethered moment
	in their relationship and like been on that's so relatable and yucky yeah no it's incredibly hard
	or rich you are it's that's that's the thing that sucks you can't buy your way out of that sucking
	No.
	No, that's true.
	That's true.
	You could buy your way out of that sucking by Russell buying a plane ticket.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And spending all that money on hanging out.
	Instead, Katy Perry was using her rest days, like the two or three days that she would have that she was supposed to rest, because that's essential in an international tour, especially for a vocalist.
	She was using that time to fly back to London or wherever the fuck Russell was at the time.
	That sucks.
	Yeah, which, you know, that's absolute madness.
	Poor woman.
	So, Brand was personally selected by the Dalai Lama to host the Buddhist Leaders 2012 Youth Event in Manchester.
	The Dalai Lama's representatives explained that Brand was selected because he had proved, quote, the power of spirituality to effect change in his own life, unquote.
	While Brand stated to the BBC after the event, quote, I said yes because he's the living incarnation of Buddha, and I thought, if you're around the Dalai Lama, that can only be good for your spiritual quest through life.
	He's an amazing diplomat, an incredible activist, a wonderful human being, and an inspiration to us all, unquote.
	This is, of course, the event I attended, and it was a pretty surreal experience in every way.
	And it was free, by the way, to anyone under 25, so I was like, well, fuck yeah, I'm going.
	I get to see the Dalai Lama for free.
	It was only when I received the ticket that I saw that Russell Brown was going to be compere, and I was like, ha!
	Okay.
	Yeah, very strange.
	Very strange.
	Yes.
	Yeah, it was.
	It was.
	I've not looked for any footage.
	There might be some somewhere.
	I'll see if I can find something.
	Brand briefly dated Jerry Halliwell of the Spice Girls, though that didn't last long.
	The same year, Brand testified in front of a parliamentary committee about drug addiction, sharing his experiences and view that drugs should be decriminalized.
	He said, quote, I'm not a legal expert.
	I'm saying that to a drug addict, the legal aspect is irrelevant.
	If you need to get drugs, you will.
	The criminal and legal status, I think, sends the wrong message.
	Being arrested isn't a lesson.
	It's an administrative blip.
	Unquote.
	Part of this testimony was included in a BBC3 documentary, Russell Brand from Addiction to Recovery, that aired in December 2012.
	Brand said he felt compelled to make the film after the 2011 death of close friend Amy Winehouse, and he also used the opportunity to question how British society deals with addicts and addiction.
	Okay, fair enough.
	Yeah, fair enough.
	I agree with everything he just said.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Go for it.
	Still surprised that I couldn't blame more of his behavior on that though.
	It's really...
	Yeah, no, no.
	He was sober before his career began in earnest, so that's the thing.
	A lot of people, I think, are under the impression that his antics in the mid-2000s, he was still on stuff now.
	That's exactly what I was assuming.
	Because also everybody else I was like, as far as musicians go, they were all Just goofed up out of their minds.
	For fucking sure.
	I just could have assumed everybody would.
	Yeah, no, yeah, no.
	No, he was sober from 2002.
	So December 2002, I think it was like the 13th or something like that.
	And he's been sober ever since.
	I don't want to doubt that.
	I don't want to, but I've gotten close a couple of times listening.
	I'm just being honest.
	Yeah no no no I get it and I think part of that comes down to his um kind of uh his mania um like his because he he gets very fucking manic and then he has other days where he is incredibly sluggish and I think those are the days where he's struggling with the depression and I think the other days are when he's struggling with mania and and possibly you know there there could be Fucking bipolar disorder.
	There could be any number of things.
	I am unclear as to his kind of psychological status or his treatment, if there is any.
	I have no idea.
	And it does, I mean, odds are against appropriate responsible treatment.
	Probably.
	With the narratives that he spins, I would be surprised.
	So, Brand was given a leading role in the film adaptation of the musical Rock of Ages, which completely bombed at the box office and received mixed reviews.
	It cost $75 million to make and only made $59.4 million at the box office.
	It made a loss.
	That's not the position you want to be in.
	The stage show was huge.
	It still is.
	Still is?
	Massive, yeah.
	It just did not translate to film for whatever fucking reason.
	Sometimes that happens.
	Brad hosted the MTV Movie Awards and launched his FX show Brand X with Russell Brand, a late night comedy show turned talk show.
	In the first half of season one, there weren't any guests, just an extended monologue from Brand in front of an audience with three loosely connected topics.
	I don't know who made that decision.
	Who decided that would be good?
	I guess technically that qualifies as a talk show.
	He's talking.
	Ratings began to pick up once there were guests added.
	And he got fucking famous guests in as well.
	Bill Shatner came in.
	Henry Rollins was there.
	Incredibly famous people showing up.
	And he also, he added the segment Totally Unacceptable Opinion, which featured people from hate groups such as the Westboro Baptist Church.
	And Brand argued with them about their controversial beliefs, then brought out some of the types of people whom they hate, for example a group of homosexuals, for a debate.
	There is actually a solid clip of Henry Rollins having a chat with someone from the Westboro Baptist Church that is quite entertaining.
	The guy's like, oh, sodomy is wrong.
	And Henry's like, yeah, but it's so fun.
	Like, yeah, great.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I mean, he, he opens with like, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to, you know, attract your ire, because this is a big guy with big fucking arms and whatever.
	I don't want to attract your eye with someone with arms that big, but you're an idiot.
	Okay, great place to start, Henry.
	I'm going to enjoy the rest of this.
	So yeah, despite multiple revisions of the format, ratings remained dubious and reviews were lukewarm, so the show was dropped after its second season.
	That same year he was part of Eric Idle's film adaptation of What About Dick alongside Eddie
	Izzard, Tim Curry and Billy Connolly, during which Brand refused to start filming until a wardrobe
	girl flashed her boobs at him. A source recalled, "Russell tried to persuade a wardrobe assistant
	to show him her breasts, but she was having none of it at first."
