From the GQ archive: Heroin binges, four-in-a-bed romps and TV stardom: the charming comic with the Big Mouth and ruffle-shirted style is happy to dish the dirt on all of it. Just don't mention Kate Moss (...oops)
If ever a man was born to be a celebrity it was Russell Brand. I don't know what other legendary Lotharios like Lord Byron and Casanova were like in the flesh, but I would imagine they made the same kind of physical impact. Even if I didn't know who he was, I would have been impressed by his entrance at a trendy bistro near Tottenham Court Road, sweeping in like a giant peacock, tall, exotically attired and in a state of apparently permanent overexcitement.
Brand, 31, has become instantly famous for two reasons this year: hosting a TV show called Big Brother's Big Mouth, and (allegedly) sleeping with Kate Moss.
I don't give a stuff about Big Brother, and in fact refused to even discuss it with him as a pre-interview condition.
Which was just as well, because his involvement with that show is comfortably the least interesting thing about the man.
Instead, we roamed for two hours through his extraordinary life, a nonstop orgy of comedy, drugs, bulimia, hookers, four-in-a-bed romps and celebrity bed notches.
To be honest, I assumed I'd find Brand irritating, pointless, an easy target. But I was wrong. He was charming, articulate, outrageous and very, very funny.
Ironically for a man who sets his stall by brutal honesty, the one thing he refused to discuss was his liaison with Ms Moss, who he picked up after one of his gigs earlier this year with the immortal words, "I know you want to shag me, but you're just going to have to wait a couple of hours until I've finished the show."
He was photographed emerging from her flat the following morning and the supermodel is said to have gone ballistic when he spoke about her in public, hence his reticence now. But the way he didn't talk about her is almost as revealing as the way he might have done if was allowed to...
Piers Morgan: I've spent the past few days examining your cuttings file, Russell, and I have to say that**it is one of the most impressively outrageous celebrity confessional files I've ever read. Are you the antidote to dull, boring celebrities, do you think?
**Russell Brand: The Rentokil to normalcy, you mean? Yes, why not? I rather like that idea. I think the truth is the only thing that's worth joking about, that's genuinely funny. The comedians I really love are Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, Billy Connolly. People who just tell you honestly about themselves.
Artificiality has no value to me.
**What wouldn't you talk about?
**Since I've been caught up in this whirl of ubiquitousness, I've learnt that while you can be as open as you like about yourself, you do have to show respect for other people.
I can't just go around saying, "Oh, I met this person the other day and I think I love her," because you can get into lots of trouble...
**I think we're edging towards the one thing that
GQ readers really care about when it comes to Russell Brand at the moment...
**I imagine that's going to be the one thing I'm not allowed to talk about...
**Come on, you profess to be an honest guy, spit it out, man...
**I can't... you know I can't... it's not really about me so it's unwise to discuss it in interviews.
**But you know what I'm talking about, obviously?
**Yes, well I think so.
**Is it an on-going scenario, then?
**Erm... no.
**Just a short-term fling, then?
**I mustn't say anything.
**But if I don't actually say who or what we're talking about then it doesn't matter does it?
**No, I know... but I can't go there.
**Well you did go there, that's the point. And now I've got Russell Brand, the world's most honest comic, behaving like a tongue-tied choirboy. Not great, is it?
**[Laughs] Look, if it were left to me I'd tell you everything. I'd happily sit here and tell you the shape and texture of my defecation. But it's not just me - other people don't like me talking about whatever it is.
**Are you enjoying fame?
**Yes. I can't stand all those people who become famous and then start saying it's a normal job, and it just happened - as if they were a plumber or something. I've always wanted to be famous.
But I am very fortunate in that I also have a kind of religious devotion to my craft. I love comedy. I care about it immensely. If I knew that I would go back to performing to 30 people above pubs, I would carry on doing it because that would still make me incredibly happy.
**What did you think fame would bring you?
**I thought it would mean I wouldn't have to justify myself so much, I thought it would validate me. I like the recognition and the sense of power, and the notoriety.
**You had quite a sad childhood, your parents split up and you suffered various eating disorders.
**Yes, I was very unhappy. I didn't get on with my stepdad at all. And I just remember feeling lonely and totally impotent - there was nothing I could do about my situation. Life is basically a series of problems that you have to somehow solve yourself. I had to deal with feeling ordinary, dull, tedious and powerless by trying to subvert those ideas, being anarchic and dangerous. I'm sure that people like Tony Hancock and Peter Cook behaved the way they did for the same reason - to escape the tedium of normal life.
