Russell Brand - My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up

A Memoir of Sex, Drugs,

and Stand-Up

Russell Brand

For my mum,

the most important woman in my life,

this book is dedicated to you.

Now for Gods sake dont read it.

The line between good and evil runs not through states, nor between classes, nor between po liti cal parties either, but through every human heart

Alexander Solzhenitsyn,

The Gulag Archipelago

Mary: Tell me, Edmund: Do you have someone special in your life?

Edmund: Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I do.

Mary: Who?

Edmund: Me.

Mary: No, I mean someone you love, cherish and want to keep safe from all the horror and the hurt.

Edmund: Erm... Still me, really

Richard Curtis and Ben Elton,

Blackadder Goes Forth

Contents

iii

vii

April Fool

Umbilical Noose 16

Shame Innit?

Fledgling Hospice 38

Diddle- Di- Diddle- Di

ow Christmas Should Feel 57

One McAvennie

Ive Got a Bone to Pick with You 72

Teachers Whiskey 81

Boobaloo

Say Hello to the Bad Guy 94

The Eternal Dilemma 105

Body Mist

Ying Yang

Click, Clack, Click, Clack 131

Wop Out a Bit of Acting

Th

e Stranger

v

Contents

Is This a Cash Card I See before Me?

Do You Want a Drama?

Dagenham Is Not Damascus 179

Dont Die of Ignorance 189

Firing Minors 201

Down Among the Have-Nots 216

First-Class Twit 224

Lets Not Tell Our Mums 239

Youre a Diamond 261

Call Me Ishmael. Or Isimir. Or Something...

Mustafa Skagfix 283

A Gentleman with a Bike 295

Out of the Game 310

Hare Krishna Morrissey 322

And Th

en Three Come at Once

vi

Dear American reader,

Jolly well done, you have purchased this book in spite of: 1. Its seemingly childish title, and 2. The photo of me on the cover, thus proving that you are: 1. Prepared to take risks, and 2. A sexy, adventurous outsider. Congratulations, you are in for a giddy, wild ride through language, hedonism and amusing despair. Unless you bought the book(y wook) for a relative, and are now perusing it only to ascertain its suitability, or worse still, you are a shoplifter pretending to read before committing your crime.

If either scenario is true, then, be assured, it is suitable for your relativeunless they are crushingly naive or small-minded. And if you are a shoplifter, Im in no position to complain as I, myself, have stolen many books. Im not con-doning it, I just understand that you must be desperate, and at least youre stealing a good book(y wook). Good luck.

Now, assuming that all who remain are good, honest consumers, Id like to thank you. This book is mine, its all true, I wrote it, and while Im proud of the book(y wook), Im not proud of some of the chaos within. I am an En glishman and, as such, reserve the right to talk, and write, in a manner that vii

Authors Note

may strike you as macabre or bonkers or crackers, nuts or weird; to avoid possible confusion, I have included a glossary so that you can understand what I have written. I only pray you can understand why I wrote it.

Long live the Queen, God Bless America.

Ta ta.

Russell

viii

And that I walk thus proudly crowned withal

Is that tis my distinction; if I fall,

I shall not weep out of the vital day,

To-morrow dust, nor wear a dull decay

Percy Bysshe Shelley,

And That I Walk Th

us

Proudly Crowned Withal

When I was small and fi ve

I found a pencil sharpener alive!

He lay in lonely grasses

Looking for work.

I bought a pencil for him.

He ate and ate until all that was

Left was a pile of wood dust.

It was the happiest pencil sharpener

I ever had

Spike Milligan, 2B or not 2B

April Fool

On the morning of April Fools Day, 2005, I woke up in a sexual addiction treatment center in a suburb of Philadelphia. As I limped out of the drab dogs bed in which I was expected to sleep for the next thirty wankless nights, I observed the previous incumbent had left a thread of unravelled dental floss by the pillowmost likely as a noose for his poor, famished dinkle.

When Id arrived the day before, the counselors had taken away my copy of the Guardian, as there was a depiction of the Venus de Milo on the front page of the Culture section, but let me keep the Sun, which obviously had a Page 3 lovely.

What kind of pervert police force censors a truncated sculpture but lets Keeley Hazell pass without question?* Blimey, this devious swines got a picture of a concrete bird with no

* Keeley Hazell is a topless model who appears on Page 3 of the Sun newspaper. Page 3 is a crazy concept whereby for no discernable reason a national newspaper prints a photograph of a young woman showing her tits. Id object, but Im too enamored with the boobs.

Th

e Sun is a Murdoch-owned right-wing populist paper, which appeals primarily to working-class white men, but has such a strong cultural presence that it is relevant to people who work in media and politics. Amusingly, they often attribute a comment on the days events to the Page 3 girl of the day, right next to her lovely, naked body, e.g., Becky thinks the global recession has been brought on by economic immigrants coming into our countryIf they come here they have to work and contribute, said the twenty-two-year-old from Oldham. That sort of thing.

RUSSELL BRAND

armshangings too good for him, to the incinerator! Keep that picture of stunner Keeley though. If they were to censor London Town they would ignore Soho but think that the statue of Alison Lapper in Trafalgar Square had been commissioned by Caligula.

Being all holed up in the aptly named KeyStone clinic (while the facility did not have its own uniformed police force, the suggestion of bungling silent film cops is appropriate) was an all too familiar drag. Not that Id ever been incarcerated in sex chokey before, lord no, but it was the umpteenth time that Id been confronted with the galling reality that there are things over which I have no control and people who can force their will upon you. Teachers, sex police, actual police, drug counselors; people who can make you sit in a drugless, sexless cell either real or metaphorical and ponder the actuality of lifes solitary essence. In the end its just you. Alone.

Who needs that grim reality stuffed into their noggin of a morning? Not me. I couldnt even distract myself with a wank over that gorgeous slag Venus de Milo; well, shes asking for it, going out all nude, not even wearing any arms.

The necessity for harsh self-assessment and ac ceptance of deaths inevitability wasnt the only thing I hated about that KeyStone place. No, those two troubling factors vied for su-premacy with multitudinous bastard truths. I hated my fucking bed: the mattress was sponge, and you had to stretch your own sheet over this miserable little single divan in the corner of the room. And I hated the fucking room itself where the strangled urges of onanism clung to the walls like mildew. I particularly hated the American gray squirrels that were running around outsidejust free, like idiots, giggling and touching each other in the early spring sunshine. The triumph of these little divs over our indigenous, noble, red, British squirrel had become a searing 4

April Fool

metaphor for my own subjugation at the hands of the anti-fuck-Yanks. To make my surrender to conformity more offi cial I was