Madison Readers Questions, May 2009

Twelve months ago I split up with my partner of 4 years because I met someone else. However almost as soon as we ended our relationship I knew it was a mistake. It’s taken almost a year for me to persuade him to let me have another chance but . now I’m worried that our relationship can never go back to what it was. Is it ever a good idea to try again with someone who’s heart you’ve broken?

Very rarely, as a rule. But that doesn’t stop us trying to be the exception that proves it. Hindsight can make the past look rose-tinted, but it’s important to remember that there must have been something not quite right – otherwise you wouldn’t have been tempted elsewhere. I’ve ‘gone back’ to a failed relationship before and it didn’t work out, but I always operate on the basis that if you don’t try, you will never know. And while you don’t know, you can never have closure; the if-onlys and the but-maybes will gnaw away at you. There is only one way to find out for sure and that is to try again – but do so with a realistic mindset because it will not be the same as it was before. Twelve months is a long time and a lot will have changed about him, especially if his heart has hardened up with scar tissue. He will be more fragile and guarded. You might find him a bit colder, more distant, mistrustful, occasionally hurtful. I know I was. These are self-protection measures, the actions of someone who is being careful not to let himself get hurt again. Take it slowly and be prepared to give a little more ground than you ordinarily would. But if at first you don’t succeed, try not to try again – for everyone’s sake.

I recently met a lovely guy at a mutual friend’s party two weeks ago. We got chatting and after discovering we live in the same neighbourhood, he said: “We should meet for coffee sometime” However we didn’t make any firm plans and at the end of the evening he didn’t ask for my number. Was it just friendly ‘guy talk’ or should I get in contact with him. And if so, what’s a grown-up way to ask a man out?

You need to engineer another ‘chance’ meeting. Invent an excuse for a few drinks – something where you are the centre of attention, ideally – and get your mutual friend to make sure the lovely guy in question comes along. Ensure that a lot of your friends are there so you look really popular and so that it doesn’t feel like a high-pressure set up. You could let your mutual friend in on the fact that you quite like him so a subtle hint can be dropped. Guys like some encouragement so long as they don’t feel they are being aggressively pursued. Once you’ve had some Dutch courage (but before you’ve had too much), go and say hi and have a line of conversation to back up the hello. At an appropriate juncture, say: “Oh we never did arrange to go for that coffee. Here, call my phone and then I’ll save your number.” That’s casual but decisive and keeps you in control. If nothing more happens that night, leave it a full day and then text him: “Fancy meeting up for a drink?” Keep it simple and keep him guessing. Make sure you go for an alcoholic drink, though. Coffee is awkward, it makes your breath smell, neither party knows where it is leading. Alcohol removes inhibitions and sometimes clothes.

Me and my partner are due to get married in the next few months and have been putting our guest list together. He wants an ex girlfriend to come, I don’t. Who’s right?

You are – 100 per cent. You’ve already got a million things to worry about on your wedding day; you don’t need an extra one. If her being there is going to make you feel at all uncomfortable, then you are perfectly within your rights to calmly but firmly ask your fiancé to ditch the bitch. End of.
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My quarter-life crisis

Teenage angst is so 15 years ago – Dan Rookwood gets to the hurt of turning 30

By the time this magazine finds its way into your hands, I will have crossed over into a whole new tick-box on the questionnaires. I’ll be [cough] 30. It’s become as unmentionable chez moi as ‘the Scottish play’ for superstitious thespians. I’m convinced my pacifistic fear of hitting the big three-oh is making me fall apart: mentally, physically, literally.

Nearly 30 = getting old. It means that my chances of playing professional sport have well and truly receded with my hairline. And it means that I finally need to start facing up to my responsibilities. Turning 30 is a life landmark that demands you check your personal compass and look at the direction you’re heading. As such, it’s a right royal pain in the arse.

The age seesaw is virtually impossible to balance. You spend the first 21 years of your life wishing you looked older and the subsequent however-many wishing you looked younger. No sooner have you come of age than it’s gone again.

One of the bittersweet by-products of getting older is a tendency towards a fond-but-false recollection of one’s own halcyon days. “When I were a lad…” I had a golden age of invincibility from the years of 23 to 26 – after the awkward skin and skinniness stage, but before the inevitable onset of baldness and paunch – when I could eat and drink and spend and sow wild oats with impunity born of a liberating disregard for consequences. It was bloody great. I now appreciate that it’s exactly this kind of rosy-specs revisionism (and the panic it elicits) that causes middle-aged men to spunk their load on a new Ferrari and/or their secretary.

I’m tearing my hair out with worry that I’m going bald. When I brush my hair in the morning, it is off the pillow and into the bin. And I recently published a second edition of my chin. In fact, I feel like my face is on one of those time-lapse cameras they have in nature docos, ageing me before my very eyes like the Picture of Dorian Gray while David Attenborough whispers earnestly in the background.

