I like Russell Brand, I didn't at first (in '05 he hosted a club night at Koko with Dirty Pretty Things, I had a bad night, blamed him for quite sometime, looking back, his was undeservedly cocky for the time, but, this was in his smack days, so...), then, he won me over presenting Big Brother's Big Mouth. He's come a long way since those days but he is portrayed as a comic book character, not a comic by the media whilst those politicians treat him like a jester when he is trying to cure the world of its problems.They are wrong too, basing opinions on how tight your jeans are or how tall your hair goes is pretty daft. Brand is annoyingly intelligent. I say 'annoyingly' as he can get out of any tricky situation by bringing in fancy vocabulary confidently. His brain works at twice the speed of the 'everyday bloke', maybe his thoughts are often idealist and unachievable but the point he actually wants to get out there lays underneath. He cleverly slips them in to the consciousness without the target even noticing. The gangly legged comedian has mastered the art of these tactics as he has evolved from being the attention-seeking clown after a laugh and a headline to become almost a maverick, in a way. His brash statements have become thought-right, intelligent with an agenda to do good. Some say that his political ramblings are childlike explosions screaming for somebody to give him a dummy but he doesn't need to take trips to Downing Street or Newsnight to get some column inches, just leaving the house can become an event, so why would he invest so much time and effort, sensationalising political matters such as drug rehabilitation, capitalism, race or homophobia for a feature in the Daily Mail?
Russell Brand is no one trick pony, when he isn't setting the world to rights, acting in Hollywood blockbusters, marrying pop stars, presenting tv shows on both sides of the Atlantic, writing about football, winning 'Shagger Of The Year', entertaining and upsetting guests at award ceremonies he is a stand up comedian and he's bloody good at it.Messiah Complex (an illness where the victim believes that they are Jesus Christ) is the title of his fourth stand-up tour and landed at the City Hall for the Last Laugh Comedy Festival on Sunday. It was a two hour laugh-a-thon filled with education and gags expertly blended together with excellent precision like only a master could. God knows how he remembers it all, it flows like a rap album, words leave Brands mouth sharp and venomous, with intent and passion, he goes off on tangents without losing focus, dips in and out of stories, it is hard enough for the listener to keep up.
The set was based around people, not just any old people, heroes, or Russell's heroes anyway. There's Gandhi, Che Guevara, Malcolm X and Jesus Christ but the message he tries to get across is that he chose those four to look up to, we should choose our own, otherwise society will do that for us and that is a bad thing. He put life into perspective stating how tiny our planet is in terms of universes and galaxies, questioning why,we, as people can't just get on, why are we afraid of one-another, what is there to be scared of really? We can all be heroes, if we want to be.
The lothario took his usual trip amongst the audience, slaggy girls offered their services, it was hard not to be embarrassed by their desperations whilst Brand gimmicked the accents and Northern traits that must have come from some decent research. Obvs there was his usual talk of sex, specifically bumming, not exactly high-brow when it follows rants on poverty or homophobia but it is what we've come to expect from three time Shagger Of The Year winner.
He might portray himself as egotistical but there is a nice soul in there, underneath the skin-tight leather trou, a charming character, troubled by his past and the first to poke fun at himself whether that was his recent Newsnight appearance or his out-spoken opinions on the Olympics which famously took a rather big u-turn. He knows that he isn't a politician but he uses his fame to at least dish out his opinions on make the world a nicer place.
Every subject that Katy Perry's former fella delved in was well researched, backing up his arguments with facts, not something you expect from the Russell Brand portrayed in the media. He had a dig at the Daily Mail taking his words out of context from a Rolling Stones interview with a flippant remarking regarding Class A drugs and young popstars, his annoyance wasn't that the story ran, if it was a genuine error then that was fine, but they took the quote, a joke, from a comedian and turned it into a statement that pretty much read "Brand tells Bieber to take heroin". Those kind of things make you question everything the press reports. Then he simplified poverty with a mind blowing fact, 157 companies in the world equate to £500 trillion and to stop poverty it would cost around £40 billion, that sounds a lot but when he simplified it, it seemed less daunting, that would be just 40p out of £500. Nuts.
Brand concluded the show replicating the image of the crucifixion, it was remarkably similar to the famous seen.
So yes, Messiah Complex is Brand at his best. He is an outspoken comedian with something worth listening to. Another top night at the Last Laugh Comedy Festival.
