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Russell Brand's My Booky Wook

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Excerpts selected by Strange de Jim from My Booky Wook, a Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up by Russell Brand, Collins 2009

"My life is a series of embarrassing incidents strung together by telling people about those embarrassing incidents."

Russell Brand captivated audiences in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and hosted the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. He appears on all the late-night shows. "For my mum, the most important woman in my life, this book is dedicated to you. Now for God's sake don't read it."

Page 8 - ["jail-swerves," when you're offered the choice of prison or rehab.] The same option exists for the terminally saucy -- get treatment or go to prison; in prison there'll be much more sex but it could err on the side of coercive.

22 - ... my flesh a rocket of which I am the captain and chief cosmo-naughty.

25 - Many's the time I'd strut off stage at some dingy comedy pit thinking, "There! Feel the magic!" as the audience queued for refunds.

31 - Amid the banality a little girl approached me and said, "Your dad's in bed with my mum. Do you want to come and have a look?" I paused. "Yeah, alright."

39 - I was a cross-reader, feasting on the forbidden fruit of girl fiction.

43 - And while in retrospect I can understand his resentment of my Quentin Crisp quirkiness -- flitting around, all self-absorbed and vain and unusual ...

50 - "Oh, we're waiting for The Queen's Legs to open so we can have a drink."

67 - One day, for a laugh -- which has been the chief motivating factor for many of my worst decisions -- I drew a face on my penis. It was on what would technically be termed the bell-end. I'm not circumcised, so the whole mechanism of the joke is that you show someone your penis, then pull back your foreskin to reveal the punch line -- a grinning face.

82 - The need to find out what will happen if I don't relent or moderate my actions has been a constant source of difficulty and discomfort in my life.

86 - I was good in drama classes. "It's just showing off," I thought, "sanctioned showing off ... Oh my God, I've found a loophole."

99 - My virginity was gone, left in Marianne's room, checkin' his contract to see if the tussle that had granted him liberty could ever properly be called "sex." It could by me. I blabbed to anyone who'd listen: instead of telling no one as requested, I told anyone I encountered." For me, it was more important that people knew I had sex than having sex.

122 - Most of the girls at Italia Conti had graduated from the school course (for those aged up to sixteen), which meant they'd been trapped in that place for years with homosexuals. So when I arrived there, still knowing how to communicate with girls because I was all feminized and everything, but being hysterically heterosexual, it was perfect.

150 - I prefer not to work on anything where I'm not being looked at and there's no chance of getting applauded at the end.

152 - I've squandered the best years of my life watching bin bags arcing out of the windows of disillusioned women. I shouldn't bother to unpack, I should just leave my stuff outside by the bins.

154 - If you see the words "refugee woman," an image will come into your mind. That image is what I was looking at. To her left were two huddled, baffled children. To her right were two more baffled children. "I don't remember going to bed with all these children," I thought. "Perhaps if I continue looking around the room an explanation will appear." ..."Well, this is unusual," I thought. "Perhaps I'll go somewhere else now where this isn't happening." I tried to think of a facial expression that would make everything alright but there wasn't one. There is no facial expression that says, "Sorry, I drunkenly, nakedly got into bed with your children and your mother." ... So I just done a sort of grin, cupped my nuts and walked out of the room. I went upstairs, got back into her bed and went back to sleep again, confident that the dream weaver would have nothing to match the lunacy that reality was churning out.

167 - I then took a liter bottle of vodka and drank it down all nice in my tum. When you do that you get a ten-minute grace period before your body realizes what an idiot it's housing.

173 - They'd always be telling me I had to pack it in, but it was also clear that this was an industry that had revered Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton, and as long as you could come up with the goods, you could get away with just about anything.

194 - When Bob Mortimer came on Big Brother's Big Mouth last year he referred to Mikey as "the perfumed laborer": that's just beautiful.

203 - And when MTV gave me a contract to make ninety shows I thought, "That's it -- what a relief, I've made it," and went from "Oh, that's ever so kind of you" to "Where's my fucking taxi?" in about ten seconds.

291 - Intrigued though I was, I broke off from the conversation at this point to go and meet Gritty and score some heroin -- just to get through the rest of the meeting about how I had to give it up. ... Once you've had some heroin, the idea of stopping taking it is bearable; it's when you've not had any that it becomes fucking terrifying.

292 - Chip turned out to be a distinguished, bespectacled gent, warm and forceful, like good sodomy.

300 - I couldn't go on living like this. I had to become successful. "I want to change the world, and do something valuable and beautiful. I want people to remember me before I'm dead, and then more afterward." And at this juncture I was finally willing to do whatever it was going to take to bring that about -- up to and including giving up drugs. From that moment on, I really did take things in the textbook rehab fashion, one day at a time.

301 - You can get away with any admission, however appalling, so long as it's preceded by the words "to my shame." ... It's like "Simon Says" for junkies.

306 - After some minutes of struggling to get the attention of the Jesus-loving real-people-hating Quakers ...

312 - I remember thinking, "This kid is sixteen years old. When some of us were sixteen years old, we were down by the disused railway track with an empty Hovis bag filled up with solvents, inhaling deeply -- you're wasting your life, son." "This kid thinks I'm crazy and wild! I can't let him down, with his little face all full of hope."

316 - "Russell, I think you're really not taking this seriously; in your mind, you're just taking notes for your stand-up comedy." This is something they said at the KeyStone place as well ... 'cos I fucking was, and always have been, because that's all life is to me -- raw material for comedy. People tell you "Life's not a rehearsal." Well, mine is -- it's a rehearsal for when I get onstage and do the real performance.

322 - ... my cat Morrissey, who was an irresponsible Christmas gift from a girl I was seeing for about a week. Morrissey remains my constant companion, sauntering and judging, eating and attacking life with a sense of entitlement that makes the Duchess of Kent look like St. Francis of Assisi.

324 - I've dragged that lad through brothels and hellholes across the globe, and he's never once said "thank you."

326 - John told me to let him speak to them. I was relieved because he uses willpower to change facts as part of his job.

328 - John says he always has to convince people that I'm not mad. This is because I am. A bit.

333 - At last the door was opened by this ... well, woman I s'pose you'd call her. She filled the frame of the door, and I had to crane round her to check the orgy didn't consist of only her. "Well, dear, there will be oral in the crook of me arm, water-sports in the nape of me neck, and you don't want to know what's going on round the back."

334 - Another thing which happened at that orgy that shouldn't is a washing-machine repairman showed up -- not as a guest, but to repair the washing machine.

336 - I was a bit browned off about being sent to Keystone, not only because I knew it would mean no diddling, not even by my own porcelain hand, but also because of the unanticipated high number of pedophiles there.

349 - Nothing really changes, now I'm just a rich poor person.

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