It’s not solely about superficial vanity, of course; it’s also about a deeper, more insidious and corrosive bacterium of modern day life: status. My hang-ups about age are weighed down by a heavy, gnawing, ever-present ache that maybe I’ve not quite achieved what I ought to by this age, and that if I’m not careful, life will pass me by. Good grief, I’m nearly 30 and yet I am still fumbling through each day like a blind man patting the walls for an exit he can't find. By the time my dad was 30, he had a house and car, a wife and two kids, and an idea of what he was doing. I have none of those things.

But I do draw a modicum of comfort from the knowledge that I am far from alone. There are significant declines in the milestones today’s typical 20-somethings have reached. The often traumatic transition to adulthood is taking longer than ever before because of job-hopping, delayed marriage and a increasing tendency towards indecision – technically known as General Fuckwittery. According to census data, the average Australian aged 18-30 has had seven different jobs.

What constitutes adulthood? The significant shift from dependence to independence has not been closely studied in Australia so indulge me while I extrapolate from the American Sociological Association’s findings. Using benchmarks such as graduating; leaving mum and dad; finding a full-time job; getting hitched; having a kid; and attaining financial independence, the ASA found new trends. In 2000, 46 per cent of women and 31 percent of men had reached those markers by age 30. In 1960, 77 per cent of women and 65 per cent of men had reached those same markers by age 30. Among 25-year-old women, 70 per cent in 1960 had attained traditional adult status, as defined by reaching those benchmarks, whereas in 2000 only 25 per cent had done so.

Why? We have grown sick with affluenza. Each generation has a higher ‘life expectancy’ than the last. But the truth is, despite these great expectations, today's 20-somethings will be the first kids who won't do better than their parents. The cost and competition of living has never been higher. A university education doesn't deliver the same promises that it once did – with a 53 per cent increase in enrollment since 1970, the qualified competition for a job has intensified. Our grasping greed for instant gratification means that we are not as financially or emotionally secure and mature as mum and dad. With a record $42 billion-worth of crippling debt racked up in 2007, us Australians are living dangerously on credit – averaging $3,000 per person. Just last year, I had to ask my retired mother if she could pay off my Visa bill and I’d pay her back interest-free. I did the same thing the year I left university. So that’s nine years and no discernable financial progress. It’s embarrassing, but increasingly common. Nearly two-thirds of people in their early 20s are financially supported by their parents, while 40 per cent still receive assistance in their late 20s, according to the ASA.

One of the greatest things about being a man as opposed to a woman is that there is no alarm on our ticking biological clocks. So to a certain extent, we can take our time over getting our act together. But perhaps the absence of a natural deadline is unhelpful and unproductive. As the ASA’s stats would suggest, it is producing a Peter Pandemic, a generation of socially immature adultolescent males.

I began my 20s as a straggle-bearded idealistic revolutionary who thought he could change the world. I’m ending them as a realist who knows he can’t. But that doesn’t mean that I am powerless to get my house in order, both literally and metaphorically. To that end, I have a means: I’m finally paying off my debts and have even managed to save some money for the first time since I was about ten. My girlfriend and I will soon have enough in our joint savings account for a deposit. Oh yeah, it’s pretty rock ‘n’ roll round here, I can tell you.

Despite the onset of scintillating conversations about tracker mortgages and of increasingly painful hangovers, I’m finding that taking responsibility and control of my life at long last is making me feel better about getting older. Maybe turning 30 isn’t so bad after all. At least that’s what mummy said when I went over to pick up my washing last week.
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What’s all the fuzz about?

Trimming your pubic hair is nothing to be ashamed ofHere is the news. The Australian bush is being eradicated at an alarming rate. This mass deforestation is taking place with such rapidity, it’s worthy of its own Kyoto treaty. That’s right: research suggests that few people in Australia have pubes any more.

The evolutionary scale of ‘primate change’ that goes from ape to cave dweller to Pete Sampras to modern-day GQ reader is going to have to budge up for a new age of man: a post-pubescent narcissistic waxed work who has clipped, shaved, plucked or lasered off all his body hair. Well, that’s if the latest statistics are to be believed anyway.

You always have to take these surveys with a whole sea full of salt – especially when they have been conducted by a marketing company whose job it is to create a market for the product they are pushing through ‘majority rules’. If they can convince you of a sweeping trend, then peer pressure compels the odd ones out to follow it. So when I saw a press release from Philips for their new electric razor called the BodyGroom, the cynic in me scoffed at the results of their supporting survey that claim that almost half of men admit to shaving their armpits; 41 per cent trim their crotch region; 29 per cent shave their legs. Sure. Who were they asking? Olympic swimmers? Strip-o-grams? Retired circus freaks? What a load of hairy bollocks, I thought, as I absent-mindedly scratched my hairy bollocks.

But in a comparatively agenda-free 2009 sex survey in Time Out Sydney – which I should point out up front is the magazine that I edit – 85 per cent of respondents ’fessed up to grooming their pubic hair. Admittedly this was an online poll of a thousand Sydneysiders, several of whom probably never get out of their bikinis. But when you break the results down further, they are pretty revealing: 96 per cent of women tend their lady-garden. Fur enough. But a more surprising 74 per cent of men get out the pinkie shears on a regular basis. And that number pushes 88 per cent when you look at the hairless figures of men aged 30 and under.

