Russell Brand

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Russell Brand

Birth name Russell Edward Brand
Born June 4, 1975 (age 31)
Flag of England Grays, Essex, England
Official site http://www.russellbrand.tv/

Russell Edward Brand [1] (born June 4, 1975 in Grays, Essex, England) is an English comedian, actor, television personality, Columnist and DJ.

Contents

Personal life

Russell Brand dresses in a flamboyant bohemian fashion describing himself as looking like an "S&M Willy Wonka" on the 12 May 2006 edition of Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Brand's current style consists of eyeliner, tight jeans and long, shaggy hair. He is a big fan of The Smiths and their ex-frontman Morrissey, and has a cat of the same name. Brand is also a vegetarian and does yoga and recently revealed on his BBC Radio 2 show that he has a personal trainer. He is a fan of West Ham United and has a season ticket. He has stated on his radio show that he would like the song "Asleep" by The Smiths played at his funeral.

Drug addiction

Brand is a former heroin addict, alcoholic and has had numerous run-ins with the law, having been arrested eleven times,[2]; he was also expelled from the Italia Conti Academy when he was younger. During the time of his addiction, he was known for his debauchery, a notable example being his ejection from The Gilded Balloon in Edinburgh.[3]

He has been free from heroin addiction since 2003, and is now a patron of the addiction charity Focus 12. His abandonment of drugs and alcohol was supposedly instigated by John Noel, Brand's manager.[4] He did so with the help of the Hare Krishnas, to whom he feels "indebted".[5]

He hosted a forum show about drugs for Channel 4 in 2006, which had a similar format to that of Big Brother's Big Mouth, and his stage show Better Now drew extensively on his experiences with addiction.[6]

Career

Standup

Brand's first significant stand-up appearance was at the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year final in 2000. Although he did not finish in the top three, his performance attracted the attention of an agent, John Noel. Currently he performs his show Shame to sell out audiences around the country drawing on embarrassing things that have happened to him. The tabloid press is also covered in the show. In late November Russell put on a secret stand-up show for anyone who had added him as a friend on MySpace. This show featured unseen material not featured on his DVD and is linked to in 'External Links' below.

Brand performed a sketch with close friends Matt Lucas & David Walliams for a Little Britain live show for Comic Relief in which he played a crossdressing plumber who comes out to "fellow crossdresser", Emily Howard.

Brand appeared in a sketch and did stand-up at the 2006 Secret Policeman's Ball.

Later this year he will be doing a charity show with Noel Fielding called "Goth Detectives" (named after something Jonathon Ross said on 'The Big Fat Quiz of the Year')

TV

His first major TV work was an appearance in an episode of The Bill and as a VJ on music channel MTV presenting Dance Floor Chart and MTV Select. However he was sacked after coming to work dressed as Osama bin Laden on 12 September 2001. [7]

In 2002 he filmed roles in the television comedy dramas, Cruise of the Gods and White Teeth.

In 2004, he hosted E4's Big Brother's E-forum (E4-rum), a sister show to Big Brother 5. The show gave celebrity guests and the public the chance to have their say on the goings on inside the Big brother house. For series six the shows name changed to Big Brother's Big Mouth. The ratings for the most recent series of Big Brother's Big Mouth during Big Brother 7 have been good. [8] Brand has comfirmed he will not return to host the next series of Big Brother's Big Mouth. In a statement Brand thanked producers for "taking the risk of employing an ex-junkie twerp" to front the show and on his time prsenting the show he said "The three years I've spent on Big Brother's Big Mouth have been an unprecedented joy". [9]

In late 2005 he played Tommy in the BBC sitcom Blessed which was written and directed by Ben Elton.

Brand was welcomed back into the MTV fold in spring 2006 when he began presenting chatshow 1 Leicester Square initially going out at 8pm Sundays before being shifted to a post watershed time of 10pm on Mondays allowing a more adult theme to the show. Guests have included Tom Cruise, Uma Thurman and Boy George. A second series of 1 Leicester Square began in September 2006 on MTV UK.

After Big Brother 7 finished, Brand presented a debate show called Russell Brand's Got Issues, on digital channel E4. The viewing figures for the first episode were seen as disappointing, being beaten by nearly all of E4's main multi-channel rivals, despite a big publicity and promotional campaign for the show and achieving only 148,000 viewers on the opening night.

On the 9 November it was announced that Brand would host his own chat show called The Russell Brand Show. The first episode was broadcast at 23.05 on Friday 24 November on Channel 4[10]

In December 2006, Brand took part in Channel 4's The Big Fat Quiz of the Year presented by Jimmy Carr. He was teamed with Noel Fielding from the Mighty Boosh. They went on to win the quiz after receiving 22 points for one question (quizmaster Jimmy Carr had jokingly said that he'd give them 22 points if they got it right, assuming that they would get it wrong, as they were giving blatantly incorrect answers to the other questions, as a joke).

He has recently filmed small roles in the films Penelope which stars Reese Witherspoon and Christina Ricci and Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (from which his role was cut).

This year Russell has hosted the 2007 BRIT Awards[11] and played a recovering crack addict in ITV one off comedy, The Abbey which was written by Morwenna Banks.[12] Brand also hosted a part of Comic Relief for one hour.

