Too many. Too many are afraid to say that Russell Brand is not amusing on stage or film or radio, and mostly exists as a bullying celebutard…one of those chat show "raconteurs" who blobby housewives and brain-dead nerds find "shocking" and "edgy."
The Daily Fail, a fawning, yawning babloid from Britain, threw crumbs of praise at mousy Russell Brand the other day. Ooh, the great "razor sharp Essex boy" (as they called him) got the better of…a pair of dimwitted interviewers at MSNBC. Wow. MSNBC. That's an obscure cable channel that happens to be available world-wide even if the ratings suggest it barely keeps anyone alert in Wyoming.
MSNBC, like so many busy cable, local and indie channels, has no money for their empty-headed chat shows, so they can't hire many fact-checkers or pre-interview experts. This means that the average asshole making the publicity circuit to promote a shitty book, shitty concert, shitty movie or shitty TV show…will be asked simple obvious questions, or even clueless ones. Hostess Mika Brzezinski opened with "He's a really big deal, I'm told…I'm not very up on pop culture."
PERFECT set-up for a bullying pseudo-intellectual feline like Russell Brand, who can make himself seem like Oscar Wilde as long as he's dueling with some dazed drone who has to interview a half-dozen morons every morning. Maybe Mika is usually assigned guests who talk about politics, advances in medicine, or have uplifting human interest tales of courage. With a host who isn't trying to provoke, a guest should simply be polite and understanding. If the guest's a comedian, then have a sense of humor!
The interview quickly deteriorated into ugly unfunny grumbles from Russell Brand…which the Daily Fail thought were awesomely hilarious. He made "mincemeat" of hapless Mika and her other stooges they claimed, running "rings around MSNBC hosts."
Really? Brand sniggered to one of them, "Is this what you do for a living?" Answering the logical question of how Americans would do understanding his accent (and comedians from Rowan Atkinson to Billy Connolly have failed to succeed with stand-up here), he sneered, "I am from a country quite near to yours." Well, no, Russell, there's an OCEAN separating us and it isn't wide enough if there's a plane heading here with YOU on it.
Brand eventually resorted to staring at Mika's cleavage ("I've got instincts," he ad-libbed) and when the woman went for a water bottle, he called her a "shaft grasper." And, the Fail added with glee, "He compared her hair style to that of the late Princess Diana."
Are you laughing?
When you're billed as a "comedian" you're supposed to be funny. Your excuse isn't that you're Ann Robinson and your game is looking sour and saying snippy obnoxious crap schoolmarms say. Your excuse isn't that you're Donald Trump, a witless businessman, and so "You're FIRED" is as clever as it gets. But it seems that Russell Brand is actually just famous for being famous. Unlike, say, Ricky Gervais or even Nathan Lane (to mention two who don't act quite as fey as Russell does) does he really get to waste time on the chat show couch merely fawning, mewling, puking, and acting like a tiresome fifteen-year old prodigy from Children of the Damned?
Were you really amused or smiling at Brand's limp Katherine Hepburn imitations languidly hurled at MSNBC's hapless hosts?
Do you think, as the Daily Fail did, that this was all worthy of being reported, complete with YouTube links to see this stupid bit of time-wasting filler?
A put-down about a hairstyle? If you overheard some wanker say those things to the box boy and the cashier at Tesco, you'd think, "What a mannerless, witless little piglet-swine." You wouldn't think, "that witty fellow belongs on TV, and I'll pay big money to see 90 minutes of it on stage." But to The Daily Fail, this is WIT. Hey, Failures, my idea of a "razor sharp Essex boy" is Ian Dury. What Ian Dury and Russell Brand have in common is that they are both brain dead. One of them just doesn't have enough sense to drop six feet under.
Which leads me to repeat the question:
WHO'S AFRAID OF HAIRY FAIRY RUSSELL BRAND?
90% of journalists, it seems. They can't stop praising The Pip of Squeak.
An exception, over at The Guardian, is Sarah Ditum. Unfortunately she comes off sounding like a humorless feminist, which may only be a response to Brand, the humorless effeminist.
As for the A-list or B-list talk (chat) shows in the UK where Brand thrives…they let him primp and prattle, hoping he doesn't insult them personally. As long as the prepared questions lead him to show off prepared (but still lame) insults at airlines or cab drivers or whatever, the hosts are fine. But why book this talentless skinny androgyne creep at all? Why is it that people are so intimidated by any loudmouth egocentric who wants attention? Bad enough when it's some bitch with fake tits who might be worth staring at for a few minutes, but worse when it's a hairy bitch with an open shirt and no tits.
Russell Brand is essentially like Graceland…a dead spot that people can't resist gawking at. He began turning up on American TV as if he was a royal…and promoted a "bookie wook" even though nobody even knew what he'd done that could fill even a pamphlet. Even his great "scandal" was unknown in America…that hacky-dumb prank phone call he and moon-faced tangle-tongued radio twat Jonathan Ross played on a guy famous 20 years ago for saying "Que?" on a John Cleese sitcom
That should've been the end of him. But people were afraid. Why? He meekly ran for cover. He and WOSS both took a powder to the powder room, and patiently waited for the "all clear." That showed just what a bully Brand actually is…he didn't stand up to the fire and be true to his bad boy image. In fact, when WOSS got off suspension and returned to TV, Brand took a long time before making an appearance, and even then, skirted the controversy in order to promote a local gig. Yes, his royal pussiness gave a kind of effeminate toss of his slender fingers in refusing to go back and address his most famous "comedy moment" in detail.
Lately the news is full of another gutless story about Brand…that he broke up with Katy Perry via a text message. Whatever. The problems of these two hills of beans aren't worth a damn in this crazy world, a world where Casablanca and the rest of the Middle East could go up in smoke at any minute. Note to Russell: please book yourself for a few concert dates in Syria.
Perhaps everyone will now take note that there is NO reason to be AFRAID of RUSSELL BRAND. And he knows it. That's why he's carefully avoided stepping on the toes of any talk show host or any comedian who could bury him with barbs. He won't sit on a couch and insult Ricky Gervais or Tracy Morgan or David Letterman or Jeff Ross or Lisa Lampanelli or Jay Leno or Craig Ferguson. Some twit on MSNBC…yeah. That's how the pussy mews.
So far, Russell Brand has managed to thrive on his reputation of being a hirsute Tallulah Bankhead, but maybe a real man with real stubble like, oh, Russell CROWE will throw a fucking phone at this guy's head. Maybe a real woman (not Katy Perry) will sit on his face and turn him, finally, into the full-time raging queer that he really is. The world should not remain terrified of an under-nourished egocentric prima donna of pouts and pretention who, to quote an insult Fred Allen once hurled at Jack Benny, couldn't ad-lib a fart after a baked bean dinner.