Product Description

Russell Brand grew up in Essex . His father left when he was three months old, he was bulimic at 12 and left school at 16 to study at the Italia Conti stage school. There, he began drinking heavily and taking drugs. He regularly visited prostitutes in Soho, began cutting himself, took drugs on stage during his stand-up shows, and even set himself on fire while on crack cocaine. He has been arrested 11 times and fired from 3 different jobs – including from XFM and MTV – and he claims to have slept with over 2,000 women. In 2003 Russell was told that he would be in prison, in a metal hospital or dead within six months unless he went in to rehab. He has now been clean for three years.

In 2006 his presenting career took off, and he hosted the NME awards as well as his own MTV show, 1 Leicester Square, plus Big Brother’s Big Mouth on Channel 4. His UK stand-up tour was sold out and his BBC Radio 6 show became a cult phenomenon, the second most popular podcast of the year after Ricky Gervais. He was awarded Time Out’s Stand Up Comedian of the Year and won Best Newcomer at the British Comedy Awards.

In 2007 Russell hosted both the Brit Awards and Comic Relief, and continued to front Big Brother’s Big Mouth. His BBC2 radio podcast became the UK’s most popular.

Russell writes a weekly football column in the Guardian and is the patron of Focus 12, a charity helping people with alcohol and substance misuse.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1920 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
'Candid, funny and moving.' (Sun )

'How in God's name did the publishers ever get him to sit down and write the bloody thing? Because make no mistake - unlike most celebrity biogs, MY BOOKY WOOK has definitely been written by Brand.' (London Lite )

'Part funny, but part hugely disturbing . . .' (Grazia )

‘The most talented stand-up comedian to emerge in Britain this decade, Brand combines Eddie Izzard’s rare ability to carry a whole crowd along on an audacious flight of comic fancy with the carnal magnetism of the young George Best. Audiences leave a Brand performance not just entertained but actively debauched by his catalogue of erotic misadventure.’

About the Author
Russell Brand is a comedian, journalist, TV and radio presenter and actor. He has won numerous awards including Time Out`s Comedian of the Year, Best Newcomer at the British Comedy Awards, Best TV Performer at the Broadcasting Press Guild Awards, Most Stylish Man at GQ`s Men of the Year Awards and the Sun`s Shagger of the Year.

Excerpted from My Booky Wook by Russell Brand. Copyright © 2007. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
On the morning of April Fools' Day, 2005, I woke up in a sexual addiction treatment centre in a suburb of Philadelphia. As I limped out of the drab dog's 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 pillow - most likely as a noose for his poor, famished dinkle.

When I'd arrived the day before, the counsellors 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 swine's got a picture of a concrete bird with no arms - hanging's 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 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 I'd ever been incarcerated in sex chokey before, lord no, but it was the umpteenth time that I'd 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 counsellors; people who can make you sit in a drugless, sexless cell either real or metaphorical and ponder the actuality of life's solitary essence. In the end it's just you. Alone

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

The necessity for harsh self-assessment and acceptance of death's inevitability wasn't the only thing I hated about that KeyStone place. No, those two troubling factors vied for supremacy 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 grey squirrels that were running around outside - just free, like idiots, giggling and touching each other in the early spring sunshine. The triumph of these little divas over our indigenous, noble, red, British squirrel had become a searing metaphor for my own subjugation at the hands of the anti-fuck-Yanks. To make my surrender complete I was obliged to sign this thing (opposite).

I wish I'd been photographed signing it like when a footballer joins a new team grinning and holding a pen. Or that I'd got an attorney to go through it with a fine tooth comb: `You're gonna have to remove that no bumming clause,' I imagine him saying. Most likely you're right curious as to why a fella who plainly enjoys how's yer father as much as I do would go on a special holiday to `sex'camp' (which is a misleading title as the main thrust of their creed is `no fucking'). The short answer is I was forced. The long answer is this . . .

Customer Reviews

One of my favourite reads of last year.
Russell Brand has lived a life, there can be no doubting that. He has been brave enough to publish some of the most personal of experiences which in itself I believe deserves recognition. I don't think I could ever bare my soul in the way Russell has, let alone make it half as entertaining as he has here. I read this through, cover to cover in one read. Some parts had me in tears and some in hysterics. He has a fascinating way with words and a style which is rarely seen in mainstream writing today.
I suppose as a big fan of Russell's, I am bound by some unwritten law...(it's probably written somewhere) to be full of praise for his autobiography and though I'll admit that is the case I feel it is most deserved. The only minor criticism is that the ending feels slightly neglected and lacks the passion entwined within the other 330 pages. Having said that, the last paragraph is superb and almost perfectly encapsulates Russell's rather stormy rise to fame, so superb in fact that it sent a shiver down my spine (in a good way).
I can't say how non-fans (what a rather horribly obscure term) will react to the book. However judging by some of the harsh comments on here (which I don't quite understand, it seems some reviewers decided to use the review section to post their views on the man himself, other than his writing) I get the feeling that some people didn't actually understand (for lack of a better word) the man. Perhaps the interview with Dawn French would be a better place to start.
I've reviewed this as an autobiography and I think it does a brilliant job at being exactly that: an autobiography.

Very Honest
I've had MBW for sometime (got it last Xmas) and finally got round to reading it. I found it to be a very good honest autobiography that gives a real insight into what makes Russell Brand tick. I loved the humour throughout and cringed at some of his mistakes in life in terms of career decisions and drug addiction. Overall you understand how performing is his passion and ultimately his saviour.

Humility to follow?
I thought Booky Wook started promisingly enough, and I was prepared to reassess him. But by mid-point I began to tire of Brand's self-indulgence; and by the end, I was well and truly sick of the guy's self-importance and indulged skew on life. So much so, that the scales of his celebrity removed themselves, leaving the adolescent rantings of a prose-stuffed student, who mistakes chemical stimulation and anti-social selfish behaviour for truth, enlightenment and (sigh...) rebellion.

Whilst the man is indeed in possession of talent, should be rewarded for writing his own autobiography in these ghost-written times; and is sharply amusing in much of his self-deprecation, there's still enough of his post-addiction self-obsession on tap to ensure he keeps trying for the cake whilst also scoffing huge chunks. I so much wanted him to drop the act and get humble, and that desire kept me reading; but it never comes, and the Brand of rock and roll humour eventually wanes.

Unless you didn't know (or had failed to grasp the appeal of his USP) Brand almost killed himself becoming addicted to drugs'n'booze'n'sex whilst looking for proof that he was a golden (intellectual) child who'd criminally remained misunderstood by the rest of the world; and he alienated just about everyone as he behaved so horrendously with friends, relatives, work colleagues and as many women and prostitutes he could lay his dirty sticky fingers on.

However, now that he's clean, the only difference seems to be that he's swapped the safety harness of self-induced numbness - the one that stopped him from seeing the errors of his own ways - for the protection of celebrity and riches, and the bulletproof delusion he clings to concerning the myth of the troubled artist.

Brand's hero, Morrissey, might have elevated the aesthetics and deprivation of poverty into the eyeline of so many of us 70s children - but at the end of the day, Mozza lives in a mansion in LA. Brand on the other hand continues to slag off the shallow, hollow rattle of our popular culture, yet makes shed loads of cash off trash like Big Brother; yearns for spiritual salvation for us all, yet earns his money swearing and running off his potty mouth on telly, like it's cool and edgy.

Brand's inner life is a real shame... in so many ways.