You feel this burning need to swim against the natural current of your human misery.
**Are you happier now?
**Not really, not when I'm on my own looking in the mirror.
I need an audience around me to be happy. To engage with people and make them laugh is what makes me happy.
**When was the first time you realised you had that ability?
**When I appeared in a school production of Bugsy Malone at 13, and things started going horribly wrong and I had to improvise my way out of it. And people laughed, and I felt this sudden rush of adrenalin surging through me. It was like a drug.
**It must be very hard going home to a quiet flat when you've had a whole night of that adrenalin?
Incredibly hard. You have all this velocity, and then nothing. And I just come off stage thinking, "F* it, I've got to have a hit or a f***, something, anything to keep the buzz going. I can't let this energy just peter out into the darkness of the night, or just lie in bed doing nothing. Sleep is, after all, like death in pyjamas.
**I've done a lot of after-dinner speaking and although most of them go well, I can only remember the one or two times when I died on my arse, and experienced what has to be one of the worst things I have ever gone through. The cold sweat, nausea and sheer horror of an audience not finding you funny.
**I've had it many times, and it is always horrible. When I was doing loads of drugs it would happen often. There is nothing sadder or lonelier than standing there wanting to be adored, but receiving instead just disdain and even hatred. But I deserved it because I was always smashing things up on stage, or doing drugs in front of the audience, or throwing dead animals at them. I was out of control.
**Were you showing off?
**Partly, but it was more complicated than that. Most of it was fear. I would turn up off my head having prepared no material, and find this audience sitting there demanding to be entertained.
And the only way I could think to entertain them was to behave very badly. I remember planting homeless people outside a theatre, asking them to beg people for money as they went inside. Then I dragged the homeless people off the street onto the stage and asked them to reveal how much money the audience had given them. And it wasn't funny so much as really uncomfortable for everyone.
**You have an extraordinary energy about you. Even sitting here in this café I can feel the heat.
**Yes, I do seem to have incredible amounts of it. I struggle with relaxing. I love watching television but hate being alone. Oddly, I can sleep very well. But once I'm awake I'm just full of this nervous energy all the time.
Do you miss taking drugs?
It never goes away because it seems so comforting in an absolute way. Particularly heroin, which was the nadir or zenith or my drug-using career depending on how you look at it. It was the only drug that delivered for me, that did what it promised. Cannabis was boring, cocaine was titillating for a while, LSD was wonderful and enlightening, but none of them really stopped the pain or reached out to my consciousness in the way that heroin did.
**When did you first try heroin?
**I was 19 at Hackney Central station, and I saw these young Turkish lads and they were smoking a joint of heroin and they sold me some at a very flattering rate. And I went home and smoked it and suddenly felt enveloped in this womb of comfort. It's a very nihilistic drug because you think, "Who cares about anything? Why does any of this matter?"
**Was it instantly addictive?
**No. I didn't do it again for another year. And then when I got a job on MTV and started earning good money I was taking it all the time.
**How bad was your habit then?
**I would take it every hour from the moment I woke up until I went to bed. I never injected it, always smoked it. And although I spent every day in this kind of heroin daze it just seemed to make life much more manageable. It numbed me. Made the pain go away. The thing about being an addict is that you retreat into your own little world. Whether you're an alcoholic Big Issue seller or a high-flying executive cokehead, the thing you share is that you are not really there. Addicts are not part of the real world, they are governed by their own internal agenda. They are glazed.
**How much were you spending?
**about £100 a day. By the end I would use it with crack as well, because I missed the buzz of amphetamine-based drugs.
**And this culminated in your getting fired from MTV for turning up the day after 9/11 wearing an Osama bin Laden outfit...
**Yes. I did. I just find huge cultural events exhilarating because it seems like everyone is freaking out - something that as a drug addict you experience all the time. I just thought, "Now everyone's part of the chaos." I'd been fascinated by bin Laden for a while. Still a stupid thing to do.
**Particularly as you were due to interview Kylie Minogue that day.
**Yes... I was doing this anodyne kids' TV show at the time and there I was with a drug dealer, dressed as Osama bin Laden, having done large amounts of heroin and crack, preparing to interview Kylie. And I remember introducing her to my dealer and witnessing what I can only describe as a clash of cultures...