Emboldened by this recent consensus of pubic opinion, I can now confidently expose that I have been trimming my private privet for years. Not continuously you understand; I occasionally do other things too.

What’s the point of men trimming their body hair? Part of it is fashion: the old school 70s medallion men like George “Hairy Chest” Best have been superseded by the smoother operators of the naughties such as David Beckham. Part of it is vanity: trimming back body hair gives you better muscle definition, allows you to tan more evenly and reduces body odour and chafing. And part of it is insecurity: the real reason for pruning the foliage down there is apparently to make the stem look bigger. “Trimming back pubic hair is thought to add an extra ‘optical inch’ to your manhood,” says BodyGroom’s website. I probably get about 100 emails a week from spammers claiming they can add size to my penis. This is the first time the proposition has been bona fide. And now that people like Philips are kindly manufacturing the equipment-enhancing equipment, men no longer have to risk accidental vasectomy hoisting their ballbag over the sink and chopping artlessly at their anal beard with the girlfriend’s nail scissors.

When I was at school, pubic hair was something to be proudly cultivated. It literally separated the men from the boys. My older brother once told me to rub Blood & Bone into my crotch. Which I did. And the only reason I ate my greens was because my mum said it would put hairs on my chest. Although now I think about it, she also said that to my sister.

In You Only Live Twice, an hirsute James Bond smugly explains to a pubeless Tiger Tanaka the secret of his potent attraction to women while taking a bath with him. “Japaneshe proverb shay: ‘Bird never make nesht in bare tree,’” says Sean Connery. That may have been so back in 1967, Sean, but these days if you want a bird in the hand, it’s worth trimming your man-bush. Just ask 00-shaven Daniel Craig.

Body hair is an evolutionary hangover from prehistoric times. It used to make sense. Or rather scents: it trapped pheromones to attract the opposite sex. But now we have alcohol to do that instead. It also helped keep cave dwellers warm until the invention of things called clothes and central heating.

As anyone who ever came across their dad’s vintage porn stash as a kid will remember, pubic hair used to be big. But log on to YouPorn today and you won’t see a ‘map of Tassie’ on the girls so much as a map of Adelaide: i.e. there’s fuck-all down there. While for their part, the blokes have either had a severe BSC – a back, sack and crack wax ¬– or they have sculpted their pubes into something resembling an ornamental bonsai arboretum. You’ve not seen such ridiculous-looking bush since George Dubyer was in power. Although he didn’t need any help when it came to looking like a bigger dick than he already was.

Let me be clear: I am not for one minute suggesting that we take our grooming tips from YouPorn. Otherwise we would have a ridiculous surfeit of potty-mouthed, peroxide-blond, perma-tanned, pubeless preeners. That’s what Cronulla is for.

But done with subtlety, a little trim of the hair down there to keep things neat and tidy will give you a more flattering silhouette. The bald fact is: when it comes to your meat and two veg, going ‘organic’ doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s all about presentation. So gents, have a bit of pride and groom.
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The new age of chivalry

You hold the door open, you pay for dinner, you defend her honour. But are you wasting your time? The rules have changed, gentlemen. Have you noticed how women want sexual equality – but only on their terms, thereby nullifying the whole notion of equality? They demand to earn the same wages, and yet they still expect us to pay for dinner. There’s no such thing as “woman’s work” any more; we’re required to change the nappy and hang the washing out. That’s fine, but when the car needs an oil change or the bins have to be taken out – well, that’s “a man’s job”, obviously. Women want to have their cake and eat it – and they’re not even prepared to bake it themselves anymore.

This isn’t some chauvinistic rant about how women should know their place – mainly because I like my scrotum precisely where it is: attached to my personage. My point is that it can difficult for us blokes to know how to treat girls these days. Sorry, I shouldn’t say “girls”. I made the mistake of calling the women in my office “girls” the other day – and I nearly got lynched for being patronising. So I asked them if they even knew what the word “patronising” meant…

This helps to demonstrate what a tightrope made of eggshells us men now have to negotiate. In the bygone age of chivalry, where men were gallant knights and women were damsels in distress, we knew what our roles were and what was expected of us. They dropped their hanky and we would rush to their aid, lancing dragons left, right and centre and challenging any ne’er-do-wells who got in our way to duels at dawn.

The goalposts of gentlemanliness seem to have shifted even in my lifetime. I was brought up to treat women a certain way: to offer up my seat, to open doors, to try and remember their name the morning after a one-night stand. You know, the basics.

But now that women are our equals – at least when it suits them – the rules of chivalry have changed. Some women might want you to throw down your coat so they don’t get their shoes muddy. Others might look at you as if to say: “What the hell did you just ruin your coat for, stupid bastard?” So what are we supposed to do?

A recent incident springs to mind. We’re having lunch for a friend’s special birthday. She’s a big girl, it must be said, but it’s her 30th and she decides she’s going to have the chocolate fondant for pudding. The bloke at the next table snorts and – in the kind of affected stage whisper that he knows we will hear – says how disgusting it is that “obese people have no self-restraint”.

