My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up (13 page)

Now that I was irrefutably a world-class sex inspector, I could devote myself full time to becoming a movie star. Having discovered that Th

e Stage newspaper was Britain’s offi

cial gateway

to show business, my feverish perusal of the agencies at the back led me into the tragic world of “extras” management. To a man poor, dreadful, cravat-wearing, hang-mole ridden woofters with offices in their spare rooms.*

Always in Leytonstone. There was one bloke called Bernard, and another with an agency called “Bovver Boots”—as if, really, he was trying to recruit rough trade. Like this little tinker.

A chap I assumed to be his boyfriend took this photo of me standing up against a brick wall. There’s an opportunity for a homophobic joke here if you want to do it. I’m too enlightened, but if you’re a bit prejudiced you can do a “backs against the wall” type joke. With this photo in my armory I was equipped to begin my voyage. “Stardom”—the yearning for recognition—had encamped in my gutty-wuts. “Doubtless, I shall be making films by Christmas,” I assumed, with cockeyed optimism. I got a few days’ work as an extra and auditioned for the famous school for unbearable brats, Italia Conti. V

* “Woofter” is an old-fashioned, derogatory term for homosexual, though these forms of abuse are generic, meaning “sissy” or “weed,” more than directly referencing homosexuality.

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Part II

“Yes you who must leave everything that you cannot control.

It begins with your family, but soon it comes around to your soul”

Leonard Cohen, “Sisters of Mercy”

“As I looked out into the night sky, across all those infi nite stars it made me realize how insignifi cant they are”

Peter Cook

12

The Eternal Dilemma

At the age of sixteen, I was accepted into the Italia Conti stage school. And in my first week there I learned two important things: i) it was full of beautiful girls; ii) to my astonishment, I found that they liked me.

The transition from Grays in Essex to Italia Conti’s in central London was dramatic. I’d shed the awful baggage of my past reputation, plus loads of weight as a result of the bulimia.

Suddenly, I was rich. In Grays I didn’t possess anything people wanted. I was trying to spend a fantasy currency from an irrelevant island.

“Sir, I am rich with doubloons,” I would announce. “Yeah, well, we don’t take doubloons, now fuck off .” “Drat! And what of these sovereigns?” But now, at last, I was in a land where doubloons were legal tender. It was an economy built on showing off. Although I couldn’t sing or dance, in the acting and improvisation classes I was good.

The excitement engendered by the magical vista of girls in bras during Bugsy Malone rehearsals was revealed to be as Bos-tik is to crack. Italia Conti was as raunchy as an institute for learning can be and still be called a school. There was a dance studio on the way to the canteen. All these gorgeous young women would be doing their jazz dancing in black leotards. It 105

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was nauseatingly exciting—an overload of sexual information: thick thighs, round arses, sweaty cleavages.

Everywhere there

were beautiful girls bustling around—

prancing into the canteen with cascading manes of youthful hair. They were all, it later turned out, miniature celebrities; Martine McCutcheon kissed me once in a corridor. She was very pretty—a lovely girl—and she said, “I’m glad you like me,”

and gave me a kiss. I wonder if she remembers? Or if she’ll sue me. This trivial exchange lit up the no-man’s-land of my life like a flare, and that’s before she became “Tiffany” and I inflated the incident into a festival of bumming for the amusement of the twerps I by then consorted with. “You see Tiffany?” “Yes, I see her on EastEnders.” “Well, let me tell you, I had sex with her.” “Oh, really.” “And by sex, I mean bumming.” “Really?” “Oh, yes. Right up the ol’ bum.”