**Did they sack you just for that?
**No, it was the cumulative effect of openly taking drugs, self-harming, smashing things up.
**When you cut yourself, were you trying to commit suicide or just trying to get attention?
**It was an attempt to expose the triviality of life, to show how angry I was at how boring everything was.
**What made you so angry?
**My dad left, and my mum was ill regularly so I had to go and live with other people who I didn't get on with. My stepdad who was an alcoholic. I just felt lost.
**But your mum loved you, right?
**She did, massively. And still does. But I never felt secure. I always had this feeling that she might not be around much longer and then what would I be left with? But she is still around, and she loves and adores me unequivocally and unconditionally. She has been the one constant thing in my life, through good and bad.
And I love her so much for that. She's a gentle, caring, compassionate, kind, lovely funny woman.
**Is she proud of you?
**Oh, definitely. She can't buy a copy of heat without showing my picture to the check-out girl.
**How does she cope with the sexual material?
**She's fine about it. I remember her coming to see one of my shows and me doing this whole thing about oral sex, and my mum just didn't mention it afterwards. I think she just pretends I'm not saying it. I did another bit once about masturbation and my need to go to London Zoo and show the chimps I could do it as well as they could, and she just said afterwards, "Oh I liked the bit about the monkeys." It was her way of making it palatable. She reads all this stuff about me but most of it washes over her head.
**How many women have you slept with?
**I've no idea.
**Are you up there with Bill Wyman - around the 1,000 mark?
**I'm well up from there, mate. I reckon I could take Wyman down to Chinatown.
**When did your rampage begin?
**When I was 15. I was quite a late starter. But I made up for it. There was a lot of activity, put it that way.
**How many a week at your peak?
**Oh God, at the peak it would be around five a day. One in the morning, maybe two for lunch and three for tea. Then someone might stick around all night. It was fairly mad. A good week would be at least 20, in various configurations. Only girls though, there were never any men around. I know there are question marks in some quarters over my sexuality but I have to confess to being resolutely heterosexual in every way. There is nothing ambiguous about me sexually whatsoever. So don't be misled by the way I dress. My admiration and infatuation with all things female knows no bounds. I feel nothing towards men physically at all.
**What's been the greatest sexual encounter you've ever had?
**I remember an Australian lap dancer who was magnificent.
Extremely tall, with these sumptuous breasts and a vagina that just devoured me in every way. My life just froze that night, trapped in this oasis of pure physical pleasure. But I've also had nights when I've looked down my bed and seen a plague of women devouring me.
**What was the largest "plague"?
**Oh, three. It gets logistically difficult after that.
Nobody is quite sure what they're supposed to be doing. I remember a friend of mine's mother catching him in bed with five girls once and she was horrified. It was like, "Dave, what the hell are you doing? You're 16, for God's sake!"
**Coincidentally, that girl that we're not allowed to talk about is also supposed to have a propensity for the group thing.
**Really? I'm not allowed to talk about that, or her, as I think we've established, Piers. I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable discussing that kind of aspect to her anyway, regardless of whether I could talk about her or not.
**You seem desperate to tell me everything, but can't because she's gagged you. Is that right?
**Look, by my nature I'm indiscreet so it's not easy to say nothing.
**Especially with that particular woman. I mean, this was the big one, wasn't it? A lifetime's pursuit of the female form ending with arguably the most desired woman in the world. And you nailed it but can't admit it. It must be agony.
**Hopefully, in the fullness of time, it will become part of my stand-up but right now I have to look after other people's feelings. I have to be careful.
**But she doesn't really care, does she? I mean, she's never looked like she gives a damn.
**Well, we still don't know who she is, do we Piers? She is anonymous, and I intend to keep it that way for the duration of this interview, however hard you try.
**I deliberately refused to name her to allow you the freedom to talk generically about this person without landing yourself in it with her... I've tried to navigate a safe avenue for you.
**That's very kind of you but that whole avenue is like a road to Basra, fraught with pitfalls.
**Are you attracting more or less women now you're famous?
**That's interesting actually, because I've noticed that all that's changed is that the amount of seduction required has decreased to almost preposterous proportions now that I'm famous.
I've always been good at pulling because I'm quite charming, and totally dedicated to the cause. But if I talked to ten women in the old days then I'd back myself to pull two or three. Now, I wouldn't be happy with less than eight or nine. And whereas I would have devoted a lot of time to the seduction depending on the quality of the target, now I just get on with it. Fame has been very helpful in that respect.