I see my friend’s face flush with embarrassment. I feel mine do the same with anger. There is no way I am going to let that go, especially on her 30th. My knuckles whiten, the vein in my neck pops out, but just as I begin to get to my feet to force-feed this shit-for-brains a napkin for his pudding, I catch my friend’s eye. It is welling with tears, but nevertheless it says: ‘please don’t make a scene’. She has more self-restraint than I do.

And she’s right, of course. Smacking this guy in the teeth would give his words the indelibility of a never-to-be-forgotten birthday anecdote. “And then Dan overreacted and got us all thrown out of the restaurant…” Far from helping, I’d be making it worse – rubbing salt into a wound rather than a wine stain.

The topic of table conversation is swiftly and adroitly altered by my other half, but I tune out. I sit and seethe in silence. I’m lost in a fantasy trance of what I should have said, what I should have done, how I should have dragged that punk out by his tie and punched him off the side of the wharf before coolly returning to my seat as if nothing untoward has happened. My girlfriend senses my tension and squeezes my hand like a hypnotist bringing me back into the room. When I snap out of it, I realise my heart is racing and my breathing has quickened.

Men are hard-wired to protect. Traditional, old-fashioned, throw-down-the-gauntlet, let’s-take-this-outside gallantry would have demanded that I settle this matter like a man. But that is not necessarily the best course of action. Hell, in some cultures, people get killed for dissing a woman.

Suppressing the impulse to intervene requires a strength of character that I evidently don’t have. It eats away at me later as I rehearse the incident on loop in my head. So I talk to my girlfriend about it. If it had been her that was insulted, I don’t think I could have held back. Nevertheless, I tell her I feel emasculated by the inaction. I feel less of a man. I, I, I… As I talk, I realise I’ve made it about me, about a need to feel in control, to feel like the alpha male.

You absolutely have to have a code of conduct for this kind of situation. It’s important. But you don’t have to follow it to the letter like some unwavering jobsworth with a clipboard and a ticklist.

I believe the impulse to protect is a correct one – but it needs to be harnessed, and it mustn’t be self-serving. You cannot have a Pavlovian, one-size-fits-all response. In the new age of chivalry, there are modern variables that need to be measured and weighed. You have to take the temperature of the situation. You have to feel the texture, read the context. And you have to do all this in that blinkered instant when your hair-trigger has been tripped and you just want to punch the fucker out.

Sometimes you step in, set things straight, punch fuckers out. Sometimes you don’t. And the only way you’ll know what’s appropriate is to read the situation first in that split-second.

True chivalry is not about you and your need to control the situation and make you feel like a real man. True chivalry is about her and what she needs you do. Sometimes she needs you to do nothing – and when every impulse in your body wants you to do something, that can take a lot more courage.

Months later, I speak to my friend about the birthday incident for the first time. She hasn’t forgotten. She thanks me for wanting to help but also thanks me for not weighing in, arms windmilling. She uses the word “gentlemanly”. I smile and give her a little bow. I tell her I will be there if she ever needs me. She smiles back and says that’s all a man ever needs to offer and all a woman ever needs to know.
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Russell Brand - the full interview

Incorrigible raconteur. Disreputable bon viveur. Inexhaustible shaggeur. Russell Brand is the unashamed star of UK stand-up comedy, Hollywood movies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and one of the biggest scandals in the history of the BBC. On the eve of his Sydney shows, he speaks exclusively to Time Out Sydney's Dan Rookwood

By Dan Rookwood.


Did you know your Enmore Theatre show sold out in 30 minutes here? I'm really proud and pleased that I can develop a following in another hemisphere, because stand-up comedy is more important to me than life. More important than eating, sleeping. I get a lot of interesting requests and comments on social networking sites from the people of Australia, some of which I'm very much looking forward to following up.

You've been to Sydney fairly recently, haven't you? Was that just a holiday? I came out to Sydney towards the end of last year and had an amazing time. I was only there for two days but it was terrific. A beautiful, clean, expansive blue-skied place. Yeah, I popped over for a few days because I was seeing an Australian woman, the ever lovely, beautiful Teresa Palmer [with whom Brand co-starred in Bedtime Stories].

What happened there? Nothing, really. I still adore her.

Do you have to change your act much when you take it to different countries? Yes, Dan, but good comedy is universal, that's why great comedians have international appeal, generally speaking. If what you're doing is incredibly parochial, it's difficult to succeed, but one has to temper the language, the references and learn where certain things have to be given more exposition.

Do you still struggle to get through customs these days? Yes. I get stopped quite a lot. Even though I've not taken drugs or had a drink and haven't been arrested for over six years now, I think I still have a gait and manner of a man who might be about to do something illegal.

Did you really travel with drugs up your arse? Yes, Dan, it's a necessity as a drug addict. It's more important than your wash bag really. There's no sense going away without drugs if you're a drug addict because it's not a holiday. It doesn't matter how nice a place you go to, you will still be shivering on the beach. I know you can get drugs on holiday but as an addict you need them as soon as you get off the plane, so you can't muck about.

