My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up (12 page)

I once heard Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols say that he thought David Bowie and Marc Bolan had come from space—because they were so weird. Well, I fucking never. I thought, “I’m one of them. That’s what I am. I’m that.” They didn’t seem foreign or alien at all.

What was alien was being ordinary, being humdrum, being trapped into appeasing Colin, having to crush and stifle my opinions, not being allowed to be brilliant, tricking myself into mediocrity. And somehow, in this most ordinary, banal of moments—the school play—I felt immediately unshackled from all that.

Bugsy Malone ran for three nights. And throughout that time I was able to accept myself and other people in a way that I never had before. My dad came to every show. He’s been really supportive in some ways—not just the cliché of an absent father.

When the last performance came to an end, though, I felt 92

“ Boobaloo”

utterly mortified. I went back with him to stay at my nan’s in Dagenham and ended up sitting on her settee, completely desolate. I just didn’t have any way of coming down from that high.

A couple of years later—once I’d crossed the line from child to drug addict—I would have doped myself to sleep. I was inconsolable.

How could I get back the feeling I’d had in front of that audience? That was all I cared about. Accessing previously untapped resources of drive and focus, I found out what I had to do and got on with it. Within just a couple of days, I’d started applying to extras agencies and stage schools. My Fat Sam experience had given birth to this ridiculous dream of salvation through fame and success. And ever since then, that vision has been the one thing—apart from the love of my mother—that has been utterly unwavering for me.

It’s difficult to be honest about this sort of thing though, because in cold print it seems serious and egotistical. If you strip away self- eff acement, charm and the spirit of mischief—qualities that make determination and ambition tolerable—you’re left with a right arsehole. V

93

11

Say Hello to the Bad Guy

My mum refers to the play, Bugsy Malone, as “Fat Sam,” because that was the part I played. I suspect that, from her perspective, upon the stage those nights stood but one tubby player, alone, reacting, brilliantly, to invisible entities. My mum thinks I’m an excellent swimmer, simply because I’ve not yet drowned. I found my religion through that play, Bugsy-ism; the next fifteen years were spent in the service of the God of my ambition. Performing was my way out of Grays, conformity and myself. I ignored the advice of Heartbeat and “Wicksy” actor, Nick Berry, issued in More magazine in response to the question: What tip would you offer to any youngster trying to make it as an actor? “Never pretend to be someone that you’re not.” Now hold on, you have to

“pretend you’re someone you’re not” a bit as an actor. Some would argue, Stanislavski for example, that that is acting’s essence. “I most certainly will not murder King Duncan, I’ve never met him.” “But you’re playing Macbeth.” “That’s a ridiculous name, I am Nick Berry, Wicksy at a push, I’ll even consider MacWicksy but I shall certainly not kill that lovely old monarch; no matter how much Lady MacWicksy may demand it.”

My zeal was potent, as is often the case with the newly converted in any faith: “I’ll be famous soon,” I thought, “then I can 94

Say Hello to the Bad Guy

get out of here and on with the job of being the new Jacko”—this was the name of Karl Howman’s Brush Strokes lothario. Th e

main problem as I saw it was to be owning a fleet of limousines before I was old enough to drive. “I suppose I’ll have a driver,” I thought. No further incentive was required, but a new and powerful one appeared. After one of the performances, girls from another school—probably William Edwards about five miles away—turned up, but to me it was as exotic as a troupe of cabaret dancers from Rio de Janeiro—all high kicks and coked-up flirting—arriving. “Another school? What’s the weather like there? What time is it there now? Marry me . . . I mean, if you think we could ever overcome our cultural differences. Can we make a go of this? If I can change, and you can change, maybe the whole damn world can change.” That’s how I felt. Except for the last bit, that was from Rocky 4.

My life is a bit like The Elephant Man. Probably ol’ John Merrick had it a bit tougher than me what with the deformity and torture and bronchitis and whatnot but there are certainly parallels. Like how grateful he is if someone’s nice to him. Meeting these rare and glorious specimens from a stone’s throw away, the scene I recalled was the one where an actress gives the charming and beautiful hero a photo—“You’re not a monster . . .

