My Booky Wook by Russell Brand
Brand opens his big mouth again.
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Monday, 19, Nov 2007 02:05
Published by Hodder & Stoughton, out now, 352 pages, £18.99.
In a nutshell...
Sex. Drink. Drugs. Etc.
What's it all about?
Documenting his rise to fame - from Grays to London, drama school to MTV and hard drugs to harder addictions - My Booky Wook is Russell Brand's humorous account of his extraordinary life both in and out of the public eye.
After opening with a chapter on his stint in a US sex addiction clinic, Brand's autobiography offers a tell-all account of his troublesome childhood and his transition to a struggling actor, battling with his addictions in the heart of London's drug culture.
Split into four sections and rounded off with diary extracts, My Booky Wook details Brand's highly-publicised addictions to sex, drinks and drugs and is jam-packed with real-life anecdotes.
Who's it by?
Whether you think of him a comedian, actor, serial womaniser or just that bloke who distastefully went to work dressed as Osama Bin Laden the day after 9/11, there's no doubting that Russell Brand has nested himself a comfy little position within British TV.
Since bursting onto our screens as the erratic big mouth (and hair) of Big Brother several years ago - for which he is probably most famous, despite doing various work for MTV beforehand - Brand's growing repertoire has shifted his status from a 'love me or hate me' type figure to one that simply says: "Deal with me, because I'm not going anywhere".
With his own national newspaper column, TV show, radio shows and now a tell-all book, we may have already started to realise that there is perhaps more to this guy's uniqueness than just a questionable dress sense (which he likens to "Worzel Gummidge going to a bondage party") and supremely large 'do.
As an example...
On growing up:
"I had a growing sense that I was a disappointment to people: not only that I wasn't the kind of person my dad would have wanted me to be, but also that I wasn't able to look after my mum; either to prevent her from getting ill, or to stop Colin from moving in. All that seemed to be left to me were my own limited resources, and an intensifying thirst for animal friendships."
On his heroin addiction:
"It makes you feel lovely and warm and cosy. It gives you a great, big, smacky cuddle, and from then on the idea is no longer an abstract thing, but a longing in your belly and a kicking in your legs and a shivering in your arms and sweat on your forehead and a dull pallor on your face. At this point, you're no longer under any misapprehension about what it is that you need: you don't think, 'nice to have a girlfriend, read a poem, or ride a bike', you think, 'f**k, I need heroin.'"
Likelihood of becoming a Hollywood blockbuster?
One the whole, the theatrical nature of My Booky Wook means that it does, at times, resemble a series of comedy sketches strung together; each recounted with the same camp eloquence and improvised language that have become almost a comedic trademark for Brand.
There is, and has been since he first graced our screens, an artificiality about such a flamboyant TV personality that questions the sincerity of his image. And while there is no doubt that some of his experiences are sensationalised, boasted beyond necessity and elaborated (with him admitting in places he doesn't actually remember an incident, but was later informed about it) the end result is a bit of a mixture between a graphic autobiography and an improvised comedy performance.
Brand's recounting of certain events - such as when he spat in the face of a lap dancer, or announced to work colleagues he had Aids as an excuse for his time off work - are told with such light-hearted humour that his narrator status always seems to override the atrocity of his actions. And with the selection there is to choose from, there's no doubt such atrocities could make pretty good viewing. Either way, he was certainly right in saying that his biggest problem is that he's lived "an autobiography rather than a life".
What the others say...
"Even when he's explaining in shocking detail why heroin is so addictive, he still manages to be supremely funny. Above all, he's achieved an incredible level of self-awareness. You come away from the book feeling like you really know - and like - the real Russell." - Heat
So is it any good?
In terms of what you're generally after in an autobiography - shocks, confessions, nuggets of experience that demote the irritatingly famous back to square one again - My Booky Wook is incredibly hard to falter.
On the one hand, Brand's frank accounts of addictions, self-harm, childhood abuse and sexuality (and pretty much all other sales-inducing controversial keywords dropped in for good measure) - are unflinchingly honest and fairly graphically told. And, while we did suspect that any guy who compares the shade of his penis to that of his father's on national TV is not going to be the most inhibited of people when it comes to telling his life story, his revelations from his childhood, parental relationships and the extent of his drug addiction do thankfully transgress a few expectations.
The humour and colourfully camp language that are inherently Brand makes his book enjoyable and engaging throughout; even the mundane, staple information of most autobiographies - which usually kicks off with irrelevancies such as parents' names and date, time and place of birth - is readable and funny.
What's perhaps most remarkable is that his life experiences - which he describes as a "series of embarrassing incidents strung together by telling people about those embarrassing incidents" - present Brand as a much more likeable character than expected. We are offered an insight into the mind of a rebellious, extraordinary child who grew up to become a sex addict, drug addict and one of the most recognisable faces on British television. One who is, it turns out, just a bit of an egotistical twit from Grays. Brilliant.
9/10
Charissa Coulthard