	But when it started to look like they weren't going to get any work done, she gave in and flashed him.
	Russell is a charming scoundrel and everybody let him get away with murder on set, except Billy.
	Billy got annoyed when he found out and gave Russell a stern ticking off.
	Very British response there.
	Of course he did.
	Of course he did.
	Of course.
	I fucking love Billy Connolly.
	The Enforcer himself.
	Grandfather of stand-up comedy.
	Pretty much invented the format.
	I love him.
	I love everything about Billy.
	And of course he would fucking rage.
	He's Glaswegian for God's sake.
	He's not going to take any shit.
	I mean, I've seen him, you know, that's wonderful.
	Like, that's an excellent YouTube rabbit hole is just watching Billy Connolly get righteously indignant for completely valid reasons.
	Oh, absolutely.
	I grew up watching a lot of his stand up because we had a lot of Billy Connolly VHS tapes growing up and I'd like clip shows of him on Parkinson and all of that stuff I had.
	Hours and hours of Billy Connolly that I watched as a child.
	Fucking tremendous comic.
	Anyway, if you put all that together, this does seem like a pretty quick and drastic fall from stardom.
	Within three years, everything he touches turns to shit.
	From getting to the Greek in 2010 to everything is bombing.
	Everything is bombing, show getting cancelled.
	I mean, he doesn't seem like a boy that likes doing his homework.
	And in order to maintain a career that's at a high level, you kind of have to do your homework.
	You gotta put in the work on the back end to pay off.
	There might be an element of that.
	There might be an element of that.
	So in 2013, Brand presented and toured his comedy show Messiah Complex, in which he tackled advertising, the laws on drug addiction, and the portrayal of his heroes, such as Gandhi, Che Guevara, Malcolm X, and Jesus, and how he is, in comically contrived ways, similar to them.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	He appeared in the movie Paradise alongside Julianne Hough, Octavia Spencer and Nick Offerman.
	The movie currently stands at a 22% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
	Brand was ejected from the GQ Awards show on 3rd September 2013 after receiving the Oracle Award.
	In his acceptance speech, he mentioned sponsor Hugo Boss' former business-making uniforms for the Gestapo.
	Brand said of the Nazis, quote, They did look fucking fantastic, let's face it, before he goose-stepped across the stage in a comical imitation of the Nazi march.
	Brand was eventually removed from the event after GQ editor Dylan Jones confronted Brand with his view that the speech was very offensive.
	Brand replied by saying that the Nazis' treatment of the Jewish people was very offensive.
	I'm completely fine with that turn of events, personally.
	Yeah, that's fine.
	Hugo Boss can be teased.
	Yeah, Hugo Boss can.
	They can withstand a little bit.
	They can suck it up, yeah.
	This Dylan Jones sounds like a fucking prick.
	That's pretty mild.
	It's offensive.
	Well, shut up.
	It's almost like he's getting worse at being offensive, too.
	Yeah, that's true.
	That's true.
	Much less of an edgelord.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	That's offensive.
	Fuck off.
	To quote Stephen Fry, like, well, so fucking what?
	So yeah, on the 23rd of October 2013, Brand was interviewed by Jeremy Paxman for the BBC's Newsnight, in which he disparaged the British political system as ineffectual and encouraged the British electorate not to vote.
	We covered this interview in our Don't Vote episode and it's a fascinating look at old school Brand compared to now.
	It's wild.
	But it's already different from the interview with the Nazi.
	Oh, light years apart.
	Light years apart.
	It's tracking.
	Yes.
	From 2013 to 2014, Brand was in a relationship with Jemima Goldsmith, an editor of the New Statesman and daughter of financier James Goldsmith.
	Brand guest edited a special issue of the New Statesman that was published on 24th of October 2013, I wonder how he got in there, and explored the theme of revolution, in which he explained his objection to the destruction of Earth through greed and exploitation, and called for a change in consciousness to accompany political and economic measures to achieve a more sustainable future.
	Fine.
	Okay.
	Every time everybody did not vote.
	Okay.
	Yeah, this came out the day after that.
	What?
	The day after that interview.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Brand launched his YouTube series, The Trues, True News with Russell Brand in February 2014, in which he, quote, analyzes the news truthfully, spontaneously, and with great risk to his personal freedom.
	What?
	We're yet to get back to some of the True's content, but I'm sure in one of our investigations into the past we'll find something interesting within, because there's a lot of it.
	His book, Revolution, in which Brand develops his earlier ideas, was published by Random House in October 2014 and received much publicity.
	Nick Cohen of The Observer called Brand's writing, quote, atrocious, long-winded, confused, and smug, filled with references to books Brand has half-read and thinkers he has half-understood.
	Checks out!
	Yeah, that's what I thought when I heard that.
	Checks out!
	On the other hand, Steve Richards in The Independent commented, quote, "Brand writes and speaks with
	verve, words flowing effortlessly and musically. The contrast with the tame wooden prose of elected
	politicians is marked." Unquote. One of our stretch goals on this podcast will be going
	through the entire audiobook version of this book, about 10 hours in total. Yeah, yeah.
	I'm betting personally that it's both stylistically interesting and ideologically half-cocked, but we shall see.
	I think both of them were right, is my personal guess.
	Yeah.
	So just after the book came out, shortly after, Brand appeared on Newsnight again, but was interviewed by Evan Davis on this occasion, rather than Paxman.
	Asked about 9-11 conspiracy theories and whether the attacks were perpetuated by the American government, Brand commented, quote, We have to remain open-minded to that kind of possibility, unquote.
	Although, this section of the interview ended with Brand insisting that he did not want to talk about daft conspiracy theories.
	Oh, how things change.
	Also, he did.
