The Russell Brand Show, C4, 24 November, 11.05
With an ego and media profile the size of Brand’s, the eponymously titled C4 chat show was inevitable.
But could The Russell Brand Show fare any better than the debacle that was Davina?
The choice of Dirty Pretty Things’ ‘Deadwood’ as the theme tune would prove to be an apposite summation of the next fifty minutes. After the opening titles segued into the obligatory camera pan round the audience (in case the viewer was curious as to how many people can fit in a television studio), on flounced Brand with trademark “blimeys!” and “‘citing!”, and wearing the same regulation outfit he’s always bedecked in (black open neck shirt and trousers and silver belt).
The line-up for his debut show was at least of a higher calibre than that managed on Davina (e.g. Tess Daly and Vernon Kay), with David Walliams and Matt Lucas (the only people in Britain more ubiquitous than Brand), and Amy Winehouse featuring. The latter was particularly promising after serving up the car-crash TV moment of the year only a few weeks earlier with her inebriated rendition of Beat It on The Charlotte Church Show.
Conforming to chat-show custom, the show opens with a topical monologue. In the news this week was Tom Cruise’s wedding to Katie Holmes, although with the entire routine based on this topic you could be forgiven for thinking it was the only thing that had happened. However, Brand’s nervous delivery results in a stilted and monotonous routine, something you wouldn’t expect to see in someone who does stand-up for a living.
But maybe it was the material that affected Brand’s delivery. Jokes about Cruise’s height (was this the ‘adult’ humour we were warned of at the start?), allegedly wearing platform shoes, and his wedding being “all a bit ‘ollywood” (which is sort of what you’d expect from an ‘ollywood actor’s wedding) were just too obvious. And it’s a bit rich from someone with a persona based on mockneyisms, contrived linguistic archaisms and shag-pile hair to mock another man’s affectations.
Brand’s nervousness was compounded by the appearance of Walliams and Lucas, whose relaxed manner contrasts with his floundering (and flouncing). The interview kicks off with a set piece in which his guests have to bring him a present (Walliams: “that’s a good idea – for you”). Lucas’ present is Douglas Adams’ The Deeper Meaning of Liff, while Walliams’ gift was a top hat, which went so well with Brand’s outfit. Perched on top of his head like a mattress balancing on a bottle of wine he certainly looked, in Jim Royle parlance, like a ‘top hat’.
Brand returned the favour by giving Lucas a model of his (Lucas’s) head made out of chocolate, although it seemed a missed opportunity for no one to quip about Brand giving Lucas head. Maybe they thought it too obvious, sort of like making jokes about Tom Cruise being short. Brand’s gift to Walliams was a chocolate-shaped penis (Walliams: I’ve always wanted you to give me that”) and in case you’re curious, after getting his mouth around the end he did indeed swallow.
As the show progresses it becomes apparent that Brand and the Little Britain pair have inverted the traditional roles of host and guest, occasionally slipping into This is Your Life territory, such as Walliams’ wistful description of his first impressions on meeting Brand (“I hated you when I first met you, when you were on heroin [but] then you’d done yoga and you cleaned yourself up and we became really close friends”).
Intermittently remembering the host's traditional duties, Brand mentions the special Comic Relief Little Britain episode, although this only leads in to another opportunity to talk about himself, such as his very own appearance in the Comic Relief Little Britain episode, dressed up in ladies underwear (maybe the black shirt and trousers were at the dry cleaners that night).
After an unnecessary reference as to exactly why the duo were on the show (“you’re here to do something promotional”), we’re shown a extract from their live DVD, before returning to a sketch idea nicked from another source (Saturday Night Armistice), in which CCTV footage of lookalikes playing Walliams and Lucas are shown in their dressing room before the show. A runner comes in with a cup of tea for them and ‘Wallliams’ and ‘Lucas’ are shown humiliating him in various escalating ways, culminating in him dressed up as the hooded Iraqi Abu Ghraib prisoner (a visual joke that was done better on Arrested Development over two years ago, mainly because it was actually topical then).
The imminent commercial break (“to raise revenue and that”) prompts Brand into the first display of his Ted Rogers-esque 3-2-1 wrist movement, and promises are made that when we come back David and Matt will “reveal exclusive things about their private life”. Which will make a change from hearing about Brand’s.