When was the last time you were body searched? Seven years ago, when I was thrown off a plane in Barcelona for causing a ruckus. Not full cavity, thankfully, otherwise they would have found I was carrying heroin and marijuana. I generally travelled with drugs up my arse in the belief that if customs officers decided to pursue this unsavoury line of inquiry, my day would already be ruined, and the discovery of crack or heroin couldn't make it much worse.

When was the last time you were arrested? May Day 2001 when I stripped naked at an anti-globalisation protest. I've not been arrested or had any confrontation with the police since I've been off drugs. Obviously, not a coincidence.

You've been sacked in pretty dramatic fashion from most of your previous jobs haven't you? [See 'Brand on the Run' panel.] Perhaps most notably when you turned up to work at MTV the day after 9/11 dressed as Osama bin Laden and introduced your heroin dealer, Gritty, and his eight-year-old son to our own Kylie Minogue. Kylie was our guest on the show that day. Me, Gritty and his son Edwin went into the toilet and the two older members of our party smoked some crack. Edwin didn't have any. He was just a little boy and seemed quite upbeat about life. Children don't need drugs because they have sweets. We blearily swaggered out of the disabled toilet and on the other side of the foyer I saw Kylie, all famous and everything. Before I knew it, I'd walked across the foyer, made a kind of "wooh-ooh" noise – in a mum-across-a-neighbour's-fence sort of way – and said: "Kylie, meet Gritty". And there's me standing beside them, dressed as Osama bin Laden. I thought: 'It don't get much better than this.' And it didn't, 'cos they sacked me about two days later.

Kylie is royalty here. To Aussies, that was ruder than Paul Keating goosing the Queen. I would argue with that. There is no way that any transgression toward Kylie Minogue could equal what Paul Keating did to Her Majesty. What he did to our queen that day – he might as well have took a five pound note and rubbed it round the rim of his helmet.

Have you seen Kylie since? No, I've not seen dear, beloved Kylie. The last time I saw her, I was dressed like Osama bin Laden and I was introducing her to a crack and heroin dealer. That might be why it's the last time I saw her. She might be seriously avoiding me.

Just last year you resigned from your BBC Radio 2 show after broadcasting messages you left on Andrew Sachs' voicemail [the actor who played Manuel in Fawlty Towers] apologising for having sex with his granddaughter. Thirty thousand complaints and condemnation from the prime minister. Nice work. Some commentators said it was the biggest UK media story since the death of Diana. Certainly in terms of newspaper inches - if that is any way to judge anything other than the size of your willy or someone's orbs - it certainly was big.

You apologised to Sachs, but have you spoken to his granddaughter since? No. I can't envisage circumstances where that would be required.

All these scandals don't seem to have held you back. It all just seems to have made you more famous. Yes, that's fair. If people want to sack me, they should be prepared for the consequences. Really, I'm a good person, I care deeply about people, I'm just motivated by a peculiar cocktail of love and vanity.

Given that you haven't been able to hold down a single job until recently, it's pretty impressive that you now have several on the go. Are you making up for lost time? Yeah, very much. I've got to do all of it, because I was unemployed and unemployable for such a significant portion of my life. I'm trying to make up for eight to ten years.

You were bulimic and into self-harm as teenager. Have you ever been diagnosed with any mental illnesses? Yes, depression and manic depression and more latterly, bipolar. Attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity. It's difficult to know which of those diagnoses are correct because most of the time I was very young and on drugs.

Are you happier these days – or is it still up and down?
Yes, much happier. This is the closest I have got to feeling fulfilled.

Your past drug addictions are well documented. Mainly by you in your autobiography, My Booky Wook. Are you still an addict? I would never, ever be arrogant enough to say that addiction has been conquered, I just don't take drugs anymore or drink, one day at a time. Hopefully it can go into a form of remission if one pursues a programme of recovery but I think addiction is a life-long condition.

How long have you been clean for now from both drink and drugs? Six years and two months.

Do you still get the urge to take drugs? Sometimes. When you finish work late or you've just done a gig and you think "What am I going to do now? Go to bed? That's when I miss it. You feel like you need an experience, some sort of punctuation: an orgasm, an epiphany, something.

How do you manage to control that addiction now? With some sort of transient erotic experience that's both consensual and blissful and conveys nothing but glory to the participants.

You're doing a million different things all at once. Is this indicative of an addictive personality? Yes, I think it probably is an indication. I think it's very difficult not to transfer whatever proclivity that leads a person into addiction into other areas of life: romantic life, professional life or even domestic life. Sometimes I've acted like a man possessed.

Is your ambition stronger than your addictions? Yes, it certainly is, Dan. I finally gave up drink and drugs because my ambition is the most powerful force within me. So once people convinced me that behaviour might become damaging to my career, I found it easier to think of it as a flaw that needed to be remedied. I'm keen to align my ambition with activities and projects that are valuable beyond self-fulfilment, because otherwise my life would be about shallow acquisitions of accolades and tin baubles when I could make it the happiness and fulfilment of huge numbers of people with just a tiny adjustment.