	He talked about it in the Paxman interview.
	Yes, yeah, briefly.
	He did make a mention.
	Yeah, for sure, right?
	Yeah.
	Lies.
	He made his children's book debut in November 2014 with Russell Brand's Trickster Tales, The Pied Piper of Hamelin.
	It is the first installment of what was an intended series featuring illustrations by Chris Riddell, right?
	In The Guardian, reviewer Lucy Mangan noted, the on-brand need to be noticed is there on every page.
	His unwillingness to get out of the way of the story tripping the reader up at every turn, and adding that Chris Riddell's illustrations give the book a beauty it does not deserve and a coherence the text does not deliver.
	Fucking harsh.
	You're a kid's book?
	Dang!
	Nicholas Tucker in The Independent noted the book's wearingly offensive language and commented, Brandt's take on The Pied Piper of Hamelin is the first of a series of riffs on traditional Therian folktales.
	If they're all as bad as this one, British children's books will have hit a new low.
	Oh my.
	There have been no more children's books from Brandt's ever since.
	He's not done any more.
	So yeah, so the series was a one and done.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	He's so good at taking criticism, usually.
	I'm not trying to come for children's books, like literally at all.
	But like, Is it that hard?
	What is so challenging?
	It's a kid's book.
	Especially when you're repackaging a story that's already been fucking written.
	It's not like you even have to use any imagination.
	You're just repackaging it.
	It's the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
	that's very famous. You know? Yeah. I'm curious about the book.
	I'm gonna be honest.
	How could it be that, like, how is it getting roasted so hard?
	I'll see if I can find a secondhand copy.
	I'm willing to bet there are thousands.
	Yeah, right?
	I can just pop into the local, well, probably not here, but I feel like in the UK, just popping into your thrift store.
	Yeah.
	There's a good online secondhand book retailer that I use.
	I'll have a look.
	I'm willing to bet there are going to be thousands of them and it'll cost me 20p with free shipping.
	That's like a lot for like a kid's book reviews.
	They fucked him up.
	They fucked him up fine.
	It sounded like they have an axe to grind in a way.
	I'm like, oh, I don't know.
	How bad is this book?
	BBC Three commissioned Brand to make a documentary on the global war on drugs, which aired on the 26th of November 2014.
	The film, titled Russell Brand and the Drugs War, shows him exploring the illicit drug policies of other countries in search of a compassionate approach to people who use illicit drugs.
	Brand said in the documentary, quote, People think compassion is wet liberalism.
	It's not.
	It's pragmatic.
	Brand appeared at multiple protests for various causes that year, speaking at a protest against austerity and one for a fire brigade union.
	It seemed kind of like he was just attending anything where there were people shouting and giving speeches.
	Fair.
	Kind of.
	I'm not sure about positioning himself as the focus of it, because he would go there and give a big speech, is what he would do.
	There's drawing attention to the event and then going there to grandstand.
	I'm not clear.
	Pulling an Alexandra Jones, I see.
	Yeah, where the line is as to what he was doing.
	On the 2nd of December 2014, Brand joined East London residents to protest over the increase in rents at the New Era housing estate.
	During a protest for the New Era residents, Channel 4 News reporter Parik O'Brien continually pushed Brand to answer questions about the value of his own property, which is rented out.
	The line of questioning irritated Brand, who ended up calling the reporter a snide, repeatedly and angrily.
	He's a landlord!
	Yes he is!
	He's a landlord at a rent control rally.
	Girl, no.
	Stop.
	Get out.
	It's not good.
	It's not good.
	Icarus flew too close to the sun!
	Yeah, no, he ended up like really getting forceful with the guy saying, you're a snide.
	You're a snide, aren't you?
	You're a snide.
	Wow, that's not a rebuttal to what he was saying, Russell.
	Not at all.
	Not at all.
	Not even a little bit.
	Call him any name you want!
	You're deflecting, sir!
	And we all hear it, and we know!
	It is a deep insight into how Brand responds to being called out on his own hypocrisy.
	Yeah, the clip went viral as well.
	I get the feeling that this podcast would send him into a blind rage.
	If that clip is anything to go by of him kicking off the reporters, just calling them out on hypocrisy, this podcast would fucking Well, he has two options, is to kick off and be ridiculous.
	That's gonna be the immediate response, for sure.
	Or to laugh it off as a joke, which is definitely the better look.
	Definitely the better look, for sure.
	I know with absolute certainty his internal response is going to be the first one.
	How he responds to us is a different question, if at all.
	The sensible and clever thing to do would be to completely ignore us, but we'll see.
	We shall see.
	Later that month, Brand would return to Question Time for a debate on the opposing side of Nigel Farage, among other panellists.
	I would play a clip, but hearing Nigel Farage speak usually means I start throwing things across the room, so I'd like to avoid that.
	On the 25th of February 2015, Brand launched a twice-weekly podcast called the Russell Brand Podcast through Audioboom.
	It reunited Brand with his radio-presenting team of Matt Morgan and poet Mr. Gee.
	Brand interviewed Labour leader and candidate for Prime Minister Ed Miliband that same year on his show The Trues, and three days before the election, Brand released the final episode of The Trues Politics Week entitled Emergency!
	Vote to Start Revolution!
	Releasing additional material from his discussion with Ed Miliband and stating, I think we've got no choice but to take decisive action to end the danger of the Conservative Party.
	So completely reversing his don't vote.
	Right.
	Up until that point, he was like vehemently imploring people to not vote.
	No one should vote.
	And then the last second, everyone vote for Ed Miliband.
	He quickly backtracked on that once Ed Miliband lost, by the way, as well.
	That's just a crappy idea.
	I mean... It's just all terrible.
	It's all terrible ideas.
	It's weird.
	It's weird.
