One-man Brand

If Americans mostly know Russell Brand as the scene-stealing, skeezy rock star Aldous Snow in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, across the pond the stand-up from Essex, England, has been tabloid fodder for any number of scandals. Among his lurid exploits: masturbating a man on Re:Brand, his British TV show; risking leg amputation when thrown through a glass door after a gig turned sour; and, more benignly, calling George W. Bush “that retard cowboy fella” at the 2008 MTV Awards.

Apparently, the U.S. is not safe from Brand’s brand: Next year he’ll reprise Aldous in the Judd Apatow–produced Get Him to the Greek; he’ll also play the boozy Dudley Moore character in a remake of the 1981 film Arthur. Brand’s autobiography, My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up (Collins, $25.99), comes out this week.

Time Out Chicago: Do you still struggle to get through customs these days?
Russell Brand: Yes. I get stopped quite a lot. Even though I’ve not taken drugs or had a drink and haven’t been arrested for over six years now, I still have a gait and manner of a man who might be about to do something illegal.

TOC: Did you really travel with drugs up your ass?
Russell Brand: It’s a necessity as a drug addict.

TOC: When was the last time you were body searched?
Russell Brand: Seven years ago, when I was thrown off a plane in Barcelona for causing a ruckus. Not full cavity, thankfully, otherwise they would have found I was carrying heroin and marijuana. I generally traveled with drugs up my arse in the belief that if customs officers decided to pursue this unsavory line of inquiry, my day would already be ruined, and the discovery of crack or heroin couldn’t make it much worse.

TOC: You’ve been fired in dramatic fashion from most of your jobs—most notably when you turned up to work as an MTV VJ the day after September 11 dressed as Osama bin Laden and introduced your heroin dealer, Gritty, and his eight-year-old son to Kylie Minogue…?
Russell Brand: Kylie was our guest on the show that day. Me, Gritty and his son Edwin went into the toilet, and the two older members of our party smoked some crack. Edwin didn’t have any. Children don’t need drugs because they have sweets. We blearily swaggered out of the disabled toilet, and I saw Kylie. Before I knew it, I said, “Kylie, meet Gritty.” And there’s me standing beside them, dressed as Osama bin Laden. They sacked me about two days later.

TOC: You struggled with bulimia and self-harm as a teen. Have you ever been diagnosed with a mental illness?
Russell Brand: Yes, depression and manic depression and, more latterly, bipolar. Attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity. It’s difficult to know which of those diagnoses are correct because most of the time I was very young and on drugs.

TOC: Do you still get the urge to take drugs?
Russell Brand: Sometimes. When you finish work late or you’ve just done a gig and you think, What am I going to do now? Go to bed? That’s when I miss it. You feel like you need an experience, some sort of punctuation: an orgasm, an epiphany.

TOC: How do you control that?
Russell Brand: With a transient erotic experience that’s consensual and blissful and conveys nothing but glory to the participants.

TOC: Are you a sex addict?
Russell Brand: I don’t know. I have problems with addiction, and this can be transferred to most areas of my life if I’m not cautious, but I don’t like to undermine the experiences I have by putting that tag on it.

TOC: The last time you had sex?
Russell Brand: Well, yesterday.

TOC: Is it almost too easy to seduce women now that you’re famous?
Russell Brand: You don’t have to do the getting-to-know-you quiz. I’m just a bloke from Essex with a terrific haircut who’s been given a Wonka ticket to a lovely sex factory because of the ol’ fame.

TOC: You’ve had an interesting relationship with your father…?
Russell Brand: He did his best, groping through fatherhood without a template.

TOC: But he took you on vacation to sleep with prostitutes in Southeast Asia when you were 17!
Russell Brand: On the plane on the way home he said, “I went away with a boy and came back with a man.” Some of the attributes of a man included: I have now had a prostitute stick her finger up my arse while sucking my cock.

TOC: Do you think you’ve broken America now?
Russell Brand: I think it was broken when I got there. I’m going to fix it.

My Booky Wook hits shelves Tuesday 10.

Buy My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up on Amazon.com

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