Russell Brand

How I Escaped My Certain Fate
by Stewart Lee
Published 18 Aug 2010

And they have experts on – sociologists, psychologists, psychiatrists – and they provide expert insight into and expert analysis of the phenomena of some twats in a place. And this programme’s hosted by Russell Brand. And what it meant when the bad racism happened, it meant that Russell Brand was contractually obliged to look meaningfully into the camera, making a serious face, and condemn racism in the strongest terms possible, whilst dressed as a cartoon pirate, before going back to his ongoing life’s work of thinking up cutesy, diminutive Mr Men names for his own penis. Mr Winky. Mr Dinky. Mr Dingle-donky-dinkywinky-wooky-woo-wa-ner. And the way that Russell Brand thinks up cutesy, diminutive Mr Men names for his own penis makes him sound like a child molester who is trying to convince himself to allow himself to molest himself.

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Martin Luther King said, ‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character,’ Martin Luther King. And when Russell Brand saw racism in his place of work, Big Brother, Russell Brand said, ‘Oooh, there’s been some bad racism and stuff going down today and no mistake, my liege. It’s made Mr Winky go right small, it has. Oh yes it has, oh yeah. And my ball-bag, my old ball-bag, has only gone up my bum. Here’s H from Steps.’* * Russell Brand didn’t actually say this. He said, ‘Racism, it’s such a wank thing, innit? It’s such a pain in the arse that someone would go around being racist.

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Maybe I should have used me own name for some things, and kept Johnny as a character. But I didn’t. And it’s too late now.’ Esquire magazine, December 2004 V: An Improvised Discussion about Russell Brand on Big Brother’s Little Brother This is an interrogation/interview that Johnny Vegas and I improvised from areas of conversation that I had suggested to him previously, included as an extra on the 41st Best Stand-Up Ever DVD, in order not to misrepresent Russell Brand, whom I had misquoted, knowingly, during the show itself. I maintained that I had no obligation to represent Brand’s behaviour accurately as what I was doing was a ‘meta-discussion’.

Sarah Millican--The Queen of Comedy
by Tina Campanella
Published 14 Apr 2017

It is a huge venue, comprising of nine performance spaces, three bars, a restaurant, nightclub and a beer garden, and is most famous for its in-house late night comedy line-up show, Late N’ Live – where ‘anything can, and invariably does happen’. Funny, outrageous, and more than a bit sweary, Sarah’s brand of comedy must have fitted seamlessly into the line-up. Many a household name has cut their teeth appearing on the Late N’ Live stage. Tim Minchin, Russell Brand, Rhona Cameron, Tommy Tierney – the list of its comedy pedigree is endless and, as a result, the So You Think You’re Funny competition is widely known as the most influential of its kind in the UK. For the 2005 competition, Bill Bailey was the MC. So when Sarah walked out on stage to give her eight-minute set it was him who announced her name.

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Ian Hislop leaned over conspiratorially and told her in a slightly condescending manner: ‘The main thing is, don’t go to the toilet in the middle of the show…’ Sarah was unfazed. She pointed to her chair and shot back: ‘But can I do it here though?’ The audience chuckled, as Ian began to tell a story about one infamous panellist who had left the studio during filming – to go to the toilet. ‘We had Russell Brand on…’ ‘…Never mind,’ Sarah cut in, making the crowd laugh once more. Next, they discussed the police force’s response to burglary and once again Sarah had a tale to tell. She’d had the unpleasant experience of being burgled and told the rest of the panel that at the time she couldn’t get an officer to come and take her statement.

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Despite this, the show is very ‘laddish’ in its content, with its presenters often boasting about their heavy drinking and nighttime exploits. Interviews with male guests are usually conducted with a healthy dose of sexual innuendo – something Sarah is an expert at. In 2010, the women interviewed lothario Russell Brand. Denise Welch welcomed him by lifting up her top to reveal a corset emblazoned with his favourite football team’s logo. Then Carol McGiffin told him that after reading his autobiography – which graphically reveals the extent of his sexual conquests – she had fantasised so much about him that she actually believed they had ‘done it’.

Content Provider: Selected Short Prose Pieces, 2011–2016
by Stewart Lee
Published 1 Aug 2016

Then Lady P, the Hackney grandmother who swore at rioters last August, jumped from a nearby window using a Happy Shopper bag as a parachute, the climax of an ill-disciplined but exuberant event that avoided all the usual opening-ceremony clichés in favour of opaque nostalgia and endearing have-a-go theatrics. The closing ceremony was no less impressive, featuring, as it did, TV comedian Russell Brand, who used to buy drugs in the area. “I got all me smack round here,” he chirped, “and now look. A dead cat. This place has gone up in the world and no bleedin’ mistake, your lordships. Citius, altius, fortius and such like!” Who can forget the hilarious song that Brand then improvised himself on the spot?

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Who can forget the hilarious song that Brand then improvised himself on the spot? “Dead catty-watty. Catty-watty woo. Catty-wat, Wittgenstein, big stinky poo!” After Brand’s wilderness years in America, and the whole Sachsgate scandal, we all realised finally that he was a national treasure, and forgave him as one. Indeed, the very public rehabilitation of Russell Brand may yet prove to be the most enduring and valuable legacy of the whole decomposing cat. But now the cat is gone and the spontaneous street party that has been raging in the road this month has abated. One of the students five doors down stumbled out the morning after the final night of celebration, in a dirty nightie emblazoned with an image of the decomposing cat.

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(Hamlet, Act III, Scene ii) Elsewhere in the message’s nine words, Brooks brilliantly and economically evokes the idea of the uncontrolled emotion Cameron’s egalitarian political vision inspires in her: “I cried twice.” Twice! Brooks cried twice. The weeping did not begin and then eventually subside, like the snotty bawling of a young foolish girl attending a Russell Brand gig or officiating the back-garden shoe-box funeral of a beloved hamster. No. The weeping began, was contained by sheer force of will, and then the undeniable power of Cameron’s crazy utopian dream of Privilege for All overcame Brooks a second time, like an enormous yes. Make no mistake, Brooks seems to say, this was not some easily won epiphany, like the gut animal reaction to cheap music or cheap perfume, but the unwanted outcome of a struggle for self-control that failed, against Brooks’s will, and then failed again.

Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons From Modern Life
by David Mitchell
Published 4 Nov 2014

Being cheerful or optimistic just allowed others to say you didn’t realise how bad things were – and to imply that therefore you, as one who’d got off lightly, were part of the problem, that you were on the wrong side of the casino-banker/thankless-nurse national divide. As a result, this new era has been enormously and relentlessly recriminatory and angry. What started off as righteous fury at the investment banker community for their incompetence and amorality has spread to almost every aspect of public life. First, Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross’s misjudged Radio 2 broadcast invoked a storm of rage, directed not just at them but against all broadcasters and celebrities. Then MPs were pilloried for fiddling their expenses in a way that didn’t just lead us to tweak how parliamentarians were financed, but to dispute the honesty of our entire political class.

