Russell Brand

Like I've been on it a long time.

When you first become famous, it's incredibly validating and for a moment sort of golden.

Like, oh my God, surely you've had your own version of like this thing that I do and did out of love and just started doing it.

And now I'm being remunerated and I can do it more.

And this is, gosh, thank you, Lord.

Thank you.

You know, even if you're a sort of secular person or even if your religion's as diffuse and baffling as the sort of neo-pagan attempts at grasping at meaning that I knew as just a working class person from Essex, drug addict, confused, blind.

pursuing something, a dream that I feel like was bequeathed by the culture.

Become famous.

If you want to mean something and you feel like you mean nothing, become famous.

Develop some sort of status in the system.

So, you know, when I first got famous, there is a moment where all of those no's turn to yeses, where no, you can't have a TV show.

No, you can't have a radio show.

No, we're not interested in your column, your book, your stand-up, anything you've got to say becomes yes.

Yes to it all.

And that sort of feels for a moment like a facsimile or at least a shadow of glory.

But quite quickly, it transpires if you are in any way attuned, and I suppose to a degree we all are, and perhaps addicts and alcoholics are especially attuned to some real meaning, real nutrition.

You recognize this wasn't it.

This wasn't what I was looking for.

Not hedonism, not decadence, not approval, not personal satisfaction.