Russell Brand
Russell Brand is a "darkly brooding proto-superstar", according to The Herald. When did comedians' press bumf stop focusing on them being funny and start concentrating more on their hotness, their marketability and their ability to be LOL!RANDOM1?
I've been seeing a lot of him recently on Channel 4 trails for Big Brother's Big Mouth, a show where people who are dull enough to want to air their views on Celebrity Big Brother on national television can do so away from crowds of innocent civilians. He was so awful on these trailers that I immediately assumed he was being groomed by Channel 4 to be their new Jimmy Carr/Justin Lee Collins spokeswanker, but he's actually been around for quite a while. He presented a show for UKPlay (the prestige!) called Re: Brand in which he "challenged cultural taboos" by having gay sex despite being straight (a la Dan Ashcroft from Nathan Barley, or indeed Chris Evans during the fag-end of TFI Friday) and pimping a heroin-addicted prostitute. That last one really challenged my preconception that arranging rape for shits and giggles is a bad thing. I bet he was really upset by how badly the press treated Kate Moss, too.
Here's a thing - when someone next decides to create a TV series by challenging public preconception, why don't they have a go at the idea that Endemol, with their massive expenditure and minimal audience figures, represent some sort of all-powerful TV cabal? Or that you don't have to be a fuddy-duddy Z Cars enthusiast to think that reality TV is, in so many ways, a poisonous and obnoxious force? Or that modern comedy is, by and large, shit, rather than "challenging" or "unique"?
I hope - by which I mean, I know, but I would like to think that this is wrong - it wouldn't be impossible in today's utterly self-satisfied media clusterfuck. The sheer amount of self-celebration in TV and the media at large today is truly jaw-dropping, it makes you wonder whether TV executives even bother to talk to people outside the industry these days. I had an idea for a show that could attack modern media marketing techniques a bit back, but it simply wouldn't get made because, as Nick Broomfield pointed out in conversation with Jason Wood, the media is now owned by such a small number of parent corporations that if you harm the activities of one of their tiny subdivisions they can cancel all their business arrangements between themselves and the people foolhardy enough to insult them, and it'll be crippling.
On that Channel 4 trailer, by the way, he was jump-cut across the screen giving his "opinions" on non-specific Big Brother housemates, all the while gurning in the most annoying fashion and talking in what is officially the most strained Chris Morris impersonation I have ever heard. Terrible stuff like "I hate... his neck!" and "I'd like to kiss her... on the mind!"
Russell Brand, then. I'd like to shoot him... in the cock!
I've been seeing a lot of him recently on Channel 4 trails for Big Brother's Big Mouth, a show where people who are dull enough to want to air their views on Celebrity Big Brother on national television can do so away from crowds of innocent civilians. He was so awful on these trailers that I immediately assumed he was being groomed by Channel 4 to be their new Jimmy Carr/Justin Lee Collins spokeswanker, but he's actually been around for quite a while. He presented a show for UKPlay (the prestige!) called Re: Brand in which he "challenged cultural taboos" by having gay sex despite being straight (a la Dan Ashcroft from Nathan Barley, or indeed Chris Evans during the fag-end of TFI Friday) and pimping a heroin-addicted prostitute. That last one really challenged my preconception that arranging rape for shits and giggles is a bad thing. I bet he was really upset by how badly the press treated Kate Moss, too.
Here's a thing - when someone next decides to create a TV series by challenging public preconception, why don't they have a go at the idea that Endemol, with their massive expenditure and minimal audience figures, represent some sort of all-powerful TV cabal? Or that you don't have to be a fuddy-duddy Z Cars enthusiast to think that reality TV is, in so many ways, a poisonous and obnoxious force? Or that modern comedy is, by and large, shit, rather than "challenging" or "unique"?
I hope - by which I mean, I know, but I would like to think that this is wrong - it wouldn't be impossible in today's utterly self-satisfied media clusterfuck. The sheer amount of self-celebration in TV and the media at large today is truly jaw-dropping, it makes you wonder whether TV executives even bother to talk to people outside the industry these days. I had an idea for a show that could attack modern media marketing techniques a bit back, but it simply wouldn't get made because, as Nick Broomfield pointed out in conversation with Jason Wood, the media is now owned by such a small number of parent corporations that if you harm the activities of one of their tiny subdivisions they can cancel all their business arrangements between themselves and the people foolhardy enough to insult them, and it'll be crippling.
On that Channel 4 trailer, by the way, he was jump-cut across the screen giving his "opinions" on non-specific Big Brother housemates, all the while gurning in the most annoying fashion and talking in what is officially the most strained Chris Morris impersonation I have ever heard. Terrible stuff like "I hate... his neck!" and "I'd like to kiss her... on the mind!"
Russell Brand, then. I'd like to shoot him... in the cock!