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It wasn’t Jeremy Clarkson reading out the menu from a Chinese restaurant in a funny voice, or Frankie Boyle’s 10 best jokes about the Queen’s genitals, or even a repeat of Diana’s funeral with an added laugh track. No, it was a new low. It was Hazel Blears, the communities secretary, eliciting a round of applause on Any Questions for suggesting that Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand should pay the BBC’s “Sachsgate” Ofcom fine. The rest of the panel bravely agreed with her. “Well, you would be offended by that!” you may be thinking. “You work in television and radio. I don’t suppose you like the idea of having to foot the bill if something you say appals the nation!” That’s true, but we live in the era of the subjective offendee and my complaint is just as valid as those made about jokes involving dead dogs by viewers who say their dog has recently died.

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It went down well at the time but the next day Newt Gingrich seemed unamused: “What De Niro said last night was inexcusable and the president should apologise for him. It was … beyond the pale and he should be ashamed of himself.” That’s a tough response. Gingrich reckons that De Niro’s remark is so offensive that he can’t even apologise for it himself. The apology has to come from the head of state. Not even Russell Brand ever went so far that Her Majesty was called upon publicly to atone. So I doubt that De Niro’s half-hearted attempt to say sorry will have quite slaked Newt’s thirst for contrition: “My remarks, although spoken with satirical jest, were not meant to offend or embarrass anyone – especially the first lady,” the actor said.

A Book for Her
by Bridget Christie
Published 1 Jul 2015

It could be that, or it could just be that they have sweaty testicles. But even if that’s true, and men just want to be comfortable, I can’t imagine a woman spreading herself out like that. No matter how sweaty her testicles were.fn2 Clammy scrotums aside, it’s a fact that men do own space better than women. They use their arms, they stretch out their legs. Russell Brand is the maestro of dominating space. Watch him on any chat show, or on Newsnight, or Question Time, or live onstage, and he takes up as much space as is humanly possible. He spreads himself out like some sort of a pirate octopus. I don’t know if Russell is even aware of what he’s doing, but whether he is or he isn’t, he is consciously or subconsciously ‘dominating space’.

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A male comedian, for example, simply has to say publicly, ‘I don’t think we should laugh at women being raped or killed by their partners,’ and he is pretty much given the run of the UN. And as much pussy as he wants. When Jimmy Somerville from Bronski Beat, the current Head of Women, dies, perhaps Russell Brand can take over? Brand’s a feminist now, because he had a relationship with a woman he thought was brilliant, which made him think that there might be other brilliant women out there as well and that he should treat women better, which is great. It’s really encouraging that more men are getting involved in trying to tackle issues that they are the root cause of.

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You don’t even represent yourself, although you did for a few years when you were between agents, so just concentrate on farts and cheese for this first book and don’t worry about all the stuff you’ve left out and issues that deserve their own chapters.’ ‘So I can’t win then?’ I asked my editor. ‘No, you literally can’t,’ she said. ‘Just go on holiday when the book comes out and don’t read anything.’ ‘Oh, OK,’ I said. ‘Do you say that to everyone?’ ‘No. Just to you and Russell Brand,’ she said. The cheese roll takes place every year on the late May bank holiday in Gloucester, where I grew up. I have Irish Catholic parents and I’m the youngest of nine children. I didn’t choose Catholicism, by the way, I inherited it, as I said, along with alcoholism, two webbed toes on my right foot, and a large collection of Pope memorabilia, all of which I have already passed on to my son.

Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech
by Geoffrey Cain
Published 15 Mar 2020

one million retweets: Caspar Llewellyn Smith, “Ellen DeGeneres’ Oscar Selfie Beats Obama Retweet Record on Twitter,” The Guardian, March 2, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/​film/​2014/​mar/​03/​ellen-degeneres-selfie-retweet-obama. “It’s not like you can”: Russell Brand. “Truth Behind Oscar Selfie: Russell Brand The Trews (E07),” posted by YouTube user Russell Brand on March 7, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=F78Bs9dwQZ0. three million retweets: Eli Langer, “Ellen’s Viral Selfie Leads to $3 Million Donation,” CNBC, March 4, 2014, https://www.cnbc.com/​2014/​03/​04/​ellens-viral-selfie-leads-to-3-million-donation.html.

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Already drowning out talk about whether 12 Years a Slave was better than Dallas Buyers Club, or who had the gala’s most stunning dress, was this little simple selfie. Within an hour, the selfie had more than one million retweets. * * * — “IT’S NOT LIKE YOU can just sell products,” said the British comedian Russell Brand the next morning, holding up the UK’s biggest newspapers, many of the front pages dominated by the Oscars selfie. “You need to sell the entire context for products. You need to sell the concept of glamour….All of it creates a frequency of consciousness that’s constantly spellbinding you in your state where a Galaxy phone seems like a good idea.”

Culture & Empire: Digital Revolution
by Pieter Hintjens
Published 11 Mar 2013

That conspiracies are real, not mythological, and that theories about crimes are not silly nonsense, they are an essential tool for establishing the truth. And, most dramatically, that the entire political establishment, left and right alike, our whole democratic system, is illegitimate. Listen to Russel Brand speaking to the BBC's Jeremy Paxman: Brand: It's not that I'm not voting out of apathy. I'm not voting out of absolute indifference and weariness and exhaustion from the lies, treachery, deceit of the political class, that has been going on for generations now. And which has now reached fever pitch where you have a disenfranchised, disillusioned, despondent underclass that are not being represented by that political system, so voting for it is tacit complicity with that system and that's not something I'm offering up.

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Brand: Well I think what it won't be like is a huge disparity between rich and poor where 300 Americans have the same amount of wealth as the 85 million poorest Americans, where there is an exploited and underserved underclass that are being continually ignored, where welfare is slashed while Cameron and Osbourne go to court to defend the rights of bankers to continue receiving their bonuses. That's all I'm saying. It is easy to dismiss Russel Brand as a cheap celebrity seeking fame by saying dangerous things. He dresses up like a Hollywood Jesus and used to be famous for his sexual conquests and drug use. However he is articulate and precise in his accusations, and deals with his interviewers with such charming self-effacing brutality that he leaves them squirming in their seats.

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Environmental activists, who have always seen the Narrative and its glorification of extraction economies, war, and consumption, as their biggest problem and the main threat to human survival. The twenty-somethings, who are naturally distrustful of anything authority says, and have historically always embraced revolutionary principles, at least until their first job and car loan. Celebrities like Russel Brand, who need fresh material to stay relevant, so seek out new thought trends and emerging truths. Evangelists in any field depend on the latest and greatest to share with their followers. Among the pioneers and early adopters I also have to include the billions of people around the world who have always seen the West as a corrupt police state, and westerners as naive, complicit, and intellectually lazy.