	There's like, so, our subreddit is a spectacular place, and people that have, like, remembered things from, like, at the time, thinking it's very strange, like, they watch the trues, and they're like, yeah, and it was just gone.
	Like, the whole kit and caboodle just disappeared.
	Seemingly, it felt like overnight.
	As a fan, they felt like abandoned.
	Yeah, it was just like, I'm just gonna get rid of all these things that I've purported as ideals for a while.
	Okay.
	Weird, weird, weird.
	It was around this time that Brand began a relationship with Scottish blogger and former restauranteur Laura Gallagher, whom he had dated on and off since 2007.
	Now, there were two key documentaries that came out in 2015, one being The Emperor's New Clothes, an analysis on the growing disparity between economic classes helmed by Michael Winterbottom and presented by Brand.
	It did pretty well, but critics weren't pleased with the way it was, quote, hyping Russell Brand as a constituent for the people rather than locating the means for sustained economic transformation, unquote.
	And I think that is a fair criticism.
	Yeah.
	Well, and that's the one that I watched and I enjoyed, but I'm a sucker for any content that's bitching about Thatcher and Reagan.
	I'll put, legitimately, that's all I remember.
	And that's, I'm not like, I will fall for that.
	No, no, no, it's fine.
	It's fine.
	It was perfectly fine to think that was okay.
	But I do think, you know, kind of taking it a step further and providing some kind of solutions would have been beneficial.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	The other important 2015 documentary actually has Russell as its subject and is called Brand, A Second Coming.
	It documents Brand's journey from a troubled youth in Essex, to a Hollywood star, to an activist encouraging social, spiritual and economic revolution.
	The official website describes the film as, quote, following Russell Brand as he dives headlong into drugs, sex and fame in an attempt to find happiness, only to realize we have all been nurtured on bad ideas and empty celebrity idols, unquote.
	It debuted at the 2015 South by Southwest Festival in March, but elicited some controversy as Brand declined to attend the premiere and is reportedly unhappy with the film.
	The film presented a positive view of Brand, but he was unhappy with the results, saying he found it, quote, oddly intrusive and melancholy, and reportedly asked... It's a documentary!
	He reportedly asked for it not to be screened.
	Director Ondi Timono was apparently the sixth director attached to the documentary.
	The late Albert Maisels was one of her predecessors who worked on the film.
	One of the guys who did Gimme Shelter, right?
	And Grey Garden!
	Big fucking deal, right?
	Yes, I love that look.
	Got fired from it.
	And Brandt himself had tried to direct the documentary as well, which, come on, you can't direct a documentary about yourself.
	You just can't.
	Tim and I spent two and a half years on the project.
	The documentary includes interviews and footage of Bran's intimate circle, including his parents Barbara and Ron, good old Ron, manager John Knoll, friends Knoll Gallagher, Jonathan Ross, Matt Morgan, Gareth Roy, and his ex-wife Katy Perry as well actually was interviewed for it.
	Which must have been fucking weird.
	I don't know if they'd exchanged a text message since then.
	You know, if they'd re-established some form of contact or just to be... They might not have.
	It might have just been in isolation.
	I mean, potentially.
	I'm like putting myself in that position and like... It's very possible.
	Like, essentially, like, ghosted my divorce?
	Like, texted me about divorce?
	Texted me my divorce and then didn't say a single fucking word to me ever since.
	Insane.
	Yeah, would I, like, pounce on it?
	Or would I be like, no, no, no.
	I wonder.
	I mean, obviously.
	I think she was fairly, she was fairly, from what I saw, she was fairly diplomatic.
	Like, she didn't shit on him, but she was like, yeah, he was a bit of a prick.
	So, you know.
	I think she was fair.
	In the documentary, Brand also interviews a group of celebrities on the topic of spirituality, including Rosie O'Donnell, Oliver Stone, Mike Tyson, and David Lynch.
	Because I need to hear Mike Tyson's thoughts on spirituality, apparently.
	And yeah, he's friends with David Lynch.
	I'm here for his thoughts on pigeons, literally, all day.
	Yeah, that's true.
	That's true.
	He's friends with David Lynch, which I still find weird.
	They're both huge advocates for transcendental meditation.
	That's the one.
	Yeah, meditation is different than transcendental meditation.
	For listeners that are maybe not aware.
	It is a little tricky because meditation in general, you know, you can just like learn how to do it.
	That's like saying, you know, it's You can pick it up and there's a million different ways to do it.
	Transcendental meditation, the system, the way it's put together is like basically an MLM.
	And it's complicated and strange and I highly encourage you to look into it because it's a whole other ball of wax.
	Russell Brand contributes significant portions of his Recovery from Addiction to Transcendental Meditation.
	Yeah, I bet.
	Which is fantastic.
	I'm sure some people attribute it to Herbalife.
	Okay.
	Alright.
	So, in the documentary, in his post-drugs attempts to rehabilitate himself, some of Bran's efforts didn't turn out to be as self-effacing as they seemed.
	You can hear of a yoga coup, for instance, in which he came to overshadow his spiritual leader, which is interesting.
	The film suggests...
	The film suggests that many previously apolitical youths have had their anti-status quo indignation stoked by Brand's The Trues web series and his support of movements like Occupy Wall Street.
	Sure.
	I would be mighty interested to know how many have followed Brand's ideals to present day and shifted with him, because I'm willing to bet there are quite a few.
	So weird.
	Director Timoner had this to say of Brandt.
	He talks about us all being one, but he really does hold himself as the Royal Russell in so many ways.
	He'll make you wait for two hours if he deems it appropriate.
	Russell comes first.
	I think in a lot of ways he is a walking contradiction.
	He's aware that he over-controlled this film before I came along, so he ended up giving me creative control.
	But then he threatened me by saying that if I didn't change certain things, the film would never see the light of day.
	He wanted to control his image instead of allowing an authentic portrait to come out.
