Russell Brand sizes up PM for marriage. No joke
Russell Brand says he’s going to “try and gay marry” Prime Minister Tony Abbott when he arrives in Australia in October to perform his politically-charged stand-up show.
The marriage proposal will not concern the Australian PM, who on Sunday joined with Opposition leader Bill Shorten to dismiss the idea of a referendum on same-sex marriage in Australia, after Ireland voted in favour of amending the country’s constitution on the issue.
While Brand may not achieve his amorous aims on his upcoming tour, targeting a national leader is not a new tactic for the comic.
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Brand has built a reputation for chasing after politicians who, in his view, do not rail against wealth inequality and big business.
He told News Corp his work has “had a pretty positive effect”. British PM David Cameron and US President Barack Obama have felt his satirical wrath.
Australia and its Prime Minister are his next targets.
“It seems Australia has a certain political will at the moment,” Brand said. “This is not an attempt to condemn Australia, I love Australia.”
Brand uses his performance skills to try and change a political malaise that obsesses him. Photo: Getty
And the local story which has caught his eye recently?
“In reference to Australia is that those (Johnny Depp’s) dogs were being flown back to America at great expense, while human beings are being kept in those crazy detention camps and being deterred from getting on boats or actually dying on boats while trying to get to Australia.”
The reformed drug and sex addict is concerned at how most of the world’s money and power is held by the richest conglomerates and he’s angry when governments fail to redress the imbalance.
He says when he brings his show to Australia he will recalibrate it to discuss and critique Australian political issues.
While local politicians are unlikely to take Brand’s entertaining attacks too seriously, that is unlikely to see him take a backward step.
Here’s what you can expect from his shows.
He wants a revolution
His activism came to public attention in October 2013 via a BBC Newsnight interview with Jeremy Paxman that went viral when he called for a revolution.
“There’s gonna be a revolution, it’s totally going to happen,” Brand said. “I ain’t got even a flicker of doubt.”
He expanded on the revolutionary wish in an essay for the New Statesman’s ‘revolution’ edition which he also guest edited.
Since then Brand has spent a lot of energy spreading political opinion with YouTube series The Trews, a book called Revolution and a documentary that premieres in Australia on June 11 called The Emperor’s New Clothes.
He despises banks
Talking to the BBC in 2013, Brand said bankers who got “loads of bonuses and loads of money” are “criminals” and their “transgressions” should be punished.
“Bankers made hundreds of billions in the run-up to the crash,” Brand says in the trailer for The Emperor’s New Clothes.
“Then all of us gave them hundreds of millions to pay off their debts … so WE were in debt.
“Did the bankers pay back their huge bonuses? No, they carried on making more money.”
Russell Brand has no time for bankers.
Tony Abbott copped Brand’s wrath before
In two separate broadcasts of his YouTube program The Trews, Brand attacked the Australian Prime Minister for his immigration policy and his linking of the Sydney siege to terrorism.
About the PM’s asylum seeker stance, he asked: “Tony, why are there even white people in Australia? How did white people get to Australia?”
Brand then said Mr Abbott should have addressed Sydney siege gunman Man Haron Monis as “a mentally-ill criminal with a long history of mental illness, criminal behaviour and lots of evidence of instability”.
“Terrorism is typically conducted in order to meet an objective. This guy, when he was asked what he wanted, he asked for a flag and a chat on the phone with Tony Abbott. No specific agenda, no specific objective,” Brand said.
He had Ed Miliband in his kitchen
In the final stages of Ed Miliband’s doomed 2015 UK Election campaign, the Labor leader found himself in Brand’s kitchen for an interview.
Could you imagine Bill Shorten or Tony Abbott appearing in Shaun Micallef or Josh Thomas’ kitchen a week out from an election?
Miliband was attacked by UK newspapers The Daily Mail and The Telegraph for the “secret” and “late night” meeting.
The meeting did Miliband no good. Brand chose to vote for the Greens in the election, even though he’d said for most of the campaign he’d not vote at all.
Russell Brand is a “total fraud”
But there are people who say they see through Brand’s vision and the ideas that he espouses.
Media personality Piers Morgan said: “Brand’s been exposed as a total fraud, someone whose ‘Revolution’ was built purely on a plinth of self-publicity designed to make him even more famous and wealthy.
“There’s nothing quite as ridiculous as famous people trapped in hypocritical headlamps.”
British Prime Minister David Cameron weighed into the debate too, saying: “Politics and life and elections and jobs and the economy, it’s not a joke; Russell Brand’s a joke … This is not funny. I haven’t got time to hang about with Russell Brand.”
Was it Russell Brand wot lost it for Ed?
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) May 7, 2015