March of the Lemmings: Brexit in Print and Performance 2016–2019
by Stewart Lee
Published 2 Sep 2019

Morrisseysmiff Stewart, if you want to know how to write a funny and pointed article read ANYTHING by Marina Hyde … JohhnyV321 Possibly the worst and most bizarre article I’ve ever read. Mikemills2016 I think he’s trying to be funny – ‘edgy’: the entire piece sounds like Lee’s hero and mentor, Russell Brand. Ronniestorrs What an evil article. A pompous and self satisfied diatribe against one of the few honest and honourable members of Parliament. JRM certainly has the lefty illiberal Corbynista worried. What an eye opener this article has proven to be! It has brought the nasty party and remoaner rats swarming out of their sewers into the light of day!

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[makes a sudden jarring shift into a friendly, chatty, observational-comedy stand-up persona] But, hey, the world’s gone mad, hasn’t it? Yes. D’you know what, I blame – I blame the young people, by which I mean people under forty, and I hope there’s none in.138 ‘I’m under forty. I’m disillusioned. I like Russell Brand, I didn’t vote, yeah. Oh no, I’ve got no future now. Never mind, I’ve got this phone.’ STEW MIMES A YOUNG PERSON TAPPING THEIR PHONE FOR ABOUT SIX MINUTES, WORKING WAVES OF LAUGHTER THAT GROW, SUBSIDE, THEN RECONFIGURE, UNTIL THE ACTIONS HE IS PERFORMING NO LONGER BEAR ANY RELATIONSHIP TO PHONE USE AND HAVE BECOME A MEANINGLESS, REPETITIVE, RITUAL DANCE.

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The likes of Toby Young, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Clarkson have a professional interest in not doing so, and they continue to deny that a joke is ever anything more than just a joke. 138 The initial thrust of this bit survived from the 2015–16 Room with a Stew tour and was too bulky to fit into its intended place in series four of Comedy Vehicle, becoming the first bankable building block of Content Provider. It didn’t make quite as much sense now, as it suddenly seemed a long time since the days when Labour leader Ed Miliband was seeking the endorsement of the newly politicised Russell Brand, who was running around advising people not to vote as there was no point. 139 This bit grew and grew, until I could dance around in a frenzy of pretended phone-screen tapping for minutes on end, surfing the waves of baffled hysteria. A clip of this section, shorn of the spoken-word material either side that explains it, has appeared on the Internet, courtesy of some alt-right nostalgist, as an example of how bad ‘modern’ comedy is, and how much better Dad’s Army, Bernard Manning and Max Miller were.

How Not to Grow Up: A Coming of Age Memoir. Sort Of.
by Richard Herring
Published 5 May 2010

Me and my friends Suze and Jenny –’ Suze and Jenny were shyer than Sarah, but waved as they were introduced ‘– are going off for a drink at a bar round the corner. D’ya wanna come?’ She smiled at me seductively, giving off an air of absolute certainty that I would want to do exactly that. She was right to be certain. This might be the kind of thing that Russell Brand experiences on an hourly basis, but it doesn’t happen to me very often. Usually, post-gig, I end up talking to a 35-year-old man with a beard in an anorak about a sketch that I have forgotten writing from some 1992 radio show that I have forgotten I appeared in. Given my other hotel-based Lusty Asians option, I didn’t have to think twice.

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she screeched like a banshee. ‘Surely there’s been some kind of administrative error? What have you even done this year that’s been funny? I mean deliberately funny.’ ‘I know, it does seem odd.’ ‘I can think of a hundred comedians who deserve that more than you. Proper comedians off the telly. Like Harry Hill, Russell Brand, Alan Carr, The Mighty Boosh…’ ‘Yeah, all right…’ ‘What about French and Saunders or Harry Enfield? Or Stewart Lee – he’s miles better than you.’ ‘That’s below the belt.’ ‘Best comedian? You? That’s the funniest thing you’ve ever said. You deserve the award for that alone.’ ‘Yeah, I know.

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I didn’t know what I had done to deserve this nod, or who had chosen me, and was aware that this wasn’t exactly one of the most prestigious awards ceremonies in the world (in fact, Arena magazine was to go out of business just two years later). But in all honesty I didn’t care about that. I felt delighted and validated to have had this unexpected nod. I was realistic about it. I knew that I couldn’t win. Like Emma, I knew that someone like Ricky Gervais or Russell Brand would get the trophy, but I was pleased to be invited along for the party and cancelled a couple of gigs so I could go. They were nice gigs – one of them was going to be a free one, in a museum – but I don’t get nominated for awards every day of the year, and I knew there would be celebrities and supermodels at the event, so I binned the gigs, lured away by the empty glamour of showbusiness.

Inequality and the 1%
by Danny Dorling
Published 6 Oct 2014

Centre-right parties perform this task, while other parties promote policies that serve the interests of those not that far below the elite. The researchers conclude: ‘in spite of these correlations, we are not able to explain the circumstances that brought developed societies to the low democratic standards that they are suffering.’86 Others are less circumspect. As the comedian Russell Brand put it in May 2013, when it comes to the UK Houses of Parliament, ‘The whole joint is a deeply encoded temple of hegemonic power.’87 In other words, the UK parliament’s main function today is not to represent the people, but to preserve the power of a few. But neither Brand nor rigorous social scientists can explain how it got to be that way, and why the 1 per cent did not gain a similar degree of control over the political process in other affluent nations.

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Flinders, ‘Down and Out in Bloemfontein’, OUP Blog, 8 January 2014, at blog.oup.com. 85. Personal correspondence, John Hague, Whittlesey, Peterborough, 29 May 2013. 86. P. Torija, ‘Do Politicians Serve the One Percent? Evidence in OECD Countries’, Working Paper, Department of International Politics, City University, London, 2013, p.18, at ideas.repec.org. 87. R. Brand, ‘Russell Brand on Parliament’, Guardian, 24 May 2013. 88. R. O’Farrell, ‘Irish Inequality During the 20th Century’, Progressive Economy Blog, 23 September 2010, at progressive-economy.ie. 89. The tax is 0.18 per cent a year on the value of property below €1 million and 0.25 per cent on the portion of any value above that: Ryan, N.

Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered
by Austin Kleon
Published 6 Mar 2014

If you’re having a hard time balancing the two, just set a timer for 30 minutes. Once the timer goes off, kick yourself off the Internet and get back to work. “One day at a time. It sounds so simple. It actually is simple but it isn’t easy: It requires incredible support and fastidious structuring.” —Russell Brand “Make no mistake: This is not your diary. You are not letting it all hang out. You are picking and choosing every single word.” —Dani Shapiro Always remember that anything you post to the Internet has now become public. “The Internet is a copy machine,” writes author Kevin Kelly.

My Shit Life So Far
by Frankie Boyle
Published 30 Sep 2009

It’s pretty much a shot-for-shot remake of The Poseidon Adventure, but with mice. 17. What’s the punch line to your favourite-ever joke? ‘That’s the last time I do any experiments on…GIANT CRAB ISLAND!!!’ It was around this time that the whole Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand debacle was hitting the news, and I got dragged into it by a variety of idiots. Russell Brand is actually one of my favourite celebrities. The manner of his death will give Michael Hutchence back his dignity. I think that whole ‘debate’ was just a distraction from the banking crisis, the war and the looming recession. It was something everybody could have an opinion about that we all knew didn’t actually matter in the real world, where things had just started to look pretty scary.

