sp!ked review of books | Blimey, he’s dead Dickensian and a lot like us!

What gives the Dickensian-era grammar an absurd feel is the desperately arcane vocabulary, where words from ‘bagatelle’ to ‘trachea’ gleam amidst the cock-er-nee syntax like big, shiny badges of the intellect. This applies even more to the references to, amongst others, Jackson Pollock, PG Wodehouse, and Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy. Clever, ain’t he?

This stylistic contradiction is not accidental to his appeal; it is central. Brand poses as learned urchin, a parochial cosmopolitan, an East End dandy born with a silver crack pipe in his mouth. Combining a refusal to conjugate verbs with a hermetic vocabulary, he is simultaneously common and aloof. He acts the role of the manliest man of the people, ‘going the match’, loving the ladies, and guiltlessly masturbating, while simultaneously enjoying the comforts of the cultural highlands. His pose mocks both, absurdly elevating the low while gleefully degrading the high. There is no limit, nothing he takes seriously.

It has certainly worked for him. From writing broadsheet football columns to his Channel 4 show Ponderland, where he was given free rein to ponder stuff, brand Brand has never been more potent. Commissioning editors love him, producers adore him. Russell can do no wrong. And even when he does, as with Sachs, it’s attributed to his edginess, his sheer unbounded exuberance. They are reassured by the veneer of intelligence, but excited by the plebian, common core. To limit such a powerful force of nature would be to destroy it. And, of course, lose the key 18-34 demographic.

Except it’s not really a force of nature. And it’s not, as Brand himself presents it, ‘authentic and honest’ (2). It’s a spectacular self-performance from a talented narcissist. ‘Is it insanely narcissistic for me to contemplate that Morrissey is trying to communicate with me through the wearing of replica West Ham tops?’ he asks, not entirely rhetorically, at the beginning of one piece. And that’s what the columns reveal. They are only ostensibly about football; their key subject is Brand, the only subject he himself admits that he Googles. Too often the columns begin telling the reader where it is he’s writing from, whether it’s Tuscany, the Isle of Wight, or Hollywood. And too often they revert to Brand’s impression of something, not the thing itself, of what Tony Cottee means to him, of how David Beckham appears to him, not how David Beckham actually is. His gaze is content to rest on the mirroring surface of things.

The contradiction between the wilful anti-grammar and the recondite vocabulary reflect the narcissism at Brand’s heart. For he is both tragically ravenous for admiration, for recognition, yet contemptuous of those who provide it. The world exists for him, and for him alone. And this is the problem with Russell Brand. His overweening narcissism meets the all-too-moveable force of editors and producers too unsure of themselves, and too sure of Brand’s convention-smashing appeal. His is a great talent made slender through the lack of limits. The humiliation of Manuel was but its most devastating example. As these sometimes genuinely witty, but often self-indulgent columns attest, rarely has someone needed saving from themselves as much as Russell Brand.