	In the words of someone very close to him whom I shall not name, he tries to untie a knot with a hammer."
	So that's what the director thought.
	And I don't disagree with her on any points.
	Stealing that, putting that one in my pocket.
	That's funny.
	I like that.
	I like the hammer illusion.
	I'm curious who was the person very close to him.
	I reckon it was Gareth Roy.
	I reckon.
	Well, or even like, I don't know.
	I am trying to put this in context with the show, with our show.
	And yeah, he works really hard at being the center of attention.
	Being the center of attention and cultivating a very specific image around that as well.
	It's ironic that he gets to do so many interviews because they're like not really interviews?
	Like he's happy if you're agreeing.
	And if you're not, he just gets to play around and be a little kid that gets attention.
	For sure.
	And you know, very rarely will he kind of just let the interviewee just talk.
	Tucker Carlson was one of the few exceptions.
	At RFK.
	At RFK, yeah.
	Shockingly.
	Shockingly.
	Whereas, you know, you then look at Dawkins and he's just talking all over the guy.
	Well, Dawkins was also fine with it, so.
	That's the thing, it doesn't feel like he's meeting resistance that is proportionate to his behaviors.
	And so, truly, why would he stop?
	Why would he stop?
	Yeah.
	He's only been rewarded for courting controversy.
	We will get into some more of that.
	On the 20th of August 2015, Brand released episode 366 of The Trues titled, Final Episode of The Trues, Goodbye, Good Luck, which he said would be the final episode of the series.
	The Trues returned on the 12th of October 2016.
	Okay.
	Okay, buddy.
	So in 2016, Russell had a leading role in animated kids movie Trolls, which was quite a success, actually, and even won an Academy Award for one of the songs.
	He also played the role of God in a Larry Charles directed movie called Army of One, which had Nicolas Cage as the lead and also starred Rainn Wilson and Dennis O'Hare.
	The film follows Gary Faulkner, an ex-construction contractor and unemployed handyman who believes that God has sent him to capture Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan.
	The story is based on the real-life Faulkner who travelled to Pakistan looking for Bin Laden.
	Fucking fascinating.
	However, it was at the last minute, the edit was redone by Bob Weinstein without Larry Charles's consent, and the original edit has never seen the light of day, apparently.
	It currently holds a 25% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
	I'd be curious to see the original.
	I would trust Larry Charles over that fuckhead.
	Yeah, that's crazy.
	So it was this year, 2016, that Russell attended the School of Oriental and African Studies, or SOAS, in London.
	Again, I'm not entirely clear on what he studied or for how long, but according to Premier Christian News, Brand wanted to learn more about Christianity and would also be studying Islam and He didn't though!
	But he didn't!
	I'm confident that he would have, if he went through, I think he did finish the thing, that he would have studied them, or at least read about them.
	He didn't know the difference between Baha'i and Ba'athist in front of Rainn Wilson.
	I'm sorry!
	That's very true.
	That's very true.
	I don't know, okay.
	I don't know what program he did, again.
	I don't know how detailed the information was, and I don't know how much of it he actually bothered to pay attention to, is the other deeper question.
	I'm not buying what he's selling as far as knowing stuff about other religions.
	I'm just not.
	And I wouldn't have thought that before we started this project, truly.
	I don't think he knows as much about anything as he says he does.
	Fair!
	That's just my feeling.
	You got me there!
	Based on all of the things he's said so far, that's just where I stand at the moment.
	Sure.
	His first daughter, Mabel, was also born in the November of 2016 that he had with Laura Gallagher.
	In January 2017, Brand announced his new tour, Rebirth, which debuted in April 2017 and was meant to go through November 2018.
	However, on 30th of April 2018, he was forced to cancel the remaining dates after his mother was critically injured in a hit-and-run accident.
	Yeah, it was really bad.
	She broke her neck and everything.
	It was pretty brutal.
	That gal can't win for losing!
	I know!
	And do you know what?
	There are plenty of bits of footage and stuff with her and Russell, you know, on the internet or whatever, and she seems like a very sweet lady.
	Not perhaps the brightest spark, but just absolutely lovely, you know.
	But she's since recovered and is doing just fine at the moment, as far as I'm aware.
	Yeah, she can't catch a break though, dang.
	Nah, poor woman, bloody hell.
	In partnership with Luminary, he also launched a new podcast, Under the Skin, with Russell Brand, in which he would interview incredibly famous guests like Bill Burr or Matthew McConaughey, and also more troubling guests like Jordan Peterson.
	This show ended in 2022.
	2017 would see the release of Brand's book Recovery, Which is a repackaging of the 12-step program with significantly more swearing and moderately less specificity of religion.
	Still giving yourself up to a higher power, just up to you as to which one.
	Which, at this point, is curious given what he says in just a minute.
	Because in 2017, that same year, he did an interview with Relevant Magazine.
	Which seemed to illustrate the conclusions of Brand's time studying religion.
	Quote, My personal feeling is the teachings of Christ are more relevant now than they've ever been.
	I say the Lord's Prayer every day.
	I try to connect with what those words mean.
	I connect to what the Father means.
	I connect to what wholeness means to me.
	I think about the relationship between forgiveness and being forgiven and the impossibility of redemption until you are willing to forgive and let go.
	I think continually about what Christ meant by the afterlife.
	And for me, it's that when you are disavowed of the illusion that the material will fulfill you, you enter the kingdom of heaven.
	The kingdom of heaven is spread upon the earth.
	Subscribe to my locals channel.
	Yeah, he's really, really getting rid of the material, this guy.
	When asked about taking the first step to recovery, Brand offers this advice for those wanting to get clean.
	Quote, Admit you have a problem.
	Believe it's possible to change and ask him for help.
	Invite him in.
	Capital H's, of course.
	Unquote.
	It's fair to say we see something of a pivot point here.