**Are you able to walk into a bar now and point to a good-looking girl and say, "You - outside now"?
**Well, I've always tried to avoid misogyny and aggression when it comes to women. That isn't very appealing and you don't need to be like that. Women just like to be treated nicely, and for you to make them the centre of your attention.
**What's it like reading a kiss-and-tell about yourself?
**It's hilarious. You will know better than most that tabloid journalism relies on all those bizarre phrases like "love nest" and "sex act" that nobody in normal life ever uses. And the papers like to improve things for the sake of a good article. I don't have a big white Jacuzzi in my house, but for the purposes of the kiss-and-tell I had to have one, so they gave me one. I need to be an S&M Willy Wonka or some sort of Dickensian Stringfellow.
**Are you a more successful sexual predator now that you don't drink?
Yes, but I resent the word "predator". I like to think of myself as a conduit of natural forces. After all, the most natural thing in the world for people to do is f*, isn't it? And people want to do it, so all you have to do is remove all the reasons why women don't actually go through with it, like pride and reputation.
You just have to unpick the conditions stopping women going straight to bed with you.
**Do you care that a lot of women might want to sleep with you just to say they shagged Russell Brand?
**Er... no? Of course not, that philosophy seems to work massively to my advantage, doesn't it? That mentality is not something I would actively seek to discourage, certainly. I can see a potentially huge personal gain emerging from that mindset. And let me tell you, I'm not a difficult lay. But I do believe women are goddesses, and I try to treat them as such.
**It seems to me that you've comfortably eclipsed Bill Wyman. You must be heading towards the 2,000 mark?
**I would think, and hope so - yes. For the past 15 years it has been pretty relentless.
**Do women fall in love with you?
**Sometimes, and sometimes I do with them too. I'm really not a nasty little pervert. I am just looking for something bigger all the time, less ephemeral.
**When was the last time you fell in love?
**Today, this morning, last night. It happens all the time.
**The unmentionable girl, maybe?
**Oh, very good. I see what you did there.
**If you were on a desert island and could invite a couple of women to cheer you up, who would they be?
Oh, I'd be fing sleazy. Lindsey Dawn f**ing Mackenzie or someone like that. Michelle Marsh. Just big sluts who will abuse me all day and night. I like fleshy women. If it was just for sex then girls like those two, definitely. But if was someone to fall in love with then I'd go for Caroline Aherne, someone who has lots of flesh and can make me laugh.
**How many hookers have you paid for sex?
**Oh, during my drug days, quite a lot. Loads. I didn't trawl the streets, but I'd go to massage parlours. It was that Rob Lowe thing of "you don't pay them to sleep with you, you pay them to leave". I became quite addicted to that world of casual sex and drugs and criminality. And rather liked it.
**Have you been to a prostitute since you've been off the drugs and booze?
**No. The thing you realise when you're sober is that it must be the most unattractive kind of sex you're ever going to get because you know they don't want to be there, and know they're not enjoying it. It's just a soulless functional thing and now that I've come off the narcotics my moral barometer is slightly higher than it used to be. And also of course there is now a sufficient supply of freebies for that not to be a necessity.
**Have you ever had sex with anyone famous other than that woman?
**Well, I haven't confirmed or denied having sex with that woman, have I, Piers? But yes, as it happens I have had sex with several people who are famous.
**Who?
**I can't really say...
**Not the wall of silence again...
**No, to be honest the reason I can't talk about the other ones is because due to the nature of all the current press coverage about me they'd be ashamed to be associated with me. I have too much respect for them to drag them into the bright nauseous lights in my giddy showbiz life.
**Do you not think you're getting a bit old to behave like you do?
**Do you think so? Is 31 old?
**You just seem to me to be quite a bright, articulate man who could perhaps offer the world slightly more than the shallow sex-obsessed rhetoric that dominates your every waking moment.
**I think I need to meet a woman who can help me stop all this, definitely. I would gleefully leave this lifestyle right now to settle down and have children. I'd like to be shipwrecked in between someone's thighs on a more permanent basis.
**Could you be faithful, though?
**I think so. I'm faithful to my comedy, and my mother, and my friends. So why not?
**Do you not worry that you might actually be a sex addict?
**The definition of addiction is compulsive and destructive behaviour that you are unable to stop. But I once went for two months without sex, in fact without even masturbation. It was for a TV experiment.
Sounds terrible.
Actually, it was f***ing awful!
Originally published in the October 2006 issue of British GQ.
Click here to read GQ's recent interview with Russell Brand.
Click here to read more grilling interviews by Piers Morgan.
