When I walk into a bookshop, two genres generally get my back up: “Real Life Tragedies”, which are essentially just macroscopic catharses, and joyless ones at that; and celebrity autobiographies, which are just a more conceited version of the same, a little louder and with a few glossy pictures straddled across their centrefolds. It’s ironic, then, that I’m about to wax lyrical about the merits of a book written by a celebrity whose predatory hunger for fame is rivalled by none: Russell Brand.Note my choice of words: written by. Unlike most celebrity autobiographies, My Booky Wook is not some ghost-written hackwork bashed out following a summary traipse through someone’s diaries; it is, in fact, an exceptionally expressive and at times really quite moving work that still manages to amuse from its first page to its last – and it’s all been written by the man himself, as is evident from the text.
As those familiar with Brand’s stand-up routines and television shows will attest, the man has an extraordinary way with words; unique, even. By his own admission, Brand makes a point of trying to say something in a different and memorable way to make it, well, different and memorable. His prose is thus chatty and technically flawed, yet it’s sophisticated too – he can’t (or, more likely, won’t) properly conjugate the verb ‘to be’, but he’ll drop words into sentences that will have even the most articulate of us reaching for our dictionaries.
What’s even more extraordinary than the man’s style though is his story, and the way that he tells it. For a book with a title so camp that it manages to make its front cover’s sinuous pink lettering look positively butch in comparison, My Booky Wook is a fierce and jaw-droppingly forthright tale of obsession and addiction. Pets, girls, crack, women, heroin, women, fame, women… Brand casually drapes his shamelessly addictive personality from his sleeve as if it were a part of his regular finery. Lesser men might use an autobiography as a vehicle to dish dirt, settle old scores or even shift blame away from themselves, but if anything Brand goes out of his way to make his capricious exploits seem even more outrageous; even more offensive. The man delights in depicting himself as a conniving, lascivious swine - and guess what? You just end up respecting him all the more.And so if you’ve room on your shelf for the musings of an indomitable fiend who once kept a league table of nans – well, it brought out the best in them – then I’d urge you in the strongest possible terms to check out My Booky Wook. It’s not quite as addictive as heroin sounds, but nonetheless it’s a bugger to put down.