Talking of the fulfilment of huge numbers of people, your sex life is also well documented. Mainly by the tabloids. Are you a sex addict? I don't know. I think I have problems with addiction as we just discussed a moment ago, and this can be transferred to most areas of my life if I'm not cautious but you know, I don't like to undermine the experiences I have by putting that tag on it. I don't think it's helpful if I imply that everything I do is regrettable in an area. Frankly it isn't. A lot of it is bloody brilliant and lovely.

When was the last time you had sex? Well, yesterday.

Do you have a girlfriend at the moment? No.

Why not? I think it is because of the momentum of my work, because I'm obsessed and devoted to my work and because I'm still not ready to commit emotionally to one person and that I don't want to put myself in the position where I have to lie to someone because I'm not ready to stop sleeping with different people... I'm not ready to make that sort of monogamous commitment. But a lot of my friends have kids now and I really love their children and I love hanging around with their children and playing with their children. And I think it would be amazing to have that kind of relationship.

So you do want to be a father one day? Very much, yeah. But given my own family history, I don't want to do that now.

You've had an interesting relationship with your own father... He did his best, groping through fatherhood without a template.

But he took you on holiday to sleep with prostitutes in South-East Asia when you were 17!
On the plane on the way home he said: "I went away with a boy and came back with a man." Some of the attributes of a man included 'I have now had a prostitute stick her finger up my arse while sucking my cock.'

You've been named The Sun newspaper's Shagger of the Year three years running – to the point they named the award after you. How do you feel about that? This shagging I'm doing is truly worthwhile and obviously world class – like when my football team West Ham retired Bobby Moore's number 6 shirt. To have the Shagger of the Year award named after me is quite an accolade – just to know subsequent shaggers who take on that mantle will always, always just have to bask in the glint of glory afforded by my enormous obstructive shadow.

How many women have you shagged then? I never, ever am going to say a number ever again in response to that question and any journalist that puts it to me will receive instead this boring speech that you are about to receive: I love and cherish all the people that are involved in my life and I would never denigrate them by reducing them to statistic on a government chart. The truth is, I just don't know, but whoever I'm with is the only person in the world. Unless there's more than one of them, and then they're the only group of people in the world.

Come on, how many in an average month? I've never had an average month. If I had my whole month that was average, I'd kill myself. I'm only interested in extreme experiences.

Is it almost too easy to seduce women now that you are famous? Well, if people sort of already know you, you don't have to do so much of the getting-to-know-you quiz most people do when they meet each other. I'm just a bloke from Essex with a terrific haircut who's been given a Wonka ticket to a lovely sex factory because of the ol' fame. I love it when I meet a woman and her sexuality is dancing across her face so it's apparent that all we need to do is nod and find a cupboard.

You say that sex is the one physical pursuit you are good at... Well, it's chemistry innit? It's not like it's table tennis or anything. I think sex, when there's a chemical connection between people, I think it can be supernatural. That's why I think it's appealing: it doesn't have to be gruntin', snarlin', curl-lipped warthogs. It can become transcendental, truly a union through the physical which is beyond the physical. You say I'm good at sex like as if I could do a video of sex moves. Although now I say that out loud – Russell Brand's Sex Moves Video – me in a leotard and a sweatband on with an erection poking through my lime green tights is what the world needs now.

What's the most ridiculous rumour you've ever read about yourself? There's loads. That I was caught waving a sword around in the London Underground, knighting homeless people with a sword. That was a favourite. A lot of them involve swords, strangely. I haven't even got a sword.

You're famed for your style. I know this is normally a question heavy breathers ask women on a sex line, but what are you wearing right now? Well, I'm having my hair done at the moment, so I've got a cape on and a towel around my shoulders, nice tight-fitting J Lindeberg jeans, a rather thick faded brown leather belt, a J Lindeberg sheer t-shirt, Stephen Webster rings on both my index fingers and a Stephen Webster crossed hammers emblem of West Ham United and I've got my hair slicked back with a conditioner in it.

Are you at your house at the moment? I am. Yes, just with the lady who does my hair and makeup and her friend who cuts my hair. I'm just walking in the bathroom to do a bit of wee out of my award-winning penis.

What are you doing with the hair these days? Still a bird's nest up top? In my normal life I don't bother to do anything to it. I just leave it as it is to do what it wants. But when I do shows I back-comb it into a ludicrous, follicular mist so it forms a nice silhouette, a nice halo.

How would you describe your style? I'm an intergalactic bejewelled pirate, a spindly sex stick, a he-witch scarecrow dressed by Dior.

You wear a lot of black. Does this reflect your inner personality? You know the Morrissey lyric: "I wear black on the outside because black is how I feel on the inside". I am very fond of that. But I think it's simply because it's easier to get dressed.