	Brandon and Laura Gallagher married in Henley-on-Thames, where they now live, on August 26th, 2017.
	In 2018, Brand portrayed SportsX Network founder Lance Kleance in a recurring arc in the last two seasons of the HBO series Ballers.
	That's Dwayne the Rock Johnson, that was his thing.
	His stand-up show Russell Brand Rebirth, which was filmed in London in April 2018, was released as a stand-up comedy film on Netflix on the 4th of December 2018.
	He was kept pretty busy from here with Under the Skin, and he and his wife had a second daughter named Peggy.
	In 2019, he began interspersing his Under the Skin videos with ones like this.
	So we talk about the important spiritual principle, Gratitude.
	You have to be grateful.
	I'll tell you why.
	Because when you are grateful, You become less self-destructive.
	Here's how I use gratitude in my own life.
	Second something goes wrong, like maybe, I don't know, what if I don't get a job I want?
	Or what if my wife won't give me what I want?
	Possibly it's conjugal activity, or possibly it's some kind of dinner, or possibly it's approval.
	You know, there's a myriad of things that I require from my life partner, wife, partner.
	Gratitude means that instead of focusing on the one negative thing that I'm not getting in that moment, I focus instead on the many things I already have.
	Two wonderful daughters, this beard, a lovely house, freedom, not poor anymore, not on drugs no more, not signing on.
	I've got a tattoo of a snake on my finger.
	People can argue if they want that it looks like a worm dragging a handbag.
	They can say whatever they want to me, but I know that it's a Mark Mahoney original.
	The principle of gratitude is an important one.
	We can control our consciousness through attention and intention.
	If we attend to the things we're grateful for, our physical health, even in situations, and particularly in situations when things aren't going our way, that is when we must be grateful.
	Find the many positive things in our life.
	Listen to them.
	Meditate on them.
	Not on the negative.
	What are you grateful for now?
	Put it in the comments.
	Put three things that you are grateful for.
	This is a vital and important technique for your well-being.
	For example, maybe you've got troll slippers.
	I know I do, and I'm very grateful.
	Hello, I'm doing these new videos more frequently now.
	Please hit the notification button at the end of this video because then you'll get like a little bell when I post a new video and I'd like you to get a little bell when I post a video.
	Then I can, I don't know, be buzzing away in your pocket.
	Sounds like I'd be like a little pocket mosquito.
	Anyway, subscribe, click the bell because I want more people to watch the YouTube videos.
	You, specifically.
	Largely, that kind of thing is perfectly fine.
	And he covered varying subjects in three minute stints, like how to handle a breakup, for instance.
	However, he is markedly positioning himself as something of a guru, you know, someone to be listened to on all things and guide people through their lives.
	Yeah.
	This year, Russell also released another book, Mentors, how to help and be helped, which deals with the people who have had a positive impact on his life and encourages us to look to others to become better individuals.
	Positioning himself as a mentor as well.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	In 2019, he said in an interview when asked if he has spent 24 hours in sole charge of his children, quote, No, she wouldn't go away for 24 hours, Laura.
	She respects and cares for their safety too much.
	Yes, I'm very, very focused on the mystical connotations of Mabel's beauty and grace.
	Not so good on the nappies and making sure that they eat food.
	When I looked after Mabel on her own, she dropped two social classes in an hour.
	In no time at all, we're in a coffee shop, she's just got a nappy on, she's covered in stuff because I'm not willing to fight any of the battles.
	I'm like, fuck it, it doesn't matter whether she wears trousers.
	No, I suppose it doesn't matter if she does that.
	It turns out that she, Laura, is extremely well versed in the nuances and complexities of child rearing.
	Me, I am dedicated to it, devoted to it, but I am still surprised when it's like, oh my god, this is fucking really hard and it's so exhausting.
	Unquote.
	The luxury.
	The sheer, plush, shag-carpeted luxury of, like, really.
	Gilded.
	We wondered how Brand was as a parent, and I guess mystery fucking solved.
	I feel sorry for Laura in this situation, as a parent.
	Because, like, it's fucking difficult for her as well, Russell.
	Like, it's just she sucks it up and deals with it, whereas you just shirk responsibility.
	Yeah, he's like the naughty older brother dad, which is just, just, just miserable.
	Just, just, just incredibly useless.
	Um, and, and yeah, it's an antique idea.
	That's it.
	That's it.
	And it, um, it, it lends a lot of credence to what Katy Perry was saying about, um, you know, Him wanting to, you know, wanting to be the boss and not wanting her to be the boss and whatever.
	And also you regard, I mean, I can't speak for anyone.
	I can't speak for anyone's internal experience, obviously.
	The pattern I have noticed in my time on this earth and as a daughter myself.
	Um, it is a lot of fun to have, like, a fun dad.
	True.
	But that's not really, again, like, older brother.
	Like, cheeky older brother isn't a dad.
	He's, I don't, I mean, I guess he's not trying to give parenting advice.
	So I don't necessarily, unless he is.
	I don't know.
	You know what?
	I don't know.
	I don't think so.
	His perspective, what he said is that I want to parent my children the way I parent my children and you should be allowed to parent your children the way you parent your children.
	That's his kind of thing.
	I've not seen him give much parenting advice and I hope he doesn't because he is very obviously un-fucking-qualified.
	It's like the Ron DeSantis's wife.
	There's a clip going around of Ron DeSantis's wife just being profoundly moved to the point of getting choked up at a moment where she talks about him like he's a stranger.
	He left what he was doing to go pick up my kids when I was having a hard time.
	They're also his children.
	They're his kids.
	That's his job.
	What are you talking about?
	Like, kids aren't toys.
	I don't understand.
	Well, we're going off on a bit of a tangent here, but it's also when, you know, whenever a dad is kind of, you know, taking the kids somewhere or whatever, you know, it's like, oh, are you looking after the kids today?