Mr. Merrick. You’re Romeo,” and he, through delirious gratitude, “Oh, how kind!”

It was unfamiliar to me—girls being flirtatious—and initially I was frightened. But I adjusted with characteristic rapidity. I became a schoolboy Tony Montana—rampaging round the playground, indiscriminately spraying girls with chat-up lines. “Say hello to my little friend,” I hollered in canteens and corridors. No one was safe from me; charged by a white mound of my own newly discovered potency, every female was a potential target.

95

RUSSELL BRAND

This didn’t go on for long before the natural hierarchy were restored. I was reminded that status in Grays was determined through football and fighting. Johnny-come-lately Fat Sam actors had a short shelf life. Plus, an identity blended together from traits gleaned from John Merrick and Tony Montana is never likely to succeed; had the Elephant Man in response to a bit of attention from the birds become an arrogant pig, the poignancy of the film would’ve been lost. If during the film’s final act John had been pinching nurses’ arses and calling Anthony Hopkins a motherfucker, the audience’s sympathy would’ve waned. Similarly, had Tony Montana’s terrifying will to get to the top actually been a flimsy veil across a fragile poet’s heart, his drug empire would’ve been a shambles. So I was whooped out of Grays School the way Coriolanus was driven from Rome. Good.

Bloody school, what a load of rhubarb, they never learn ya nothing worth knowing anyway. Assembly? Bah! You can poke it mate. The only times I enjoyed school was when a dog got in the playground. “There’s a dog in the playground! There’s a dog in the playground! Wahoo! All bets are off, you can’t control me, you can’t even keep dogs out of the fuckin’ playground! Revolution!” Or those dark, mysterious lads that don’t go to school, turn up like outlaws, moseying on in on their BMXs, gliding across the tarmac with Eastwood sneers and B&H fingers.

“Miss, who are them boys in the playground?” “Don’t look at them,” she’d shriek, frantically tugging at the blind as if it were her petticoat lifted by a mischievous breeze. “It’s all a con,” I thought. “There are kids out there who don’t go to school. Th ey

seem alright, in fact look at ’em, they’re cool. They’re like high-waymen.” “Take me with you,” I muttered to the God of rascals.

When school became untenable after my Terence Trent D’Arby reaction to a speck of local fame, I sought out these rogues.

You’re told school is important, and that whole doctrine seems 96

Say Hello to the Bad Guy

overwhelming, so then what happens if you just stop going, and you discover another culture of people who regard school as dross? Lads like Nick, Ricky and company, who lived in the next street to ours, and smoked fags and had rings and wore two-tone Rossini tops that were half gray and half blue. I joined this merry band and we’d bunk off and go on the rob. I admire people that seem to have no fear of consequence: I worried about non-attendance and getting nicked; that clan of fearless vagabonds lived in the moment, all perfect and serene like shoplifting swamis. We’d go off to the chalkpit where I’d wandered as a child (this had by now been developed into the Chaff ord Hundred estate, but they left a scrub of wilderness as a senti-memento), where we’d hang about, unwrapping stolen pens and CDs that we’d nicked from Lakeside.

I popped into school on occasion, on flexi-time, which is a silly phrase, because you can’t make time flexi unless you go to space or you’re Einstein; it was also Sexi-time—I’d see if I could snatch a moment with any of the dames who hadn’t been put off me when I was Georgy Porgied out of town. My virginity had yet to be lost, it followed me everywhere, huffing and sighing, rolling its eyes when I wanked and demanding to be liberated. “Lose me! Lose me you filthy wanker. I’ve tolerated you for fifteen years, sixteen if you include the nine months of womb prison.”

