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COMEDY star Russell Brand has announced dates for a new tour – including three gigs in the West Midlands. He’ll be at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, on Tuesday, May 9; Symphony Hall, Birmingham, on December 5, and Wolverhampton Civic Hall on November 1, NEXT YEAR!
That week will coincide with daughter Mabel’s second birthday after she was born to girlfriend Laura Gallacher in the autumn of 2016.
Questions Russell wants to pose on the Re: Birth tour include ‘‘What is real?’’, ‘‘Who are we?’’ and ‘‘Where did this baby come from?’’
They will be discussed while he ‘‘unravels the matrix of modern media, politics, sex, fatherhood and death’’.
Expanding on his theories, Brand says: “How do we make sense of the madness of our lives once we become parents?
“What am I going to tell my daughter about conformity and responsibility?
“What happens if she grows up to be like me or, worse, date someone like me?”
Born in Grays, Essex and a former pupil at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts, Russell was famously married to Katy Perry for two years from 2010.
As well as trying his hand at being everything from a broadcaster to an actor, author, podcaster, columnist and political commentator, Brand has increasingly become known as a mental health and drug rehabilitation activist.
Brand has made several visits to Digbeth in Birmingham to support the work of Recovery Central including one in May last year during the week he announced he was to become a father for the first time. Speaking from the heart about his own “one day at a time recovery”, the former heroin addict said the way forward was not to offer substitute drugs but to understand people’s feelings in order to offer them hope.
“When you are an active drug addict you think are you useless and worthless (and that) drugs and alcohol is the only way you’ve got of coping with the world.
“I’ve been in recovery one day at a time for a little while now, and it’s still extraordinary that what people are talking about is not this substance or that substance, but their difficulty with relationships, their sense of loss, their sense of loneliness and their sense of worthlessness.
“What’s really weird about that is that’s exactly what I felt.”
Tickets will go on sale at 10am today through sellers including www.ticketfactory.com