In 2007, Brand will film roles in the new series of Cold Blood for the ITV network and the film re-make of St Trinian's opposite Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Stephen Fry and Emily Watson.

According to recent press reports, Brand is in talks to appear in a as yet untitled action comedy feature film opposite Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock after being introduced to director Brett Ratner by Courtney Love.

Radio

Matt Morgan, Trevor Lock & Russell Brand
Matt Morgan, Trevor Lock & Russell Brand

On radio, Russell has hosted a Sunday afternoon show on Xfm until he was sacked for making a rude comment on air. In 2006 he was given a Sunday morning radio show on BBC 6 Music initially alongside Karl Pilkington. However due to contract obligations linked to his podcast with Ricky Gervais, Pilkington was replaced by Brand's long-term contributor Matt Morgan and comedian Trevor Lock. The show placed as high as number one in the iTunes UK most-subscribed podcast chart. In October 2006, BBC announced a 40% rise in listeners to BBC digital radio, they claimed this was largely attributed to host Russell Brand. According to Rajar, the station was attracting over 400,000 listeners. [13] The show was transferred to BBC Radio 2, the UK's most popular radio station, on 18 November in the 21:00 - 23:00 time slot.[14] The radio show often features a call from Noel Gallagher of Oasis and a segment called 'Cry for help' where listners phone and ask Russell, Matt and Trevor for advice. In January 2007 his show reached the No #1 spot on the iTunes podcast charts.

Books

Their are currently two unofficial biographys about Russell. One is entitled Russell Brand: Unleashed, Untamed, Unauthorized and is written by Tanith Carey. The other is called Russell Brand Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know written by Dave Stone. Brand has recently singed a deal to write his autobiography which he has chosen to entitle My Booky Wook.

Notoriety

  • In 2006 the Daily Star published an article claiming that Bob Geldof has forbidden his daughter Peaches to go to Ibiza in case Russell were to follow her.[citation needed] Rod Stewart publicly chided the television presenter Russell Brand at the GQ Awards for saying he'd slept with Stewart's daughter Kimberly Stewart. Collecting an award for outstanding achievement, Stewart challenged Brand to swear an oath that this really had happened - and warned Brand that if he couldn't swear that it was true, he shouldn't make such claims. During the filming of the Live stand up DVD on the subject of 'shame' he addressed this matter, explaining that his claim was a joke, and that he and Stewart share a common PR agent and were 'messing about'.
  • On 23 February 2006, he hosted the 2006 NME Awards show. Upon reaching the stage to receive his award, Bob Geldof began his speech with 'Russell Brand... what a cunt.' which later prompted Brand to strike back with; "Bob Geldof. No wonder he's such an expert on famine, he's been dining out on "I Don't Like Mondays" for 30 years...'.
  • Ex girlfriends include most notoriously Kate Moss and Lisa Moorish and Big Brother alumni Kate Lawler, Imogen Thomas, Makosi Musambasi and Bekki Sedeki and glamour model Coralie Robinson, Brand has also been linked to Abi Titmuss, Sarah Harding, Sadie Frost, Amy Winehouse and Courtney Love.

Awards

He was named best Stand Up by Time Out Magazine in the Time Out Live awards in 2006,[15] and the eight-night run of his stand-up show Shame at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival was the first show to sell out for that year [16] although he was forced to cancel some shows due to severe laryngitis.[17] In 2006, he was named GQ's Most Stylish man of the year,[18] Although, as if to prove the fickle nature of fame, he then won the 2007 GQ "Least Stylish Man of the Year" [19]

Other awards include Funniest Man at the Loaded Lafta Awards,[20] Best Newcomer at the 2006 British Comedy Awards,[21] He also came third in BBC3's 'Most Annoying People Of 2006' programme, broadcast on 28 December.

Selected works

Radio credits

Television credits

Stand-up credits

  • Better Now
  • Shame
  • Maxwell's Full Mooners

References

  1. ^ Russell Brand Fan Site
  2. ^ The Observer at the Guardian.
  3. ^ Arts.Guardian.co.uk.
  4. ^ [1].
  5. ^ http://observer.guardian.co.uk/7days/story/0,,1989933,00.html
  6. ^ http://www.chortle.co.uk/edfest2004/russellbrand.html
  7. ^ http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/tm_objectid=17151454&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=exclusive--russell-brand-s-sex-tips-name_page.html
  8. ^ http://www.barb.co.uk/viewingsummary/weekreports.cfm?RequestTimeout=500&report=weeklytop30
  9. ^ [2]
  10. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6133116.stm
  11. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6205786.stm
  12. ^ http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/tm_headline=russell-stars-in-sitcom&method=full&objectid=18095225&siteid=94762-name_page.html
  13. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6086738.stm
  14. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6109170.stm
  15. ^ http://www.timeout.com/features/liveawards/winners.php?cat=comedy
  16. ^ http://www.chortle.co.uk/news/June06/brnad286601.php
  17. ^ http://www.chortle.co.uk/news/aug06/silenced248805.php
  18. ^ http://www.vogue.co.uk/vogue_daily/story/story.asp?stid=38290
  19. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6517341.stm
  20. ^ Russell gets Loaded - ITV News
  21. ^ http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/showbiz/article-21205155-details/Little+Britain%27s+big+win/article.do

External links

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