RUSSELL BRAND
Comedian, 42
The cleaned-up comedian reveals what — if anything — he’s learned
Addiction can be regarded as a spectrum. All of us are forming attachments to external behaviours or phenomena that are governing our lives. Often negatively.
The things I’d like to learn are Spanish and, maybe, the ukulele.
If you have an image in your head of Noel Gallagher’s 50th birthday party, that’s probably right. From the cultural ephemera that he has given us you could conjure a pretty good idea of it. He’s a really genuine man, Noel.
I don’t know if some sort of hormonal shift has happened but I feel pretty good at 42.
There’s always been so much chaos that it’s difficult to spot patterns, you know, but I’m basically calmer. Physically, I feel a lot more still. My hair is going grey.
You can’t make people like you. If people don’t like you it doesn’t really matter as long as it’s not as a result of something that’s transgressive of your own moral code.
I grew up in a place called grays in Essex. Ordinary, I’d describe it as.
My cat, Morrissey, is still going strong 14 years on. I used to look at him when he was a little kitten and think, “Gosh, where will we go? What will happen to us?” I still wonder.
The reason I think I’m in a happy relationship now is because I manage my expectations. I don’t see my partner as a carer or someone who’s meant to generate joy for me, but as an independent person that I share my life with. The problem is that we don’t recognise the parameters of consumerism. I don’t think we see how entrenched it has become in our mentality, that we look at all experience as something we can somehow devour or use.
I don’t mind talking about the past. Some of it’s bloody fascinating! I just don’t feel particularly connected to it. I sort of feel like an observer of it now.
being an only child gave me a lot of time to reflect. Sometimes I would dream about having a brother. I kind of liked those people in the dreams. I’m not a muso. I don’t have a secondary identity that’s deferred to bands. No, I like a lot of the guitar music that someone who looks like me would like but that sense of deep personal identification, I get it from Kenneth Williams or Peter Cook or Bill Hicks.
The more time you can spend thinking about other people, the better you become. The less time you think about yourself, the better you become.
My life philosophy is to try to remain present. Try to observe what you’re thinking and why you’re thinking it. Treat your visceral and anatomical experience as a series of warnings — like, “Ah, you’re becoming anxious”, or “You’re becoming excited” — and take the appropriate action to become unagitated. I suppose a lot of it is basic atavism. We are so seldom in grave peril but we operate at a level where we think, “Uh-oh, something serious is going to happen. I’d better react.” But mostly nothing serious is going to happen.
What scares me? Death. Obsolescence. Sometimes I don’t really want to do hard work.
Fatherhood has made another person the centre of my world. In other ways I still can be me; I can be looking at my phone while my daughter’s in the room but I didn’t realise I would have such a sudden and profound sense of purpose that was to do entirely with something that is basically ordinary, like a little person. It’s not grandiose, is it, fatherhood? It’s grounding.
It would have been lovely to have been good at football. But if I had, God knows what I would have done to the world!
I’ve stopped defining myself by things like vices and what I want to do. In short, I’m looking at the world from the perspective of... what would broadly be regarded as spiritual. Look, I’m still wearing this stuff. I care that this is a nice shirt. It’s not like I’m floating around in a blanket high as a kite, but I’m interested in, like, what is important? What is going to be of value? Who is it I admire? It’s an interesting change and it still has to occur quite regularly over the course of a day. I might think, “Oh, it’d be ever so nice if I got those shoes.” Then I’ll realise those shoes are meaningless. When I was performing at a lot of big US ceremonies I’d talk to dear Paul McKenna and go, “I feel quite nervous about this.” He would give me his techniques to manage those feelings. You vividly recollect all the times you’ve done similar stuff and it’s gone well and you place them — in Paul’s technique — in TV sets or VDUs of some kind. Then you bring up the colour, bring up the volume. For your fears and anxieties, you do the reverse. It works.
Can I tell you a joke? No. I’ve never known any. Imagine the number of times I‘ve been asked that. You’d think I’d have learned one.
When there are biological imperatives it can kind of usurp all other forms of enjoyment. So it’s like, “Ooh, it’s pretty brilliant to have sex.” It feels good and tied into it is the idea of people approving of you. It can take a little while before one recognises that it is transient and fallible. For me, because my model for looking at things is an addiction model I would apply it to sexual behaviour, other people’s approval, drugs and alcohol, gambling, food. Almost anything that’s adrenaline-producing or whatever it is.
My dad’s a working-class man. He’s dealt with a lot. He’s determined and he’s funny. When I think of the great loves of my life — West Ham and comedy — these things are inherited. We talk a lot and I feel like he’s enormously proud of me and really adores me.
Once I was famous I thought, “Oh, this is it, then.” That was about a week in. It’s a mercurial, floating thing. Suddenly a beautiful boa drapes about you, like some garland of wonder. It’s not actually going to do anything. There are satellite and orbital phenomena that are also enjoyable to a young man but they, too, are ultimately unfulfilling. For me, now, I still think fame and all those things are enjoyable but I’ve got a different perspective because of having experienced them the way I have. I’ve been very lucky like that.
Who’s my favourite Russell? I’m very fond of Russell Grant. The jumpers. The astrology. The campness. The avuncular warmth…
‘I DON’T MIND TALKING ABOUT THE PAST. SOME OF IT’S FASCINATING. I JUST
DON’T FEEL CONNECTED TO IT. SORT OF LIKE AN OBSERVER OF IT NOW’