Two members of the girl- group-to-be, Eternal, were at the school, Louise Nurding and Kéllé Bryan. There was a dizzying period of a couple of days where they both fancied me. Th is

was lunacy. Just a few days before I’d have sliced out a lung for a few moments with one member of the girl- group-to-be, Eternal, and now I had to choose between two. I was not accustomed to making choices of this magnitude; my volition had previously been confined to dilemmas no more complex or consequential than which color Penguin biscuit to eat, knowing that I’d be eating both eventually, regardless. “I’ll start with you blue, but yellow, you too will know the thrill of being devoured by me.” I thought the application of the “I’ll have ’em all” technique would serve me in this situation. All that remained to decide was which one to have first. I selected Kéllé

because being from “white man’s last stand” Grays, the possibility of a black girlfriend was stupidly exciting; girls from another school had seemed exotic, so another race—well, 106

The Eternal Dilemma

that’s almost too much. What a soppy sausage I was not to have yet learned the vital Penguin lesson that beneath the wrapper we’re all the same. I was punished for this embarrassing rationale when a friend of mine, Matthew Warner, the adorable embodiment of a stage- school pupil, in the closet, scissor-kicking his way down Goswell Road like a real-life Fame title sequence, told her of my twittish reasoning. Leading to this scene, almost too awful to write.

DAY. INT. ITALIA CONTI, GIRLS’ TOILET.

We see Kéllé, future star of Celebrity Love Island, sixteen, beautiful, wearing a leotard and Russell, a twit. Kéllé is furious.

KÉLLÉ: Russell, what’s this I hear that you’re only going out with me because I’m black?

RUSSELL: (Incredulous) What! No! That’s not true. Who said that?

KÉLLÉ: Matthew.

RUSSELL: Him? You can’t trust him; he’s not even honest about his own sexuality.

KÉLLÉ: (With incredible sincerity, imagine Oprah Winfrey confronting Eugène Terre’Blanche)* Look Russell, I’m damn proud of being black.

RUSSELL: (Out of his depth) Me too, I’m proud of you being black, this relationship is like the song “Ebony and Ivory.”

Shall we get married? That’ll show all those bloody racists.

KÉLLÉ: I’m not marrying you, you idiot. You’re chucked.

KÉLLÉ STARTS TO LEAVE.

* Eugène Terre’Blanche is a barmy (mad), South African, pro- apartheid racist who kept turning up on the telly harping on about racist stuff. Everyone just thought, “What a crazy name, what a nitwit.”

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RUSSELL: Kéllé! Please, don’t go! I can change. And if I can change and you can change, maybe the whole damn world can change.

KÉLLÉ DISGUSTED, SLAMS THE DOOR.

RUSSELL: Kéllé! No! (Pause) Kéllé, could you find out if Louise is free later? Also find out if she’s got any ethnic blood in her.

CUT TO . . .

I became obsessed with Louise. I spoke to her recently and she reminded me that I’d send her up to six letters a day. What on earth was I finding to write about? I hope to god these letters were bloody short. Dear Louise, please go out with me. Yes?

No? I’ll write again after ballet. They weren’t short, though, they were long, loooooong and filled with longing, emotional more than sexual, for although as I’m sure you can imagine the sixteen-year- old Louise Nurding was pretty bloody gorgeous, I wanted love and a partner, salvation damn it; this was before I’d become a bounder. I often wonder if Louise, when she reads in a tabloid about some loveless bit of smut I’ve been involved with, glances over at her handsome, intelligent, kind, lovely ex-footballer husband Jamie Redknapp and thinks, “I’ve made a terrible mistake.” Almost certainly.

The novelty of being good at something gave vent to the wild, reckless aspects of my character. Previously, these had come in the form of tantrums, self-harm and smashing things, but from this point onward, they began to evolve. I started to become aware of and lovingly nurture the archetype/cliché of the self-destructive artist—the perpetually drunk poet.

The drunk part was easy. And when it came to writing poems, “Oh, I’m depressed and on my own” was essentially my only topic. But the vocabulary was good, and people liked 108

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them. These were boors, knowing nothing of Shelley and Byron. Poetry should be more than just a list of feelings, shouldn’t it? Good poets like my mate Mr. Gee, from the R2 show (who just read this chapter to make sure I don’t come across as a racist nit) can convey truth, beauty and humor without lapsing into self- indulgence. The poetry I wrote was not about self-expression but about getting people to like me. I’d yet to learn that earnestness was an aspect that was ill-befitting and that I would have no real success, personal or professional, till I focused on making people laugh. But girls liked the poems.