The Life and Loves of a He Devil: A Memoir
by Graham Norton
Published 22 Oct 2014

He is extremely gifted at what he does, which is why I took no pleasure at all in what happened next. Luck is a factor in any career, be it good or bad. It turned out that Jonathan Ross’s very bad luck would become my good fortune. Of course you may be reading this and thinking to yourself that what happened to Jonathan was nothing to do with luck, that the prank calls he and Russell Brand made to the actor Andrew Sachs that led to his suspension were simply an error of judgement. Of course you’d be right, but when you are working at the risqué edge of comedy that Jonathan and Russell inhabit, it is very important to be surrounded by people who remind you of the line and pull you back.

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The bad language alone would heave needed to be cleared, never mind the actual content. In the end, what caused Jonathan’s downfall was the fact that it was a quiet news time between Obama’s election and his inauguration; and, most of all, his much-publicised £18-million-pound deal with the BBC. The artificially inflated sense of outrage forced the BBC to act. Russell Brand had already resigned, leaving Jonathan to be the fall guy. The punishment might have been a twelve-week suspension but after that it was inevitable the corporation and Jonathan would part ways. I think every other comic and presenter working for the BBC looked on with a deep sense of ‘There but for the grace of God …’ It wasn’t long till the ripples of the controversy reached my career.

Citation Needed: The Best of Wikipedia's Worst Writing
by Conor Lastowka and Josh Fruhlinger
Published 14 Oct 2011

According to Adrian Tame of the Sunday Herald Sun, Mellor retired after that experience, “disillusioned and broken-hearted,” but with his dignity and manhood intact. Yes, most of the spectators certainly walked away from this event thinking, “That guy who just spent the past five hours with a ferret in his pants sure kept his dignity intact.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferret_legging Shock jock October 18 2008: (UK) BBC radio 2 host Russell Brand was fired for calling Fawlty Tower’s Andrew Sachs house and leaving an answering machine message claiming that he had had sex with his granddaughter (in the derogatory sense) and that he should kill himself as a result. In fact, Brand had actually had sex with Sachs’s granddaughter in a positive, supportive sense, which Sachs ought to have felt pretty good about.

The Age of Stagnation: Why Perpetual Growth Is Unattainable and the Global Economy Is in Peril
by Satyajit Das
Published 9 Feb 2016

Higher interest rates slow the economy and trigger financial crises, setting off a new round of the cycle. If the economy does not respond to expansionary policies, then there is pressure for additional stimuli, as policymakers seek to maintain their aura of economic control. There may be no alternative to monetary morphine. As celebrity and former drug addict Russell Brand put it: “The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of day with some purchased relief.”23 The position of the global economy is akin to a black hole, from which gravity prevents anything, including light, escaping. Excessive levels of debt and deep-seated fundamental imbalances now prevent escape from stagnation or worse.

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Finance, 23 January 2013. http://au.pfinance.yahoo.com/our-experts/michael-pascoe/article/-/15932231/the-rba-guide-to-housing-prices/. 21 See “William White: Central Banking…Not a Science,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCx-lKdRrPs. 22 A. P. Chekhov, trans. Julius West, The Cherry Orchard (1904) 1916. www.eldritchpress.org/ac/chorch.htm. 23 Russell Brand, “For Amy,” 24 July 2011. www.russellbrand.com/for-amy/. 4. The End of Growth 1 Arthur Miller, “The Year It Came Apart,” New York Magazine, vol. 8, no. 1 (30 December 1974—6 January 1975), p. 30. 2 See Reuters, “China's GDP Is ‘Man-made,’ Unreliable: Top Leader,” 6 December 2010. www.reuters.com/article/2010/12/06/us-china-economy-wikileaks-idUSTRE6B527D20101206. 3 Robert F.

Sex Power Money
by Sara Pascoe
Published 26 Aug 2019

‘It’s about how when men look at women, they imagine how they’d fuck them.’ ‘That’s not true,’ I insisted, because I absolutely believed that. How could that be true, how could men function like that? I said only very poorly men who needed professional help could feel that way. Men like Russell Brand, or Russell Brand. I cried for my friend, I felt so sorry for her. She had such an awful, broken boyfriend. She told me Geoff had said – HIS NAME WAS GEOFF, why are all Geoffs perverts? – that when he walked down the street, every woman he passed, every woman he saw on the tube or who served him in the shops, he would get images, snapshots of them being fucked; cocks in their mouths, cum on their faces.

Hemingway Didn't Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations
by Garson O'Toole
Published 1 Apr 2017

Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans, Love It, Don’t Leave It: 26 Ways to Get What You Want at Work (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2003), 398, https://goo.gl/biAIXa. 5. Kevin Kruse, “Top 100 Inspirational Quotes,” Forbes, May 28, 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2013/05/28/inspirational-quotes/3/. VENTRILOQUY The comedian Russell Brand has written two bestselling autobiographies, My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up (2007) and Booky Wook 2: This Time It’s Personal (2010). The sequel bears a mistaken epigraph on its opening page:1 Credit: Booky Wook 2/HarperCollins Brand may have seen a user-generated post on the website Goodreads, which attributed the quotation to Franz Kafka, and which matches the one in Booky Wook 2: This Time It’s Personal.2 However, QI discovered that the quote wasn’t written by Kafka at all, but by another famous author in the late twentieth century.

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Those are my words struggling to define the impression Kafka’s example made on me! And it’s being attributed worldwide to Kafka. Notes: Many thanks to Nathaniel Tan, whose inquiry gave impetus to QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. Thanks also to the Project Wombat group. In addition, many thanks to Anne Rice for her response. 1. Russell Brand, Booky Wook 2: This Time It’s Personal (London: HarperCollins, 2010), 1. 2. “Franz Kafka > Quotes > Quotable Quote,” Goodreads, accessed November 8, 2013, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/201816-don-t-bend-don-t-water-it-down-don-t-try-to-make. 3. Anne Rice, foreword to The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories, by Franz Kafka (New York: Schocken, 1995), 1–3.

Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet―and Why We're Following
by Gabrielle Bluestone
Published 5 Apr 2021

(The damning allegations in the docudrama even prompted Facebook to issue a rare four-page statement with subheadings like “Facebook builds its products to create value, not to be addictive” and “You are not the product.”146) At least the warning message in the Netflix documentary could be viewed without logging on to a social media platform. In a recent video called “Stop Being Your Phone’s Slave,”147 the actor-cum-activist Russell Brand tackled the issue, though he may have perhaps defeated the purpose by disseminating it across his verified Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter accounts. “Did you know that 69 percent of people check their phone as soon as they wake up? And the only way that I can’t do that is by charging my phone in another room.

