Russell Brand was a creation of television and the tabloids, not the comedy circuit

Until last night's Dispatches, I had never seen Russell Brand's comedy act. I now look back on those days with affection. 

But that doesn't mean I wasn't aware of him. As I complained in 2013:

Russell Brand turned up writing on football for the Guardian. He guest edits the New Statesman. He's interviewed on Newsnight. I can’t get away from him.

He wasn’t much of a sportswriter and his political views on Newsnight were ridiculous – a bunch of media-left slogans and a call for unelected officials to tax us all.

But then why should he be expected to be an expert on these things? He is a niche comedian.

Brand’s trouble is that he has become a symbol of youthful cool and everyone wants to be associated with him.

Jonathan Ross’s exit from the BBC arose from his inability to grow middle aged gracefully. He wanted to show how young and hip he still was. And the way to show that was to demonstrate to us that he knew all about Brand’s love life.

And two years later Owen Jones fell under Brand's spell too. And have a look at the Guardian's contributor page for Brand to see just how much the paper loved him.

The extent to which Brand was a media creation was brought home to me by something Simon Evans tweeted this afternoon:

Brand is not now and never was a comedian. He was never on the 'comedy circuit', which is now being traduced as an unreconstructed sewer of nodding, winking, pawing, leering predatory men, with a code of silence to match their coercive behaviour.

He's a TV/tabloid/PR construct and that is the sewer you need to navigate if you want to understand the culture that allowed him to thrive. Pretty much the exact same one that allowed his illustrious precursors in disgrace to thrive before him.

I was a stand up from 1996 and gigged hard on the circuit until 2010 or so. I didn’t see Brand on a bill once. I’ve been in multiple dressing rooms with everyone else from that era, however quickly they elevated to TV and tour shows. That’s how it works. I’ve never even met Brand. 

The only time I saw Brand at a show was  standing at the back of a one off gig being hosted by his friend Simon Amstell. I am not guilting Simon by association, I don’t know him. But that’s who he was there with. 

Brand is (or rather was in those years) 100 per cent the product of the very culture that C4 deliberately cultivated like a pseudo left wing Daily Mail sidebar of shame, with a dash of Eurotrash. I found it nauseating but they loved his bad boy shock factor.

My honest gut feeling was that he would have been despised in 90 per cent of 'dressing' rooms on the circuit. They were old fashioned enough on the whole and If nothing else he showed a good deal of self awareness in steering clear of the place and booking himself on the fast track to notoriety via Big Brother and Bizarre.

And for some sharp analysis of the way the media kowtowed to Brand, see Evans's sharp analysis of his appearance on Newsnight in the video above.

He says of it:

It’s not a masterpiece (and I cringe at some of the boosted “laughter track”) but then it was written and performed in a 48-hour period. And the hat was misjudged. I did not quite understand the format. 

But I will assert that my chosen take on Brand was driven through against the prevailing perception of his having spoken truth to power in that Newsnight interview. Prevailing in the SUFTW offices at any rate. And particularly among… but no. I’ll leave it there.