Perhaps overawed by the abundance of varied and spectacular flesh, I opted to go out with this girl called Rachel, who came from Romford. I used to get the train into school with her, ’cos I was staying at my dad’s in Essex at the time. She was very beautiful, with long blond hair, but also a bit insecure and obsessed with getting a nose job.

As will already have become clear, my early sexuality was not characterized by the almost piratical nonchalance that I have developed in later years. I was a nervous and sensitive young man. I suppose partly because of those early filthy encounters—I was really apprehensive about sex, and as a consequence there were a lot of opportunities that I was too nervous to take advantage of.

I’d seen loads of pornography, but I was quite scared of girls, really. What I wanted was to be in love, to have a companion to look after me—someone to replace my mother. But before I could persuade anyone to fulfill that function, I found drugs. V

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13

Body Mist

I’d never tried social drugs in Grays because I wasn’t really a social person, I didn’t get invited to parties and the like on account of the ol’ oddness. The first notable encounter with marijuana was at Conti’s. I was with this lad called Jimmy Black. I really admired Jimmy. He was from Hull and had long hair and was funny and could sing. Me and Jimmy were sat smoking a joint, and he said “Russell Brand . . . is that your real name?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “That’s a good name, that.” I said, “Oh, do you think so?”

“See all these buildings, Russell? All these buildings were once a drawing on a piece of paper, and before that they were an idea in someone’s head. Any idea that you have, you can make manifest.” Wow. Man. That, like, totally blew my mind man. It was my first bit of countercultural chitchat. He was one of a spellbinding band of Conti pupils who were out of place in every way but their theatrical abilities.

They were: Justin Edmonds, a mixed-race lad from Moss Side; Jose Vedberg from East London, a handsome lad who was in Th e

Bill; and Dean Northard from York, with his ginger hair and muscles and a beautiful falsetto singing voice. Till then I’d only known people from Essex. Talent was anathema. Th ese young

men were cool. Although they were only a couple of years older 111

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than me, they seemed absurdly worldly. These eigh teen- year- old lads, to me, seemed like a crew of rum-drinking smugglers, smoking weed, singing songs and having it off. Charismatic and brilliant, and forever skinning up—and they accepted me into their group and all I had to do was be an unpaid butler carrying out whatever whim my new idols requested.* As soon as I saw them I wanted their company as much as I did the stunningly attractive dancing girls. I realized that the easiest way to win their friendship was through grass, so I bought some and nervously approached Jimmy in a toilet which, given the thriving gay culture in that building, the only exemptions being the boys listed on the previous page, was perhaps naive.

He was combing his lustrous hair. I marveled at him for a while then said, “Jimmy, I’ve got some draw—do you want to smoke it?” Jimmy paused and put his comb back in his pocket like Fonzie, surveyed my little face to see if there was any kind of catch—I don’t know what that could’ve been; I was too young to be a government agent. Satisfied that I was legit he grabbed the dope with a curt, “Yeah, alright,” rolled a couple of joints, and the next thing I knew, he was lecturing me about architec-ture and opening my mind.

I hadn’t really considered when using weed as bait to entice cool friends that it can have powerful psychoactive side eff ects.

We went back to school, my querying in my mind the history of every building we passed. Jimmy bowled off to do some eff ort-less singing, while me and my open mind, listless body and yellow face slumped ourselves into a chair and watched the atoms in the windows vibrating, entranced and queasy, like William Blake watching angels in the trees on Peckham Rye. A teacher saw me sat there, grinning at nothing and reeking of weed, and

* The act of “skinning up” is to make a marijuana cigarette.

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Body Mist

a brouhaha ensued and a summit was called. “Th ere’s children

taking drugs at this school—we’ll have to clamp down on it.”

Jimmy Black remarked, “Fucking hell! We’ve been here two years, doing this every day. He’s had one joint and there’s a fucking offi