What with your quasi-camp persona and foppish appearance, people might look at you and assume you're gay. But you once masturbated a man to prove conclusively that you are not, didn't you? I did do that whilst on crack and heroin, Dan. Whilst on crack and heroin I did a lot of things as part of a TV programme. I didn't do it out of my own curiosity. Jackass was a big deal at the time and I was charged with promoting that in UK so I decided to do more of a psychological Jackass where I'd do stunts of a more cerebral nature. So I went to live with Nazis to see if I could change them, I went to live with a prostitute to see if I could make her fall in love with me and then see what it was like to have sex with a prostitute if you knew her. And I did wank off a man to see if your innate heterosexuality can be overcome by committing a homosexual act. It can't, incidentally. I also tried to seduce a little old lady and had a bath with a homeless man. It was a funny couple of months. I'm curious about the fringes of psychological experience.

You don't have to bathe with homeless people anymore, now that you are a Hollywood star. I'm in the fortunate position of being able to do things that I really want to, which means primarily concentrating on stand up comedy, movies, writing and doing less television. I've finished filming The Tempest. I am making a documentary on enlightenment with Oliver Stone and Albert Maysles. Then I am working with Judd Apatow and Jonah Hill on Get Him to the Greek in which I reprise my character Aldous Snow from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It's a buddy movie. Then I'm remaking the film Arthur, the Oscar-winning Dudley Moore film with myself in the title role. I am execuitive producing that and am involved in the writing and casting of that currently. That's being written by Peter Baynham who co-wrote Borat. And I'm writing the second part of my autobiography - My Booky Wook 2: This Time It's Personal. So that's the next year...

Do you think you have broken America now? I think it was broken when I got there. I'm going to fix it.

After calling George W Bush a "retard cowboy fella" at last year's MTV Awards, are you going to be hosting any more awards ceremonies? Yes, but I am not at liberty to say what. The one that is the most obvious thing you can imagine – that's what will happen.

The Oscars? I will present the Oscars one day.

Do you think you're capable of winning an Oscar one day? Yes. I would like to think so, otherwise there is no point acting. If people are giving out Oscars for acting and I'm doing acting I sort of think well, I'd like one.

So you're basically becoming a global Brand? It's worth striving for the extremity, Dan, for all of us know mediocrity in some form in our own lives. I don't think there's any limit to anything really. Except time.

One man Brand
Russell Brand performs his show Scandalous at the Enmore Theatre on 17 March and the Hordern Pavilion on 18 March. His autobiography, My Booky Wook, is out now; his stand-up DVD, Doing Life Live, will be released here on 5 March; and his Ponderland show will be shown on Seven later in the year.

Brand on Time Out
"Time Out was like a Bible for me as a new stand-up comedian, finding the tiny little pubs where you'd perform in front of 20 or 30 people, none of whom would be listening. I was 23 when I first did stand up, and in only my fifth stand-up gig ever I was in the finals for the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year. At that time I was properly a junkie, properly mental. Although I didn't get first, second or third place, Malcolm Hay, the Time Out London comedy critic, dedicated most of his review to my performance and compared me to Bill Hicks and really gave me hope that stand-up comedy could be a route worth pursuing. It really inspired me and it fairly contributed to my subsequent success and because of Malcolm I got the best stand-up award from Time Out in 2006 so I have a predisposition to like you and your publication."

Brand on the run: notes on a scandal
1999: Pretends to have AIDS to explain away an unauthorised holiday while working at a language school
2001: Gets sacked from MTV for introducing his drug dealer to Kylie Minogue while dressed as Osama bin Laden, the day after 9/11
2002: Makes cable TV show Re:Brand, in which he masturbates a man on camera, lives with a prostitute and a Nazi, tries to seduce an 81-year-old woman, and has a bath with a homeless man. Check it out on YouTube
2002: Gets sacked from Xfm radio for bringing a homeless man in to answer readers' letters that he would read out on air from a pornographic newspaper
2002: Gets sacked from Steve Coogan film Cruise of the Gods for using prostitutes and trying to coerce the cast into doing the same
2002: Gets arrested for the 11th time - on this occasion for stripping naked at an anti-globalisation protest
2002: Risks leg amputation when thrown through a glass door at the Edinburgh Festival after a gig turns sour.
2002: Checks into rehab for drinks and drugs
2005: Check into rehab (or "winky-nick") for sex addiction
2008: Calls George W Bush "that retard cowboy fella" at the MTV Awards
2008: Resigns from BBC Radio 2 after 'Sachsgate' receives 30,000 complaints and a rebuke from PM Gordon Brown


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Going through the ringer

Buying an engagement ring is something most of us face at some point. Dan Rookwood navigates you through the choppy waters of life on the high Cs. There are certain rites of passage transactions you never forget: your first beer, your first car, your first house, your first tailored suit, your first wife’s engagement ring. The latter is a life purchase I recently made.

Buying a diamond is a little like buying drugs or a second hand vehicle: it massively helps if you know your dealer personally, or you know someone who knows a dealer personally. So let me introduce to my very good friend Arman. Mention my name and he promises to look after you. His diamonds are forever and ever, Arman.