	It's like, well, He's like, are you babysitting today?
	Yeah, yeah, you're babysitting.
	No, these are my fucking, like, it's my child!
	You're a father.
	I'm not just looking after the thing.
	It's like, I'm a parent.
	That is my job.
	That is the thing I do.
	All day.
	Day in, day out.
	Permanently.
	Forever.
	Like, I do the fun stuff, and then I do the hard stuff.
	I get in fights with my fucking toddler.
	Well, she gets in fights, I just kind of let her.
	You know, you can't fight a toddler.
	It's completely pointless.
	I know that it's a little bit, I think, triggering for me to hear about a parent That can kind of take it or leave it.
	Yeah.
	Which I do think that, I mean, especially being rich and famous, boy, that sure is an option.
	I don't think they have a nanny or anything though.
	Really?
	I don't think that's something that they do.
	No, if Laura is unwilling to leave for 24 hours and has to be constantly there to look after the kids and he said, oh, you know, she's great at child rearing and all of that, I genuinely don't think that they have a nanny.
	I don't think that is even something that Russell would agree with, either.
	I don't think that he would want that, based on the kind of ideals that he has laid out so far.
	That's just my estimation, again.
	I don't know it for sure, but... Well, it's something we can keep our ear to the ground for.
	That's interesting.
	It'll be interesting.
	It'll be interesting.
	So then came 2020.
	The self-help style videos had begun occasionally delving into politics, such as discussing the US presidential election and his reflections on gun violence.
	He began doing a slightly longer editorialized version of it, which he called the Not Too Late Show.
	And shortly after he dropped the name because it was terrible.
	After a while of messing around with formats and styles, you know, of how to kind of do this, he knew he wanted to do it, wasn't sure how it should look.
	The pandemic hit, and Russell put out his first couple of COVID videos, one called My Take on Coronavirus, and the other one, Coronavirus, What Has It Revealed?
	In a sea of videos getting around 100,000 views on his page, that first one got 600,000 views, and the What Has It Revealed one currently sits at 1.1 million views.
	So from there began a harsh pivot, which I intend for us to cover at some point.
	But needless to say, in short order, his videos were suddenly titled with, Is Your Life Your Prison?
	and Are We in Danger of Becoming Docile Automatons?
	I've little doubt that Bran's hatred of the lockdowns wasn't helped by the fact that he was in a kids movie in 2020 called Four Kids and It, which grossed only $500,000 worldwide.
	Gross?
	Yeah, $500,000 worldwide.
	I know the industry took a bath during that time, but fuck.
	But still.
	$500,000 worldwide. I know the industry took a bath, you know, during that time, but fuck.
	But still.
	Yep.
	Sheesh.
	So I... he didn't do well.
	Oh, um...
	In September 2021, Brand shared information on how to avoid COVID-19 safety measures for people attending his tour.
	He was trying to advise people how to get around them, to get around the legal measures in place.
	For their own safety.
	In October 2021, YouTube began reviewing some of Brand's videos to see if they violated the site's COVID-19 vaccine policies.
	Columnist Charlotte Litton accused Brand of pandering to the anti-vax movement as well as amplifying pro-Russian conspiracy theories with respect to the Russo-Ukrainian war.
	Nonetheless, he discovered he was on a profitable tip as Brand's new weekly views went from a weekly
	low of less than 500,000 in November 2020 to about 14.5 million weekly views in March 2022.
	Quite a growth.
	That is fucking rapid.
	That's crazy.
	In 2022, Brand discussed the World Health Organization's meetings on the pandemic treaty and said, quote, I'll tell you what's up, your democracy is fucking finished, unquote, and that future people would say we lapsed into a terrible technocratic globalist agenda.
	Also in 2022, Brand released a video decrying the media for ignoring reporting on the Canada Convoy protest.
	Brand also said in the video that, quote, truckers who were previously regarded as heroes when they were delivering vital goods and working during the lockdown are now villains as they protest vaccine mandates, unquote.
	Okay.
	Due to having one of his videos taken down in September 2022 due to YouTube's policy on medical misinformation, he moved his channel to Rumble, where he has his show, Stay Free with Russell Brand, now.
	In June 2023, the On Brand podcast came into existence, and it's our mission to take Brand to task every week for the shit that he says.
	As of today.
	Hero hands!
	Hero hands!
	Yeah, do you know what?
	I'm quite glad that we were pretty quick off the mark actually, because it was only September 2022 that he moved over to Rumble and we were on it within, you know, kind of What?
	Eight, nine months?
	Something like that?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And I remember catching it in April.
	That was when I kind of had that moment.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So, as of today, Brand is at 6.58 million YouTube subscribers with over a billion views, cumulative.
	And 1.3 million Rumble subscribers.
	Well, 1.37 million Rumble subscribers, should I say.
	Him and his wife Laura are also expecting another child, so that's good.
	And that takes us pretty much up to present day.
	But there was one thing I wanted to include that is more hearsay than anything else.
	But in my efforts to be comprehensive, I wouldn't want to leave it out.
	In October 2022, Daniel Sloss, Scottish comedian, went on the We Might Be Drunk podcast and made assertions that Brand stole someone else's comedy act early on in his career, as well as stating that Brand is not a good man and there are many things he can't say on camera about him.
	If We is a podcast... Another one!
	If we as a podcast ever get big enough, I would love to have Daniel Sloss on to chat more about this, with plenty of caveats of, rumour is, and I heard, you know, just to cover ourselves a little bit.
	So there we have it, the first part of the Russell Brand Primer.
	That is the man himself.
	Part two will be tackling his main narratives and arming our audience with information to battle these narratives if they encounter them in the wild or to at least have knowledge of why the things he says are bullshit.
	Are there more controversies that we'll be able to cover in the future?
	Because we've hinted at some, and I've had to not Google it.
	Darn it.
