My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up by Russell Brand Page B

don’t usually do them simultaneously, but if there’s a GCSE in it . . .”
    A former protégé of Colin Hill—though the possibility that he might have exaggerated his role in this man’s rise cannot be ruled out—was Karl Howman, then starring in the BBC sitcom, Brush Strokes, and also the Flash cleaning product adverts where he plays the same character in a more restricted plot that always has to involve him doing some cleaning under pressure from a Mother- in- Law type woman. Actually Brush Stokes wasn’t as well constructed as the Flash ads, but it did have a theme tune by Dexy’s Midnight Runners which was brilliant and puts Brush Strokes alongside Birds of a Feather as shows that have unjustifi -
    ably tear-inducing music. “Now on BBC1, some light comedy, but before that why don’t you have a quick listen to this and consider that no matter what you achieve you will die alone.”
    “Karl Howman’s one of mine—him out of Brush Strokes,”
    Colin Hill used to say. And I used to think, “Hmm, interesting.” And the realization that people who had later become famous had been taught by the same teacher as me parked itself in my nut and gestated.
    “We’re doing Bugsy Malone as the school play—you should try for the part of Fat Sam,” said Mr. Hill. That’s as signifi cant a moment in my life as there’s yet been—him asking me to audition for that role.
    I was fat already, so the adjective had been taken care of before I’d picked up a script. All I had to work on was the Sam bit.
    How hard could that be? I had met people called Sam. In fact, that was my best friend at school’s name.
    From the first day I started doing Colin Hill’s drama group, I remember thinking, “This is fucking brilliant—why on earth didn’t I do this before?” There were all these girls, for a start. It 87

    RUSSELL BRAND
    attracts girls, drama. It’s not for boys. Well, there was one lad from the year below me, Jeff Bell. He was really good actually.
    He played Bugsy Malone, and then there was me playing Fat Sam and loads of girls.
    A consequence of involvement in this drama group was you’d get to see girls in bras—I suppose they were changing into costumes. The sight drilled itself so deeply into my mind that vital faculties had to be removed to allow it to flourish. Dancing and the ability to form intimate bonds were quickly sacrificed so that the “girls in bras” department of my brain could be given extra floors and its own DJ; “Boobaloo” he’d holler whenever he saw some knockers he liked. He’s still in there now, spinning the same discs night after night and keeping me tuned in to the screaming frequency of Libido FM.
    I enjoyed the rehearsal process enormously. But on the first night the terror I felt was almost transcendental. Euphoric fear, so vertiginous, awesome and profound that I felt it could only be a prelude to death. I now know that the adrenalized fever is my body’s preparatory method and is responsible for the energy and speed I can produce on stage. Once or twice I’ve sought out a reference or a joke in my mind while on telly and it’s seemed like an age or, perhaps realistically, twelve seconds, at the time, but when I watch it back it’s an imperceptible beat. Everything about the school seemed different that first night. Th e hall,
    which had been empty when we were rehearsing, was now full of lines of plastic chairs and the air was neon and flashed with expectation.
    All the parents came. I don’t know how many people that would’ve been—I suppose about a hundred. But it seemed to me like a riot in a straitjacket. I locked myself in a lavvy and evacuated liquid dread. “God, what are you doing?” I asked myself. “I don’t have to do it,” I reasoned. Locked in the lavvy, locked in ne-88

    “ Boobaloo”
    gotiation with myself. “Scared, SCARED. RUN!” sang my unconscious, with backing vocals from my bowels. I had drawn on a mustache with an eyebrow pencil, I