It happened a week before my sixteenth birthday, with a girl called Marianne Laybourn, Tallulah to my Fat Sam in Bugsy Malone. Oh the glamour of it all, how could she resist?—why, she’d witnessed my ascent. She wouldn’t have known I was a virgin until the bungling encounter commenced (when it would’ve become startlingly obvious, as I adopted the demeanor of a man struggling to build a cuckoo clock in oven gloves) because I was careful to cultivate an image of myself as an aristocratic sex- pert.

97

RUSSELL BRAND

Marianne lived in the same road that my school was on—directly opposite the MacLean house hold. The MacLeans. Ah, the MacLeans, how I loved them. They gave me domestic normality and comfort where previously there’d been none. John, my mate, Jenny his sister, Bill the dad and Trish the mum. Th ey

were from Liverpool and lived life like a Viz strip. I would find solace and refuge with them after rows with Colin. I’d go round to their house and smoke B&H, and they’d give me a lager.

They were always screaming and damning each other in beautifully devised colloquial insults. “You’re a hard-faced git John.”

“You cheeky rat.” I watched TV with them and watched them like telly. They had values that I admired. Me and John were once criticizing some girl from Neighbors saying she was rough and shouldn’t be on the telly. Bill was displeased. “Leave ’er alone, she might blossom in a few years.” Aah, she might blossom. He stuck up for her even though she was just a girl from Australia on a telly.

When I played up they called me a cunt. Or “coont,” which sounds nicer. I miss them a bit. I was round there, peering through the nets at Marianne’s house, before I finally got shot of that twit “my virginity.” I knew that I was going round to hers to get rid of him and I was scared.

In my mind, all the girls in my year were sophisticated, vamp-ish, Marlene Dietrich–like characters, though in reality I suppose they were just silly little Essex twerps, like I was. I wheeled my bike across the street for my last walk as a virgin.

What ensued was not the sort of proper sex that I have now, where I shamanistically disappear and become like some sort of Aztec nomad watching the situation—“Oh wow! How could they ever have created those giant eagles that span the land?

They must have been looking from the sky!”—I was always present in my own mind. I never left myself.

98

Say Hello to the Bad Guy

I didn’t have the confidence to remove my clothes. Oddly, given the nature of one of my subsequent catchphrases, I didn’t pull down my trousers and pants, I merely undid my fly and had some sort of nervous, unprotected jab of a sexual encounter.

“Tell no one,” she said, probably uncertain as to whether or not anything had actually happened. “Babe,” I assured her, “I just ain’t the kind of guy to kiss and tell.” I kissed her on the forehead then calmly made my way down the stairs and out of the house.

Once outside I scrambled toward my bike, and if I could’ve done wheelies, I would’ve done one. My heart was pounding, my head was swirling, I tingled and panted, far more excited than during the act itself. My virginity was gone, left in Marianne’s room, checkin’ his contract to see if the tussle that had granted him liberty could ever properly be called “sex.”

It could by me. I blabbed to anyone who’d listen: instead of telling no one as requested, I told anyone I encountered; Sam, John, Anyone. “This is the operator, Ambulance, Police or Fire rescue, which service do you require?” “Which service do YOU

require toots, because I just had me a whole lotta lovin’ and I’m aching for round two.”

I told Nicholas Hunter and Stephen Norrington. Lads from my year. But Marianne Laybourn sensibly denied all knowledge of the aff air.

This left me with no choice but to entrap her into making a confession like that bastard sheikh in the News of the World is always doing to people, ballsing their lives up. For me, it was more important that people knew I had sex than having sex.

That’s daft, if you live for other people’s perception you can never be happy, but this was no time to ponder that existential blather, I had a sting to set up. We went to Stephen Norrington’s house, and set up a tape recorder on the downstairs phone while I called poor, beautiful Marianne, who’d been kind 99

Say Hello to the Bad Guy

enough to let me have pseudo-sex with her, from the phone in his parents’ room. I dialed her up and, when she answered, clumsily sought out ways to elicit a confession. “So, the ol’ sex we had was pretty hot huh?” “Not really.” “Right . . . So you’re admitting we had sex?” “Well, I suppose . . .” “That’s all we need, miss. Hang up the phone.”