Russell Brand – Confidence man
Explicit content warning
10/16/24 • 86 min
1 Listener
What the hell happened to Russell Brand? Ten years ago, the comedian and actor was the loudest voice on the British left as his florid calls for spiritual and political revolution won him the support of politicians and journalists. Now he is a full-time conspiracy theorist and disgraced exile from mainstream culture, conducting prayer meetings with Jordan Peterson and flirting with Donald Trump. The fall of a celebrity is not usually Origin Story material but Brand’s transformation epitomises the political chaos of the last decade: how populism and paranoia scramble conventional notions of right and left to create a volatile third category.
In the first episode of season six, Dorian and Ian reassess Brand’s extraordinary rise to fame in the 2000s in light of recent allegations of sexual misconduct and explore how British culture gave him a free pass. In 2013 Brand swapped sex and fame for a new compulsion, reinventing himself as a flamboyant agitator to great acclaim. In the void between Occupy and Corbynism, his verbose mishmash of self-help and socialism briefly made him a lion of the left. During the pandemic Brand embraced a darker shade of politics, promoting conspiracy theories about Covid-19, Ukraine and much more besides. After the allegations broke last year he went full crank, aligning himself with Robert F Kennedy Jr, Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones in the paranoid space.
What does Brand’s journey to the fringes tell us about the shifting political landscape? Did he really switch sides or were the red flags flying all along? What can the left learn from its haste to turn a motormouth comedian into a radical icon? Is Brand’s latest incarnation sincere or opportunistic, and does it really matter? And which of his tomes makes for the most painful reading today: Revolution or My Booky Wook?
This is a bizarre story of celebrity and conspiracy, addiction and attention, which says a great deal about where we are now.
Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory – out 17th Oct
Origin Story will be live at the Tabernacle in London on the 7th of November for a special post-US election show. Tickets here.
Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon.
Reading List
Books
Russell Brand - My Booky Wook (2007)
Russell Brand - Revolution (2014)
Anna Merlan - Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power (2019)
Naomi Klein - Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (2023)
Video and audio
Russell Brand at parliamentary select committee on drug addiction (2012)
Newsnight debate on drug addiction with Peter Hitchens (2012)
Newsnight interview with Jeremy Paxman (2013)
Newsnight interview with Evan Davis (2014)
Brand: A Second Coming, directed by Ondi Timoner (2015)
Russell Brand: In Plain Sight: Dispatches (2023)
Articles
Michael Kelly, ‘The Road to Paranoia’, New Yorker (1995)
Piers Morgan, ‘Russell Brand’, GQ (2006)
Miranda Sawyer, Brand on the run, The Guardian (2008)
Russell Brand on Margaret Thatcher: “I always felt sorry for her children”, The Guardian (2013)
Russell Brand on revolution: “We no longer have the luxury of tradition”, New Statesman (2013)
Brian Logan, ‘Messiah Complex – review’, Guardian (2013)
Ma...
What the hell happened to Russell Brand? Ten years ago, the comedian and actor was the loudest voice on the British left as his florid calls for spiritual and political revolution won him the support of politicians and journalists. Now he is a full-time conspiracy theorist and disgraced exile from mainstream culture, conducting prayer meetings with Jordan Peterson and flirting with Donald Trump. The fall of a celebrity is not usually Origin Story material but Brand’s transformation epitomises the political chaos of the last decade: how populism and paranoia scramble conventional notions of right and left to create a volatile third category.
In the first episode of season six, Dorian and Ian reassess Brand’s extraordinary rise to fame in the 2000s in light of recent allegations of sexual misconduct and explore how British culture gave him a free pass. In 2013 Brand swapped sex and fame for a new compulsion, reinventing himself as a flamboyant agitator to great acclaim. In the void between Occupy and Corbynism, his verbose mishmash of self-help and socialism briefly made him a lion of the left. During the pandemic Brand embraced a darker shade of politics, promoting conspiracy theories about Covid-19, Ukraine and much more besides. After the allegations broke last year he went full crank, aligning himself with Robert F Kennedy Jr, Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones in the paranoid space.
What does Brand’s journey to the fringes tell us about the shifting political landscape? Did he really switch sides or were the red flags flying all along? What can the left learn from its haste to turn a motormouth comedian into a radical icon? Is Brand’s latest incarnation sincere or opportunistic, and does it really matter? And which of his tomes makes for the most painful reading today: Revolution or My Booky Wook?
This is a bizarre story of celebrity and conspiracy, addiction and attention, which says a great deal about where we are now.
Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory – out 17th Oct
Origin Story will be live at the Tabernacle in London on the 7th of November for a special post-US election show. Tickets here.
Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon.
Reading List
Books
Russell Brand - My Booky Wook (2007)
Russell Brand - Revolution (2014)
Anna Merlan - Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power (2019)
Naomi Klein - Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (2023)
Video and audio
Russell Brand at parliamentary select committee on drug addiction (2012)
Newsnight debate on drug addiction with Peter Hitchens (2012)
Newsnight interview with Jeremy Paxman (2013)
Newsnight interview with Evan Davis (2014)
Brand: A Second Coming, directed by Ondi Timoner (2015)
Russell Brand: In Plain Sight: Dispatches (2023)
Articles
Michael Kelly, ‘The Road to Paranoia’, New Yorker (1995)
Piers Morgan, ‘Russell Brand’, GQ (2006)
Miranda Sawyer, Brand on the run, The Guardian (2008)
Russell Brand on Margaret Thatcher: “I always felt sorry for her children”, The Guardian (2013)
Russell Brand on revolution: “We no longer have the luxury of tradition”, New Statesman (2013)
Brian Logan, ‘Messiah Complex – review’, Guardian (2013)
Ma...
Previous Episode
The British Board of Film Classification – Who watches the watchers?
Sex! Violence! Censorship! These days the British Board of Film Classification rarely makes headlines but it was on the cultural frontlines throughout the 20 th century, from Herbert Asquith and the dawn of British cinema to Mary Whitehouse and “video nasties”. Through the turbulent life of one institution, Ian takes Dorian through a century of moral panics, censorship and furious debates about cinema’s influence on the life of the nation. This (literally) cinematic tale ranges from The Birth of a Nation and Nosferatu to Cannibal Holocaust and The Life of Brian, and has an unusually uplifting ending. Won’t somebody think of the children?!
Origin Story will be live at the Tabernacle in London on the 7th of November for a special post-US election show. Tickets here.
Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon.
Reading List
The Miracle Of The Movies by Leslie Wood, Burke Publishing 1915
Obscenity and Film Censorship: An Abridgement of the Williams Report edited by Bernard Williams
The British Board of Film Censors: film censorship in Britain, 1896-1950 by James Robertson, Dover, N.H. 1985
Censoring the moving image by Phillip French Seagull Books, 2007
See no evil: Banned films and video controversy by David Kerekes, Headpress 2000
Ban The Sadist Videos: 2005 Documentary
Mark Kermode interview with Robin Duval: Guardian 2004
Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Next Episode
The Suffragettes – Part one – Deeds not words
This week we begin the tumultuous story of the suffragettes. In 1903, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union. Sick of waiting in vain for women’s suffrage, they decided to secure it by hook or by crook. By 1906, the so-called suffragettes were the most exciting, audacious activists in the land, with their banners of purple, white and green. They then took on the might of the British state with ingenious protests and hunger strikes before agreeing to an uneasy two-year ceasefire while parliament wrestled over whether to give women the vote. We conclude part one at the end of 1911, with political failure and the dawn of a new phase of militancy.
Who were the Pankhursts and their inner circle? How did they interact with Millicent Fawcett’s moderate suffragists? Why were Liberal politicians so determined to deny women the vote? And could it all have worked out very differently?
It’s a fiery story of courage, conflict and missed chances, as British women found their political voice for the first time.
Origin Story will be live at the Tabernacle in London on the 7th of November for a special post-US election show. Tickets here.
Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory
Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon.
Reading List
Diane Atkinson – Rise Up Women!: The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes (2018)
Helen Lewis – Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights (2020)
Joyce Marlow (editor) – Suffragettes: The Fight for Votes for Women (2015)
Glenda Norquay (editor) – Voices and Votes: A Literary Anthology of the Women’s Suffrage Campaign (1995)
Christabel Pankhurst – Pressing Problems of the Coming Age (1924)
Christabel Pankhurst – Unshackled: The Story of How We Won the Vote (1959)
Sylvia Pankhurst – The Suffragette: The History of the Women’s Militant Suffrage Movement 1905-10 (1911)
Sylvia Pankhurst – The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals (1931)
Mary R. Richardson – Laugh a Defiance (1953)
Fern Riddell – ‘Sanitising the Suffragettes’ (2018)
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
If you like this episode you’ll love
Episode Comments
Generate a badge
Get a badge for your website that links back to this episode
<a href="https://goodpods.com/podcasts/origin-story-204446/russell-brand-confidence-man-76330199"> <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/badges/generic-badge-1.svg" alt="listen to russell brand – confidence man on goodpods" style="width: 225px" /> </a>
Copy