Getting engaged isn’t something you should do on a whim or drugs; it’s a big deal. After all, you don’t get married every day. (Unless your name is Elizabeth Taylor.) Not only are you parting with several thousand dollars in exchange for some shiny bit of rock, you’re also waving goodbye to your wanton youth. As Vince Vaughn’s character says to Will Ferrell’s in Old School, “you get one vagina for the rest of your life”.

Given that pound for pound an engagement ring is probably the most expensive thing you’ll ever buy, it pays to do your homework carefully in advance. I learn all about the “four Cs”: carat (size and weight), cut (shape), clarity (purity) and colour (you don’t want any). Where a diamond appears on the graphic equaliser of these four scales dictates the fifth C: cost.

I go and see a few respected jewellers – Tiffany, Percy Marks, Bunda – for a ballpark figure. And that ballpark looks dauntingly like the New York Yankees stadium. So then I frown and swear at my effing bank statement. And then I open up a secret bank account and I save and save like an evangelist with OCD.

Fast-forward several months of penury and homemade packed lunches until you hit now. Then rewind a few weeks. Stop. This is where Arman enters the story. He’s the jeweller my friend Anoop and his family go to. “I’ll introduce you,” says Anoop. “Arman will look after you, don’t worry.”

There’s a covert drama around buying the goods in advance of popping the question that gets the adrenaline flowing and makes you feel almost like you’re living out a Guy Ritchie movie. (Except without quite so many gun-toting mock-cockney geezers, hopefully.)

For starters, it helps if you have that personal introduction via a close friend and an appointment. Then it’ll go something like this…

You push the door of the jeweller’s but it doesn’t open. Someone inside presses the security buzzer. You enter and the door locks behind you. Handshakes. Your palm is clammy. Please, sit down.

The merchandise is kept in a safe. You get to inspect it with a monocular, a pair of tweezers and a light box so you can pretend you can spot the difference between a flawless gem and a lump of quartz. It feels a bit like that game the optometrist plays with you during an eye test when you’re not sure whether the red or the green circle is clearer.

Then you awkwardly pussyfoot around your budget while trying not to sound like a cheapskate and/or an amateur. At this point the jeweller knows you’re serious rather than on a fact-finding mission and he senses a sale. He dangles a carat in front of you. You like it because it’s big and size matters. He tells you what the full price is. The colour drains from your face. But the jeweller is your new best mate. He assures you he’ll give you a good price because any friend of Anoop’s is a friend of his.

And so the dance begins.

You’re prepared so you know exactly what your budget is and you know exactly what you’re looking for. The former is two months salary but you tell the jeweller ten per cent lower than your limit to account for his salesmanship; the latter is a six claw round brilliant cut diamond solitaire that is high up on all the C scales – but which an independent third-party certificate assures you hasn’t cost an African miner his life – on a simple white gold band.

Now you get down to price. The figures are seen but not heard: he jabs at his oversize calculator and pushes it over to you so you can read the display. You frown and purse your lips and suck your teeth as if to tell the jeweller he can give you a better price. The jeweller is well versed in reading this body language, so he obligingly pounds the calculator some more, as if working through some terribly intricate sums involving the exchange rate, the Dow Jones Index and the lunar cycle before coming up with another number which is still a couple of thousand dollars over your budget. So you go cold on the deal. Maybe I’ll go away and think about it, you say. He looks you in the eyes. He taps into his calculator once more. It’s more than you wanted to spend ideally but within the ten per cent contingency. Handshake. Yours is still sweaty.

“Given that this is a five-figure life purchase, this isn’t the time to get all experimental or take a risk with the design,” advises Arman. Yes, five figures. “Most men buy rings that are between seven to 16K, with the average first time purchase at around 10 and 11.” When you’re a jeweller, the thousands are a given. “The ones who spend more are usually second time arounders.”

“You cannot go wrong with that ring,” coos his able assistant Marie, helpfully and reassuringly giving the woman’s point of view. “The solitaire is the classic engagement ring, one that will never go out of fashion. Tastes and styles change, but this design is timeless.” It’s such a winner that most jewellers are confident enough to say you can bring a solitaire ring back if necessary. But it won’t be; Arman has never had one returned.

Of course, there is a way to eradicate any risk: let her choose her own ring. But that necessarily means that, like about 50 per cent of blokes these days, you popped the question with a dummy ring rather than the real thing. To my mind, a man who proposes without the ring is hedging his bets. It indicates a lack of commitment, a hint of doubt, an abdication of trouser-wearing responsibilities. Right, Arman? He won’t be drawn on this pop psychoanalysis. “Some couples like to choose the ring together,” he says. “It’s very exciting.”

By contrast, a man who has bought the ring in advance is a man who knows his own mind, who doesn’t shy away from life’s big decisions, who backs himself. “They are usually more confident, self-assured guys,” says Arman. Buying a diamond literally crystalises the decision to get married. It’s a rock-solid investment of intent. Once you’ve saved up that kind of money, you’ve already thought it through very carefully over a suitably long period of time. You are ready. “It’s more romantic this way,” he says. “Plus she doesn’t know the cost, which can be helpful.”

I say Arman to that.
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