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Book. 145.Kevin Roose, "Do Not Disturb: How I Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain," New York Times, February 23, 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/business/cell-phone-addiction.html. 146.Chris Lindahl, "Facebook Slams the Social Dilemma as Sensationalist, Says Netflix Doc Unfairly Scapegoats Platform," IndieWire, October 3, 2020, www.indiewire.com/2020/10/facebook-response-the-social-dilemma-1234590361/. 147.Russell Brand, "Stop Being Your Phone’s Slave!" YouTube video, September 19, 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yjixt4eKSas. 148.Nir Eyal, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. Editor: Ryan Hoover. (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2014). Book. 149.Ibid. 150.Ibid. 151.Ibid. 152.Albert Bandura, Social Learning Theory (New York: General Learning Press, 1977).

The Life of a Song: The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World’s Best-Loved Songs
by David Cheal and Jan Dalley
Published 20 Sep 2017

In ‘Roar’, ‘It’s the Hard Knock Life’ leads a medley of empowerment references. Helen Reddy’s feminist anthem ‘I Am Woman’ (1972) is alluded to in the title (‘I am woman, hear me roar’). Survivor’s Rocky theme tune ‘Eye of the Tiger’ is quoted in the lyrics. The context is Perry’s divorce from comedian Russell Brand. Co-written with her friend, singer-songwriter Bonnie McKee, ‘Roar’ gives a Californian spin to Annie’s tale of hard-won social mobility. Perry celebrates going ‘from zero to my own hero’, a dazzling act of personal validation. It’s like orphan Annie graduating from the school of hard knocks, moving to LA and swapping Sandy the dog for a personal trainer.

The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory
by John Seabrook
Published 4 Oct 2015

I was just so relieved.” “Teenage Dream,” the second single from the album of the same name, went to number one and spent two weeks on top. After that breakthrough in 2010, McKee went on to help Perry write lyrics to five more huge hits, including her best song, “Wide Awake,” written after her short marriage to Russell Brand dissolved. McKee also collaborated on “Dynamite,” with Taio Cruz, and on “Hold It Against Me,” with Britney Spears, both smashes. But McKee still hadn’t realized her own teenage dream. Now, thanks to Dr. Luke, McKee was getting that illusive second chance. He had signed her to Kemosabe, his label, as an artist, and a Bonnie McKee album was forthcoming.

…

A DREAM TEAM WROTE and produced the second Katy Perry album, Teenage Dream, including Benny Blanco (now living back in New York and well launched on a major hit-making career of his own), as well as Stargate, Ester Dean, and Tricky Stewart. “Firework,” the smash ballad from the album, was a classic Stargate-Dean collaboration. It had the ectomorphs’ signature rise in the pre, that builds toward Ester’s hook. Boom boom boom Even brighter than the moon moon moon. The lyrical concept came from Perry herself. Russell Brand had pointed out to her the great passage in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road in which the narrator expresses his admiration for people like Neal Cassady who “burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars,” and Perry turned it into an inspirational pop ballad.

Help
by Simon Amstell
Published 15 Jan 2017

I was aware that most actors would be thinking, I’d love to have the opportunity to do something so challenging. And I thought, Who the hell can be bothered with this? I felt a bit better recently – I’d just finished writing a film and I thought, OK, we’re OK – what’s better than a film? And then my friend Russell Brand decided to start a revolution. I didn’t know that was an option. We were both trained clowns, and then he goes, ‘Yeah, I enjoy this clown work but I think I’m probably also Gandhi. What are you up to, Simon?’ ‘Oh, I’ve just finished writing a film.’ ‘Oh, that’s good. I’m trying to save the world from economic and ecological disaster.

Big Capital: Who Is London For?
by Anna Minton
Published 31 May 2017

This was followed by a two-week occupation of an empty and boarded-up block of flats on the Carpenters Estate, subject to similar contentious estate regeneration proposals as those going on in Southwark and Lambeth. The huge success of the Carpenters Estate occupation, with widespread media coverage and the involvement of comedian Russell Brand, saw the council backtrack on the eviction of the mums. Robin Wales was forced to issue a qualified apology, writing in the Guardian that ‘although the decision was the right one, the way … the council initially dealt with the foyer families was unacceptable, and for that I apologise’.3 All the twenty-nine mums were rehoused in Newham, but Robin Wales clearly hadn’t forgiven them; he lost his temper and had to be physically restrained when they protested at the mayor’s summer show, an incident which was filmed and has had tens of thousands of hits on YouTube, showing a red-faced Robin Wales being held back while shouting at Jasmine.4 Following its investigation of a complaint, the council’s standards advisory council found that Wales had breached the council’s code of conduct by not treating a member of the public with respect.5 Since the campaign began, Focus E15 has gone from strength to strength: its members man their weekly stall, support new campaigns and speak at events across London and abroad.

Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing: Life, Death and the Thrill of the Catch
by Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse
Published 29 May 2019

Strangers not a few make the long and trackless pilgrimage to the wild glens where, almost within shouting distance of one another, the triple streams leaving the bosom of this great mother of waters, head for such different worlds. You can boil all this down to the sentence: ‘The Wye has a source.’ I thought it might have some tips on where the nicest bits were, but it doesn’t, it’s just 189 pages full of what Russell Brand would sound like if he was an Edwardian. But it’s a reminder that it’s actually quite hard to write about a river. It is, after all, just some water in a mud chute. Rivers were made to be stood in front of and admired with the eyes and absorbed by the soul. You can’t do them justice with words.

Tails I Lose: The Compulsive Gambler Who Lost His Shirt for Good
by Justyn Rees
Published 25 Jun 2014

That would lead me to conclude that there were environmental circumstances that also contributed. I will let you, the reader, make up your own mind about some of the things that may have triggered my addiction. One thing I am convinced of is that addictions of all types usually cover over an underlying emotional issue. Russell Brand, in an article he wrote in the Spectator magazine, makes the point that: “Drugs and alcohol are not my problem – reality is my problem. Drugs and alcohol are my solution. I look to drugs and booze to fill up a hole in me.” Unlike drug and alcohol addictions, gambling is progressive rather than chemical.

How Democracy Ends
by David Runciman
Published 9 May 2018

The internet certainly has room for multiple different visions of the good life to co-exist. Nozick’s list would need to be updated for the twenty-first century (here’s mine, though really it could be anyone’s): ‘Rihanna, Ai Weiwei, Margaret Atwood, Travis Kalanick, Maria Sharapova, PSY, Janet Yellen, Russell Brand, Larry David, J. K. Rowling, Pope Francis, Lena Dunham, Mohammed al-Zawahiri, Kid Rock, etc., etc.’ In fact, what’s most dated about Nozick’s litany of names (apart from the fact that they are almost all men) is the assumption that someone needs to be famous to have a vision of the good life we can recognise.

