skirmishes were minor – nothing was to get in the way of my inexorable rise, everyone was talking about me, I was living like a teetotal Bacchanalian. It was time for me to make a pilgrimage, for all this success was built around comedy and I am a comedian. Yes, there is an unusual degree of tacked-on glamour and pelvic thrusting, but under the hairspray and hysteria I am but a joker, and it was time for me to return to every stand-up’s Jerusalem – the Edinburgh Festival, the festival at which I’d been arrested, attacked and hospitalised, where I’d fought it out at late-night bear-pit gigs and gouched on smack on stage, and once employed, Fagin-like, a tearaway gang of local children to promote my show. Where, once clean, I’d toiled to earn the respect of my peers and laboured over my craft till I could go toe to toe with anyone. Now it was time for me to take Edinburgh by storm, to stand above it like the castle, to light the sky like the Hogmanay rockets. I was returning as a star, to show them what rock’n’roll comedy is all about. I was going to tear it up, show ’em where I’m from, go crazy. I was ready for anything they could throw at me.
†
They complained about those kids. And they weren’t crazy about the heroin either.
GILDED BALLOON
To Russell Brand
Pablo Diablo
22 August 2000
Dear Russell Brand
I have been made aware of several incidents involving the children you have working for you. Firstly I must point out that it is against employment law to employ minors in any capacity and that the Gilded Balloon does not allow children to work in any of its venues or areas.
There was an incident on Monday when items were taken from the Production office. You were informed of this and those involved have been barred from the administrative areas.
I have now had further complaints from Venue Managers of the same children causing a nuisance in and outside of venues. This has involved the throwing of items at people queuing for shows and abuse being given to staff and customers of the Gilded Balloon. This is unacceptable.
I must therefore insist that these children are no longer admitted to any Gilded Balloon venues or public areas and that you cease to employ them - illegally - to do flyering for you.
I am sorry to have to take this action, but they are causing a great nuisance to staff and customers alike and I would appreciate it if you could advise them to no longer come to the Gilded Balloon.
I hope that I do not have to take this matter further
Yours Sincerely
Mick Bateman
General Manager
cc. Karen Koren, Artistic Director
Chapter 6
No Means NOooo
There’s nothing more tragic than being in Edinburgh on 1 September, the day after the festival, or indeed in the first few days of August before it starts. Because of my inability to be punctual, my unmanageability and my lack of planning, I’ve experienced both the bookends of the month of August when Edinburgh pulls you into its cultural embrace; a cerebral carnival, not a carnival of just decadence. There is such a strong sense of unity in the city, a common manner of purpose, ad hoc venues hastily formed from dentists’ waiting rooms and people performing on street corners. But “the day after”, like the post-H-bomb TV movie that goes by that name, Edinburgh is bereft and eery or like Emily’s shop when Bagpuss has gone back to sleep – still nice, but where’s the magic? Edinburgh in its post-festival slump probably doesn’t have the agonising pathos that Bagpuss had– nor does it raise so many questions, like: why was a little girl trusted to run a second-hand shop? How come Bagpuss could turn inanimate objects into dancing mice and pompous woodpeckers just by waking up? I don’t want to get all “Joseph Campbell”, but that’s what Jesus did with Lazarus. Where’s Bagpuss’s gospel? Probably never penned because, as Matt once wisely observed, the woodpecker bookend Professor Yaffel is a handicraft doppelgänger of that Godless stick-in-the-mud Richard Dawkins. Whenever Bagpuss was delighting the gallery with some unlikely thesis on a bottle or a ballet shoe, claiming them to be rocket ships or Minotaur mittens, Yaffle would coldly high-jack these flights of fancy – “Rocket ship? Why that’s nothing but an old bottle. A Minotaur’s mitten? It’s a dirty old shoe. Islam? It’s inherently violent.” Why can’t Professors Yaffle and Dawkins just let us all enjoy a nice story? I expect Dawkins would say that it’s because he opposes ignorance, especially where it causes war and bloodshed. Well, I happen to think people cause wars, not ideologies, and were we to be united by one, drab godless dogma we’d be murdering each other over who ate the last croissant within an hour.
The first time I went up to Edinburgh I arrived two days early, which is embarrassing, like arriving at a party early or misjudging the mood and touching a date’s thigh or calling your teacher “Mummy”. If I call a teacher “Mummy” now, it is a part of a cheeky little sex-game – not a kindergarten blunder – I think sometimes my sexual pursuits are like time travel: I Quantum Leap back into my past to try and unravel some perceived slight or wrong. “Hmm, those teachers didn’t respect me – I’ll drag a few back to my chamber, that’ll remedy the wrongs of the past.” I’m like Marty McFly hurtling “Back to the Future” to paint in a new present. He seemed to have an unusual interest in sex with his mother for the protagonist of a children’s film – he couldn’t keep his hands off her. What on earth were our young minds supposed to glean from that? Time travel is possible and by the way have you noticed what a lovely arse your mum’s got?
So it’s a drag to arrive at the festival early, but at least there’s hope. Not like the day after the festival, when it’s all gone, like looking into the eyes of someone who no longer loves you, all the more empty for how full it once was. In the middle, however, it’s amazing and exciting, and in Booky Wook – the hit autobiography (now a major motion picture in my mind) – I mentioned the excitement of the first time I went up there as part of a play with students from Webber Douglas and performed my first ever stand-up. I went there the next year with Nigel Klarfeld and it built. My first Edinburgh after becoming famous was an altogether different experience. That year Ricky Gervais literally overshadowed everything, he was performing at Edinburgh Castle for eight thousand people and caused a lot of acrimony and jealousy. But I didn’t really mind it myself, I just thought, “Ricky Gervais will be up in that castle, it doesn’t make that much difference, some military thing goes on there usually – the Tattoo, and I don’t mind that either, just bombast and pomp, a needless display of antiquated power.” There’s an easy joke to do here along the lines of “and the Tattoo’s a bit pompous an all” but I admire Ricky and his success. However, the structure of that sentence does demand that I at least draw your attention to the potential for that quip.
This time I was going to Edinburgh glistening with notoriety because of Big Brother and tabloid guff and being on Jonathan Ross. The previous year I’d had a cult following; girls would turn up, giggly and available, and boys would nod. There was a buzz about me, and famous people were in the audience; but this year, 2006, I was famous.
I was playing a run of one week of gigs, seven nights in a fifty-seater theatre at the Assembly Rooms and four in this thousand-seater venue and that was the biggest room I’d done – the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. The little fifty-seater room had been initially booked early in the year, then
