Recovery by Russell Brand - review

I wonder when I first went badly off Russell Brand. Was it Sachsgate? Or was it when he started a YouTube channel called “the Trews” (because it’s like, news, but also, like true — one would have thought that even a mockney would have remembered that “trews” is slang for trousers)?

Or was it earlier, when he turned up to present a show on MTV dressed as Osama Bin Laden — on September 12, 2001? Or was it when he started giving publicity to David Icke, who thinks, among other things, that Hitler was a Rothschild? Or when he called his first book My Booky Wook? Or when I first saw him on TV and thought: “He’s not even slightly funny”?

Well, now he has another booky wook. This one’s about his addiction to druggy wugs, or sexy wex, but he does not dwell on the details. Rather, this is a self-help book, or would be if it wasn’t, basically, the 12-step programme used by Alcoholics, etc, anonymous. Brand has his work cut out: he is, he claims, “addicted to drugs, alcohol, sex, money, love and fame”.

I regard the first three things on Brand’s list as cushions on the divan of pleasure, the fourth a tiresome necessity, the fifth far too important to mess around with, and the sixth a deranging gadfly that some people mystifyingly call upon themselves.

That, I think, is Brand’s true problem, and the problem from which all others arise. And the fact that this book may be worthwhile — if he helps one addict get out of the mess they’re in, that can’t be bad — does not conceal the fact that he’s got a long, long way to go before he kicks the fame habit. “1.25 million books sold in the UK, 12.2 million Twitter followers”, it says in the publicity accompanying the book. Very anonymous.

As for the contents, they are pretty much exactly as you would expect. Whatever native gift for expression Brand may have had is all too often shoehorned into the language of The Programme: “In these areas [sex, professional life, etc.] then I have not been living according to my Higher Self.”

Every so often he says something genuinely useful. “If you are temperamental in your working life... this will be tolerated for as long as you are making people money.” Every so often he says something funny. Of Step 4, which involves writing down all the things that are fucking you up, he says, “I avoided Step 4 like I owed it money.” I rather liked that, but I’m not sure the line is his own. And every so often, he says something I don’t understand. Talking about his sprained ankle healing by itself: “If this were a phenomenon exclusive to me I’d be dancing nude in the fountain at Lourdes.” Anyone? No, me neither. But the book’s still more worthwhile than anything else he’s done. If it works.

£10, Amazon, Buy it now