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
by Amanda Montell
Published 14 Jun 2021

As soon as she turned eighteen, Tasha moved to Los Angeles, one of 3HO’s home bases, and for eight years, she dedicated her entire life—all her time and money—to the group. After a series of exhaustive trainings, she became a full-time Kundalini yoga instructor and, within months, was attracting big-name, spiritually curious celebrities to her Malibu classes: Demi Moore, Russell Brand, Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody. Even if they didn’t become full-time followers, their attendance was good PR for 3HO. Tasha’s swamis (teachers) praised her for raking in the dollars and allegiances of the rich, famous, and seeking. At the café, Tasha unsheathes her phone from an inky black clutch to show me old photos of her and Demi Moore, garbed in ghost-white short-shorts and turbans, twirling around a desert retreat, backdropped by Joshua trees.

Planes, Trains and Toilet Doors: 50 Places That Changed British Politics
by Matt Chorley
Published 8 Feb 2024

A third key figure also demurred from an on-the-record conversation: ‘I haven’t got much interest in getting into it I’m afraid.’ A fourth said: ‘I can’t. I just can’t.’ In the final fortnight before the 2015 election, the polls suggested that the Conservatives and Labour were neck and neck. The big event in the campaign calendar had been Ed Miliband’s decision to do an interview with piratical poseur Russell Brand, who had previously told his fans not to bother voting at all. During their fifteen-minute YouTube exchange in Brand’s kitchen, the comedian-turned-conspiracy theorist complained about ‘unelected powerful elites’, and Miliband insisted ‘It’s not about being edgy.’ This meeting of minds is what Labour spinners had been worried would be the reason why the 2015 campaign would be remembered.

Reaching for Utopia: Making Sense of an Age of Upheaval
by Jason Cowley
Published 15 Nov 2018

He was far from alone in misreading the political moment: social democrats across Europe believed that the financial crisis would enable their revival. As it turned out, nothing that Miliband did or said during the protracted election campaign – no boast about his toughness nor late-night tryst with Russell Brand – would change the people’s fundamental view that he was simply not up to the job of being prime minister. In the words of the political philosopher John Gray, it was as if Miliband had been ‘trying to lead a country that did not exist’. His legacy, however, was to shift Labour to the left and to change the rules by which the party elects its leader, opening the way for the takeover by the Corbynites.

Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World
by James Ball
Published 19 Jul 2023

In the US, a poll taken by YouGov as early as May 2020 found that 44 per cent of Republican voters believed Bill Gates was plotting to use Covid-19 as a pretext to plant tracking microchips in billions of people around the world. Only 26 per cent disagreed with the statement.67 The pandemic also provided many more avenues in conspiratorialism. Previously relatively mainstream figures like Russell Brand or Joe Rogan would promote Covid-19 conspiracies to their large followership, while celebrities including Jim Carrey, Lisa Bonet and tennis pro Novak Djokovic all received coverage for their refusal to take the Covid-19 vaccine. By July 2021, when the vaccine was a reality and adult Americans were being urged to get their free jab, a further YouGov survey found that 51 per cent of people who had refused the vaccine believed it contained a microchip.

Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity
by Douglas Rushkoff
Published 1 Mar 2016

“You are your own media company,” Oliver Luckett, founder of the first real social media talent and marketing agency, theAudience, explained to me when I pressed him on it. “One hundred percent. That is every single person’s goal in this.” Working with online celebrities from Ian Somerhalder and Steve Aoki to Russell Brand and Pitbull—people with multiple millions of followers and likes—Luckett uses a social data analysis platform to match his clients’ social networks with the right brands. So if 10 percent of a TV star’s million followers have also engaged with a particular shampoo or automobile brand on social media, Luckett is armed with data that can win his client a new social media endorsement.

Municipal Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Council Housing
by John Boughton
Published 14 May 2018

When the estate was sold to the American pension fund manager Westbrook Partners in 2014, residents faced an immediate 17 per cent rise on £600 monthly rents which, to that point, had been broadly equivalent to their social housing equivalents. They were warned to expect further increases – to around £2,400, deemed the market rate for the area. Powerful protests by the community – supported by local resident Russell Brand – eventually saw the estate purchased by Dolphin Living Ltd, a not-for-profit housing association committed to pegging rents to residents’ ability to pay. The Northwold Estate, also in Hackney, is a predominantly interwar LCC scheme – comprising 580 flats (around 140 purchased under Right to Buy) in five five-storey balcony-access blocks and one 1967 addition in similar form, housing around 1,700 people.

Unequal Britain: Equalities in Britain Since 1945
by Pat Thane
Published 18 Apr 2010

Such efforts have had only limited success, judging, for example, by the media discourse around the introduction of 2006 Regulations. Among all-too-many examples, a speaker on BBC Radio Four’s Today show on 28 October 2006 described ‘younger’ workers as generally ‘more enthusiastic and energetic’ than ‘older’ ones, despite much evidence to the contrary. Comedians such as Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross can ‘joke’ at the expense of older people as they no longer can, acceptably, against other minorities. When rock stars such as Mick Jagger, or actors such as Helen Mirren, aged in their mid-60s, are active, successful and not evidently conforming to any stereotype of ‘old age’, this is cause for surprise, rather than recognition that the same is true of many of their age group.

How to Own the World: A Plain English Guide to Thinking Globally and Investing Wisely
by Andrew Craig
Published 6 Sep 2015

No single individual could afford to invest enough or accumulate all of the skills needed to provide any of the things I’ve listed above, or create the microchip, fibre-optics or the smartphone. I genuinely don’t wish to be overly political here, and I am very happy to concede that an unattractive feature of stock market capitalism can be significant wealth inequality (more on this later), but I would ask any self-proclaimed anti-capitalist of the likes of Russell Brand (who writes in his latest book that stockmarkets are “bollocks” after admitting on the very same page that he knows nothing about them!) to think deeply about what has had to happen in the forests and paper mills of Finland, and in the shipping and trucking industries of Europe and about what has been spent on building a massive network of convenient retail outlets in this country just to get toilet paper into his home!

This Is Not Fame: A "From What I Re-Memoir"
by Doug Stanhope
Published 5 Dec 2017

Early in my career I was giving advice to an even younger comedian after an open mic. Joey Scazzola, a comedian just a little bit more experienced than me, pulled me aside and said, “Hey, don’t ever tell these kids what to do because all you’re doing is telling them how to be more like you.” That was the best advice I ever got. If a young Russell Brand had asked me for advice I would have told him to quit and buy an ice cream truck. Everybody has a different sense of humor, both audience and comedian. It makes me crazy when I hear someone say, “He’s not funny” without acknowledging personal preference. Even comedians do this. Even I do this.

Why We Get the Wrong Politicians
by Isabel Hardman
Published 14 Jun 2018

I joined the lobby – the group of journalists who work in and cover the day-to-day goings-on of Parliament – in 2011, and while I have met my share of politicians who are either too selfish or too stupid to deserve the honour of representing their constituents, I have largely become more disillusioned by the way the vast majority of decent, well-meaning types are ill-used by Parliament itself. So the next important question is whether Parliament turns good eggs into bad. Just take this exchange on the BBC’s Question Time in 2014 involving the left-wing populist comedian Russell Brand. A member of the audience confronted the comedian, telling him to ‘stand for Parliament. If you’re gonna campaign, then stand, OK? You have the media profile for it.’ Brand replied: ‘My problem would be, mate, I’d stand for Parliament but I’d be scared that I’d become one of them.’4 Brand clearly thinks that going into politics would force him to change in some way to become like other politicians.

