Okay, I promised various loyal readers I would share my thoughts on Russell Brand's
My Booky Wook.
On the one hand, reading about his life is watching a car crash. On the other, it's a car crash with style where the driver knows exactly what he's doing. And on the gripping hand, you're aware he only got away with it through sheer luck. He's a man of undoubted, genuine talent – a school performance (Fat Sam in
Bugsy Malone) got him into the Italia Conti Academy for acting, which doesn't just hand places out by rote; and after that he got into the Drama Centre. He also managed to get thrown out of both.
And there's the nub, the car crash aspect. Until very recently – apparently, though I won't hold my breath – he's been set to self-destruct. Every time fame has coming knocking at the door, cap in hand, he's found a way to slam the door in its face. Those of us who do it the other way round, going begging cap in hand to fame and actually, you know, putting a little effort into it might find this a little galling. Maybe fame is a Darwinian process – you have to surrender everything, burn your every possession on its altar, and even then it only chooses to come to you, and for every one person who makes it a thousand don't. Though frankly, if 'fame' = presenting for MTV or Big Brother, I'd say you took a wrong turn somewhere.
The book starts with RB describing his enforced stay in a Philadelphia treatment centre (or even center) for sex addiction. Then he goes back to the beginning and talks about his childhood onwards, and ends shortly after his treatment for drug addiction and the first tentative steps towards stability in his 30-year-old life. It is not, in any way, an easy read. Maybe his one saving grace is that he doesn't brag, but nor does he self-pity or beat his breast (in fact there's quite an amusing passage where he talks about how you can get away with confessing almost anything if you preface it with 'To my shame ...'). You have to take the same attitude as him. He is simply stating the facts (often with humour, where humour is to be had); you simply have to read them. And on the way you may actually learn something - like, exactly what it is like to be a heroin addict. Your life can probably proceed unhindered without this item of knowledge, but you may be a lot less quick to criticise if you do read it.
Both the drug and the sex addiction treatments were done on the orders of his agent, John Noel. In both cases RB was told by the managers of the respective clinics, 'you have to want to come', to which his agent replied, 'fook that, he's going.' And RB meekly went.
This is where you could get really psychological and talk about father figures. It's facile to say that any kid from a broken marriage, or any boy brought up primarily by women, is going to end up like Russell Brand, because clearly they don't. But it is telling that almost as soon as he introduces Noel he uses the word 'patriarch', and Noel does seem to be the only man in his life who can give him orders.
The failings of RB's dad as a father are Dickensian in their magnitude, even though RB clearly adores the man. I don't have a toddler of my own and I don't have large stashes of porn on me – but if I did I wouldn't be leaving the one lying around the house for the other to read. I doubtless have my weaknesses as a stepfather, but I can safely say I won't be taking the Boy on a grand tour of the brothels of Hong Kong and Bangkok, as Brand Snr did to his son when RB was 17. The cost of the flight must have meant they couldn't afford separate rooms – or maybe sharing a room while they both banged their way through the local talent was just Brand Snr's way of bonding. Either way,
eeeuuugh.
On the way back home, Brand Snr apparently made a remark about going out with a boy, coming home with a man. No, Mr Brand, you went out with a damaged child and you came back with a permanent head case.
BUT: it does look like RB is making it and I hope he does. He's clean of his addictions, apparently; someone with sense finally diagnosed him as depressive and prescribed treatment; and he's intelligent enough to take action on his self-knowledge. There's talk of acting work appearing on the horizon, too soon before publication to say how it will go. So far in life, as he freely admits, his motivation has been to be noticed – hence it's no big deal whether he's acting or doing stand-up or presenting MTV or Big Brother. But I hope it's the acting that really works, because that's a way of building up a body of work he can really be proud of, to carry him through the lows and sustain him for a lifetime, while in everything else you can be yesterday's news five minutes from now.