After the ‘revenue raising’ the show resumes with a sketch featuring, you guessed it, Brand as Tom Cruise and more height jokes (maybe there would have been room for the head joke after all) and innuendo about Cruise’s sexuality. So we can pretty much assume Tom won’t be appearing on the show in the near future.
Back in the studio the host and guests have moved towards a bar area (with Lucas looking particularly uncomfortable while perched on a stool), and Brand continues his attempts to interview the pair. But is it possible to take anyone seriously as an interviewer (or person) who asks Walliams about his cross-Channel swim in the following way:
“Your real chance to shine, David, come when you done that swimming across the sea, what you done.”
After a clip showing Walliams beginning his cross-Channel swim (and falling off a rock at the end), the spotlight is soon back on Brand as he ponders whether “you can find redemption through these charitable acts” (Lucas: “You’d have to swim around the fuckin’ world, mate!”). A skit of Brand pretending to swim the Channel is shown, followed by unnecessary outtakes of him flouncing about in the sea (“Me fuckin’ snout’s gone out!”).
At this point Walliams and Lucas have been on for more than half the show and, as Brand notes, “I don’t know if you’ve told us anything yet that’s really, really intimate”. This is always going to be the critical factor in making a chat show interesting, although Walliams is pretty clear why this hasn’t happened so far (“Well you haven’t asked us anything – you’ve just talked about yourself”).
In the final section, after more revenue raising and wrist reflexes, the host and his guests return to the sofa for more chat, although it’s unfortunate - or depending on your opinion rather apt - that the chocolate penis is constantly in shot whenever the camera switches to Brand as he asks a question. He continues to elicit little of interest from the two with Walliams being slightly touchy over Brand’s questioning on whether he took his mother to the Baftas “to use her in a defence capacity” (Walliams: “No. I just took her because I knew she’d like to go”).
Finally, after 30 minutes of inconsequential chat (mainly about Brand), something vaguely intimate is revealed when we discover Matt and his partner are about to have a civil partnership, although any follow-up on this is lost as Brand worries what he’ll wear at the wedding (my money being on the black shirt, black trousers and silver belt combo).
It’s something of a relief when the show finally moves on from the pair to Winehouse, although it’s disappointing to find she’s not pissed. Well, “not yet” she isn’t. After an introduction by Brand which made me consider whether he’d fallen off the wagon (“Winehouse: do a record, you lunatic, sing it out of ya gob!”) she “does her record”. As the first time I’d heard her sing was on The Charlotte Church Show, it’s evident that alcohol doesn’t do much for her vocal range, although it has to be said she does sound an awful lot like Shirley Bassey done ‘in the club style’.
After ‘doing her record’ Winehouse accepts Brand’s invitation (“Oi! Winehouse! Come over ‘ere!”) to join him on the sofa with David and Matt. However, Winehouse doesn’t have a present for the host, which leads to an unintentionally amusing verbal squabble between the pair, who despite looking like a gothic his and hers tribute to Dusty Springfield sound exactly like Wayne and Waynetta Slob.
Possibly for this reason the show moves to its climax, with Brand relocating everyone in front of a shelf in order to “situate these glorious gifts up here on the mantelpiece”. Brand claims “these will stand here for all time”, although based on his debut show the likelihood is that his hat and book won’t be the only possessions of his shelved in the near future.
The show ends with a bemused-looking Winehouse (perhaps trying to remember where she’d left her drink) and an embarrassed looking Walliams and Lucas trying to stay in shot by the shelves for the closing credits. Lucas’ book falls off the shelf and narrowly misses Brand’s barnet (probably not the first time the deeper meaning has gone over his head), while he continues his demented Ted Rogers impressions as the credits roll.
Whatever the merits (or otherwise) of Brand’s concocted persona, if a chat show host’s interest is more in himself than his guests, there’s little to sustain interest once the host become tiresome. In thirty minutes of chat with the pair all Brand managed to elicit is they have a DVD out in time for Christmas, Lucas is gay and Walliams’ mother is still alive, and you didn’t need to watch the show to find that out.
It’s appropriate that the production company responsible for this 50-minute exercise in egomania is called Vanity Projects, with its corporate logo being of a scruffy-looking man holding onto his genitals.
Who says narcissists don’t do insight?