	I have a vested interest.
	Not particularly.
	Not from his past, anyway, in terms of controversy.
	I'm pretty sure I got most of them.
	There might be the odd kind of little thing here, but I'm pretty sure I covered it.
	So you should be safe in terms of controversy, I think.
	But, you know, if anyone thinks I've missed anything, by all means, let me know.
	I will shove it in there.
	Yeah.
	If there's anything important.
	But yeah, spent a long time trawling through a bunch of bullshit from Russell.
	So hopefully I got it all.
	In kind of going through the early portions of this I felt a lot of pity for Russell and then as it progressed I felt gradually less and less and less and less and now we are where we are.
	And I still end up back in the exact same position.
	I was like, well, you're being a fuckhead, Russell.
	We need to deal with you.
	I mean, he could stop.
	He could stop.
	He could stop.
	If he wants this podcast to go away, he could stop doing what he's doing.
	That's my barter with you, Russell.
	If you want us to stop, you need to stop.
	We could just do music is nice all the time.
	Yeah, we'll do a podcast about something else.
	That's fine.
	I mean, it'd be a licensing nightmare.
	So no, we couldn't.
	Spotify actually do allow, you can do like a kind of form of it, because it'll then play the individual track and you kind of do the bits in between, so you can't really talk over the track or anything like that, which is kind of annoying.
	Yeah, no dogs in space did that.
	Yeah, but you can do it, you can do it.
	Right, so that's our show.
	Anyway, I hope patrons and everyone listening enjoyed the very first part of the Russell Brand Primer.
	I look forward to getting into some of the bullshit narratives that he's going to be dealing with.
	It might be next week, might be the week after, we shall see.
	Depends what comes up in his show because it's completely opaque as to who or what he's going to have on within a week.
	Even the pictures he uses for the covers of his videos are misleading in a way that is confusing, so all bets are off!
	His Rumble page is just clickbait heaven, that's all it is.
	Yeah, YouTube too, also, both.
	Yes.
	It's weird.
	I know he's done another Maui Wildfires video.
	I know that.
	And not good, again.
	We'll see.
	We shall see.
	But in the meantime, if you want to support us in what we do, please go to patreon.com slash onbrand.
	And we can have more things like this.
	The next one is going to be covering Brandemic, Russell Brand's most recent- Our next stretch goal, right?
	Yeah, our next stretch goal.
	Which they don't really have on Patreon, but we still have.
	We still have them.
	Next will be Brandemic covering his last comedy special, which is out this year.
	And the one after that is going to be doing Revolution, the 10 hours of audiobook.
	And then I think the one after that, we can get to two episodes of this a week, which would be tremendous because it would mean an aspect of doing Content, which I can tell you, emotionally, in my heart, I'd love to do this all the time.
	Hey, me too.
	Me too.
	But there's a reason that we have stretch goals.
	We need the financing to be able to do it on a more permanent basis.
	Yeah, and just have more time.
	No, absolutely.
	I would need a full work week to be able to do two of these a week, for sure.
	Oh, absolutely.
	Yeah.
	And I would love that because as it is at the moment, we only get to cover about a fifth of what Russell does in a week.
	And I would love to be able to cover at least some of the other four fifths because there's shit in there that needs covering.
	Well, I can just say, in no uncertain terms, I've been, you know, we've been doing this for a minute.
	I don't have to invest that much time relative to you.
	And I'm still, like, getting, you know, some very lovely messages from, like, consignors or I sell my work and they're like, hey, We need more stuff, and I'm like, can I freeze time?
	Is there a time machine that I can use?
	Yeah, that's it.
	Need the time.
	So yeah, literally it can be purchased.
	Yeah, no, absolutely.
	You want to hear more stuff?
	Share, tell your friends, rate, review, all that stuff.
	Exactly.
	That is absolutely a huge, huge portion at this point.
	If you want to send us an email, that's theonbrandpod at gmail.com.
	We welcome emails from everyone.
	We will respond to them, be it slowly or quickly.
	At the moment, it's slowly, but we will return to being quick once life stops happening.
	Life keeps happening and it's...
	Our socials!
	We are mostly the on-brand pod on most of our socials.
	I think Twitter is something different.
	And there is also a subreddit that's unofficial, but we love the thing anyway.
	It's onbrand underscore pod, is it?
	I think so.
	Yes, I think so as well.
	Well, look for the logo.
	This blue thing with this wild three eyed guy.
	You will find it.
	You'll find it.
	Personal socials.
	I am at Alworth Official on most things and Lauren is at made.by.lauren.b We are findable.
	We are so findable.
	So very findable.
	Come and have a chat.
	Leave a message on Spotify or you can email us a voice message too.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And on the Spotify episodes, there's the little, what did you think of this episode thing, which just appears automatically.
	However, we do actually receive those comments.
	So, you know, you can comment through there if you want to just, we can't reply to them is the only, is the only downside of that.
	So it would just be, Sent out into the ether to us, but feel free if that's what you feel like doing.
	Or comment on YouTube, we can work that out.
	Yes, comment on YouTube.
	Like, subscribe, do all the YouTube things.
	Sorry, YouTubers, I don't mean to forget you.
	We love you very much.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	But yeah, we'll be back next week, everyone, with something.
	It might be more of this, it might be more of the different, as Russell likes to say.
	Have an excellent day.
	I hope your day is awesome.
	Have an excellent life, everyone.
	Whenever you're listening to this, whatever year it is, I just hope your life is currently excellent and will be excellent tomorrow.
	I dare you to prove I don't mean that.
	Listen, I enjoy every single person who listens to this.
	If you're still listening right now, Yes, you have a good day.
	Yes, ma'am.
	Yes, ma'am.
	Props to you for hanging in there.
	What a hero.
	What a hero.
	We love you very much.
	Thank you, everyone.
	Love you very much!

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