The Nanny State Made Me: A Story of Britain and How to Save It
by Stuart Maconie
Published 5 Mar 2020

Also, we do allow programmes that are opinionated. But that would be an Analysis on Radio 4 perhaps, rather than the news bulletin at ten. We have to guarantee fair treatment, the right to reply … . That LBC model is working very well for them but we will always have to have balance within programmes.’ In the wake of the Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross scandal, when the nasty, unfunny phone-badgering of actor Andrew Sachs by two middle-aged ‘lads’ was wrongly broadcast, several high-ranking managers lost their jobs by ‘falling on their sword’. Subsequently, what felt very much like panicky changes were introduced. Nowadays, several highly paid individuals have to sit and listen to every pre-recorded programme that goes out for fear of offending some unspecified sensibilities somewhere rather than simply trust professional and dedicated producers and presenters to do their job diligently.

Making It in America: The Almost Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the U.S.A. (And How It Got That Way)
by Rachel Slade
Published 9 Jan 2024

(film), 65–66 Henry, John, 173 Higgins, Mike, 180 Hine, Lewis, 134, 195 Hoffa, Jimmy, 185 Hogs & Heifers, New York City, 87–89 hoodie/sweatshirt as an American icon, 140 brief history of, 132–40 case of Trayvon Martin and, 138–39 Champion adds the hood, 136 Champion brand, 135–36 evolving significance of, 137 Fetterman and, 139 first sweatshirt born, 135 Lemon and, 140 Macron and, 139–40, 140n manufacturing of, offshored, 140 “Million Hoodies March,” 139 “no hoodie” policies, 138 Rocky movies and, 136–37, 137n Russell brand, 135, 136 as symbol of subversion, 137–38 as workwear, 136 worn by union men and women, 138 Zelensky and, 139–40 Zuckerberg and, 138 “Horo Once More I Would Shout for Joy,” (Scottish Gaelic song), 43–44 Horowitz, Fran, 257 Howard, Ron, 100 Howe, Elias, 144 sewing machine and, 144–45 zipper patent, 145 I IDEA (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance), 23 ILGWU (International Ladies Garment Workers Union), 105, 181–82, 184, 303 “Look for the union label,” 197 IMF (International Monetary Fund), 71, 246 imports, xi, xiii amount processed through California ports, xii, 238 apparel and footwear, 19, 231 costs vs. costs of made in America, 21 Covid pandemic and, 24–25 damage to the U.S. economy and workers, 69, 295 demand for, xii, 26n in early America, 7 environmental impact of textile manufacturing and, 21–22 factory safety and, 22 flooding the U.S., 74 free trade paradigm and, 24 hunger among foreign workers, 25 impact of pursuit of cheaper labor, 24 income inequality and, 23 international trade and, 12 major brands and, 74 NAFTA and, 15–16 Nike and, 25 pharmaceuticals, 299, 299n political problems and, 23–24 poverty and, 21 quality and, 22 questions about workers, 20 regulation and, 12 shuttering of U.S. factories and, 74 tariffs and, 7, 8, 11, 13, 16, 198, 286n tariffs recommended by the ITIPF, 68 U.S. annual trade deficit to China, 68 U.S. dependency on, 295 U.S. port backups, xi–xiii, 275 Zara hoodie example, 20–21, 21 See also China; NAFTA; specific countries India Amazon and, 270 American cotton and, 156 British East India Company and, 12–13 exports from, 27n, 156, 263, 299 Monsanto and cotton crop, 154–55 Indonesia, 12, 25, 123 Industrial Revolution, 6–7, 9 International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 114, 216 International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 184, 185 International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, 158–60 International Workers of the World, 76 Iraq War, 121 Isosky, George, 58 ITIF (Information Technology & Innovation Foundation), 68 IUE-CWA (electrical and communications workers), 78–79 J Jabbir, Anaam, 179, 229–30, 272, 303 AFL-CIO convention speech, 160–62 at American Roots, 120, 121, 160 children’s success in Maine, 122, 221 as political refugee from Iraq, 120–21 son’s Portland restaurant, 294 James, LeBron, 139 Japan, 70, 71, 227, 237 auto manufacturers, kaizen, and, 251 Fujifilm and Kodak lawsuit, 84 post–World War II textile industry, 71 JCPenney, 143 Jefferson, Thomas, vii, 9 Jerome, Arizona, 208 Jones, Mary G.

David Mitchell: Back Story
by David Mitchell
Published 10 Oct 2012

Perhaps I came across as some sort of weird ascetic or the kind of person who ‘keeps himself to himself’ and is later discovered to be dwelling on a pit of human bones. I think people thought I had something to hide. Maybe he’s gay and can’t admit it, they may have thought. Or spends all his money on morphine. Or, as the Heat photo might have suggested, he’s as promiscuous as Russell Brand but is somehow managing to do it on the quiet. What is his secret? was the implied question I feared. So I tried to be honest, when I went on Desert Island Discs at least, about the bare facts of my life and how I felt – that I was single and unhappy. I resented the interest. I didn’t think – I don’t think – that the specifics of my private life were anyone’s business.

Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing Out of Catastrophe
by Antony Loewenstein
Published 1 Sep 2015

“The ultimate lesson from the report is that, sooner or later, an alternative programme to ‘more of the same’ will emerge,” wrote Britain’s Channel 4 News economics editor Paul Mason. “Because populations armed with smartphones, and an increased sense of their human rights, will not accept a future of high inequality and low growth.”71 There is some reason to be hopeful. After a public campaign in 2014 by writer and comedian Russell Brand to highlight plans by US asset management firm Westbrook Partners to evict dozens of families from the New Era housing estate in London, the company shelved its proposal and sold its stake to an affordable housing organization. It was a small but significant win, undeniably strengthened by the profile of Brand, and a rare example of disaster capitalism being challenged and beaten back.

How to Murder Your Life: A Memoir
by Cat Marnell
Published 30 Jan 2017

“Who do you think I am?” The treatment ended and I lurched out onto Park Avenue with a frozen section of fat like a stick of butter over my abs. The day before the trip, I found out that fucking Julie was being sent along to babysit (an experience she has since compared—incidentally—to the Jonah Hill–Russell Brand movie Get Him to the Greek). “WHAT?” I screamed. “Don’t be mad,” Julie said. I hung up on her. I wanted to kill Julie! Then Jane. How dare they treat me like a child? I sulked and sucked on strawberry-flavored Klonopin wafers the whole flight to LA. Once we landed and got into a taxi, I got another surprise.

Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs
by Johann Hari
Published 20 Jan 2015

Dario Moreno translated my interview with the president. In Stanford, Charlie Keeden did some digging in the George White archives for me. I also thank many other people who read this book and commented on it in ways that made it better, or helped me in some other way: Patrick Strudwick, Jessica Smerin, Josepha Jacobson, Adam Thirlwell, Russell Brand, Lizzie Davidson, Noam Chomsky, Sarah Punshon, Daniel Bye, Tom Angell, Evgeny Lebedev, Ammie al-Whatey, Rachel Seifert, Glenn Greenwald, Arianna Huffington, Eugene Jarecki, Sarah Morrison, Jeremy Heimans, Alnoor Lahda, Ali Weiner, Jack Bootle, Alex Romain, Ronan McCrea, Matthew Bloch, Greg Sanderson, Josh Cullimore, Anna Powell-Smith, David Pearson, Dorothy Byrne, Rupert Everett, Peter Marshall, Chris Wilkinson, Owen Jones, Damon Barrett, Matthew Todd, Stephen Fry, Matt Getz, Deborah Orr, Sally-Ann Larson, Zoe Ross, Joss Garman, Ben Stewart, Anna Moschovakis, Dennis Hardman, Simon Wills, my parents, Violet and Eduard Hari, my brother and sister, Steven and Elisa, and my sister-in-law, Nicola.

Who Owns England?: How We Lost Our Green and Pleasant Land, and How to Take It Back
by Guy Shrubsole
Published 1 May 2019

In 2014, his company courted controversy when it took a minority stake in a consortium that bought the New Era housing estate in Hoxton. The consortium threatened to hike rents on the estate, leading Hackney Council to warn of ‘enforced homelessness’ for nearly half of the ninety-three households living there. When the community rallied in protest, and were joined by comedian-turned-activist Russell Brand, Benyon’s firm was forced to back down and sell its stake. A third income stream flows from farming. In 2017, Benyon’s Berkshire estate pocketed £278,180 in farm subsidies, courtesy of the taxpayer. It was through enclosure that the Englefield Estate grew to be so large, and so wealthy. To this day, a large expanse of woodland at Englefield is called Benyon’s Inclosure, denoting a former common enclosed by the MP’s ancestor.

Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World
by Bruce Schneier
Published 1 Jan 2000

I would also like to thank Beth Friedman, who helped with a major edit about halfway through the completion of this book and minor edits throughout the process, and helped keep both the copyeditor and proofreader in line; Karen Cooper, who helped proofread the book; and Raphael Carter, who helped with a major edit toward the end of the process. And I would like to thank Michael Angelo, Ken Ayer, Steve Bass, David Dyer-Bennet, Ed Bennett, Russell Brand, Karen Cooper, David Cowan, Walt Curtis, Dorothy Denning, Carl Ellison, Andrew Fernandez, Gordon Force, Amy Forsyth, Dean Gahlon, Drew Gross, Gregory Guerin, Peter Gutmann, Mark Hardy, Dave Ihnat, Chris Johnston, James Jorasch, Arjen Lenstra, Stuart McClure, Gary McGraw, Doug Merrill, Jeff Moss, Simona Nass, Artimage Nelson, Peter Neumann, Andrew Odlyzko, Doug Price, James Riordan, Bernard Roussely, Tom Rowley, Avi Rubin, Ryan Russell, Adam Shostack, Simon Singh, Jim Wallner, and Elizabeth Zwicky, who read and commented on all or part of the book in its almost-final form.

The Platinum Age of Television: From I Love Lucy to the Walking Dead, How TV Became Terrific
by David Bianculli
Published 15 Nov 2016

He’s even done spin-offs of his own movies—taking supporting characters played by Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann in 2007’s Knocked Up and focusing on them alone in 2012’s This Is 40. “This is our Lou Grant!” Apatow proclaims proudly, adding, “And we did it with [2010’s] Get Him to the Greek,” promoting a rock-star supporting character from 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall. “We liked Russell Brand’s character, and we said, ‘What if we do a spin-off?’ And that was heavily influenced by all the James Brooks spin-offs,” Apatow admits. “If you have a great character, well, why not tell their story? There’s no reason why these things can’t drift off. So when you see things like Better Call Saul [Vince Gilligan’s spin-off of his Breaking Bad], that’s my favorite thing in the world.

Lonely Planet London
by Lonely Planet
Published 22 Apr 2012

Some of the world’s most famous modern comedians hail from, or made their names in, London, including Ben Elton, Alexei Sayle, Victoria Wood, Julian Clary, Rowan Atkinson, Reeves & Mortimer, Eddie Izzard, Jo Brand, Sacha Baron Cohen (aka Ali G, Borat and Brüno), Ricky Gervais, Matt Lucas, David Walliams, Russell Brand, Josie Long, Paul Sinha, Tiernan Douieb, Russell Howard and Alan Carr. London’s leading comedy event is the Greenwich Comedy Festival (www.greenwichcomedyfestival.co.uk) and Union Chapel (Click here) is a wonderful venue that hosts a monthly Live at the Chapel (http://liveatthechapel.co.uk) , with big names and live music.

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
by Marc Goodman
Published 24 Feb 2015

Increasingly, celebrities and high-profile public figures are targeted by the practice. In 2013, a twelve-year-old boy in Los Angeles was prosecuted for swatting Ashton Kutcher’s Hollywood home and Justin Bieber’s Calabasas, California, estate. He also swatted a local bank and reported a robbery in progress. Other celebrity victims of swatting include Russell Brand, Tom Cruise, Rihanna, Charlie Sheen, and Miley Cyrus. It is only by a miracle that no innocent civilians have been killed as a result of swatting incidents, though several police officers have been injured while risking their lives responding at full speed to bloodcurdling spoofed calls for help to 911.

Lonely Planet London City Guide
by Tom Masters , Steve Fallon and Vesna Maric
Published 31 Jan 2010

I transfer some of these drawings onto tea plates and tea cups to add a touch of fun and beauty to tea time. I am also working on my first novel, based on fact, set in 1920s Somerset. Lydia Fulton, Manager of Wapping Project Bookshop, was interviewed by Vesna Maric * * * Recent years have unearthed Russell Brand, one of the UK’s most loved and prolific comedians, and stars such as young but sharp Josie Long, Paul Sinha, Tiernan Douieb and Russell Howard. We don’t have space to name all the comedians on this jolly circuit, but do look out for the fantastic London-based American comedian Rich Hall; Geordie sonic-waffler Ross Noble; musician, poet and Luton-towner John Hegley; controversial and politically minded Mark Thomas; and dead-pan and dirty Jimmy Carr.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
by Naomi Klein
Published 15 Sep 2014

It’s also why there are now more calls for fundamental change than at any point since the 1960s. It’s why a challenging book like Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, exposing the built-in structures of ever-increasing wealth concentration, can sit atop bestseller lists for months, and why when comedian and social commentator Russell Brand went on the BBC and called for “revolution,” his appearance attracted more than ten million YouTube views.66 Climate change pits what the planet needs to maintain stability against what our economic model needs to sustain itself. But since that economic model is failing the vast majority of the people on the planet on multiple fronts that might not be such a bad thing.