A guide to all kinds of addiction from a star who has struggled with heroin, alcohol, sex, fame, food and eBay, that will help addicts and their loved ones make the first steps into recovery
“This manual for self-realization comes not from a mountain but from the mud...My qualification is not that I am better than you but I am worse.” —Russell Brand
With a rare mix of honesty, humor, and compassion, comedian and movie star Russell Brand mines his own wild story and shares the advice and wisdom he has gained through his fourteen years of recovery. Brand speaks to those suffering along the full spectrum of addiction—from drugs, alcohol, caffeine, and sugar addictions to addictions to work, stress, bad relationships, digital media, and fame. Brand understands that addiction can take many shapes and sizes and how the process of staying clean, sane, and unhooked is a daily activity. He believes that the question is not “Why are you addicted?” but "What pain is your addiction masking? Why are you running—into the wrong job, the wrong life, the wrong person’s arms?"
Russell has been in all the twelve-step fellowships going, he’s started his own men’s group, he’s a therapy regular and a practiced yogi—and while he’s worked on this material as part of his comedy and previous bestsellers, he’s never before shared the tools that really took him out of it, that keep him clean and clear. Here he provides not only a recovery plan, but an attempt to make sense of the ailing world.
We all know the system isn’t working. Our governments are corrupt and the opposing parties pointlessly similar. Our culture is filled with vacuity and pap, and we are told there’s nothing we can do: “It’s just the way things are.”
In this book, Russell Brand hilariously lacerates the straw men and paper tigers of our conformist times and presents, with the help of experts as diverse as Thomas Piketty and George Orwell, a vision for a fairer, sexier society that’s fun and inclusive.
You have been lied to, told there’s no alternative, no choice, and that you don’t deserve any better. Brand destroys this illusory facade as amusingly and deftly as he annihilates Morning Joe anchors, Fox News fascists, and BBC stalwarts.
This book makes revolution not only possible but inevitable and fun.
Russell Brand With this first picture book in Russell Brand’s Trickster Tales series, the famed comedian, actor, and bestselling author delivers a hilarious retelling of an old fairytale favorite that will appeal to adults and children alike.
Once upon a time, long ago, in a time that seemed, to those present, exactly like now except their teeth weren’t so clean and more things were wooden, there was a town called Hamelin. The people of Hamelin were a pompous bunch who loved themselves and their town so much that if it were possible they would have spent all day zipped up in a space suit smelling their own farts. But space suits hadn’t been invented yet so they couldn’t.
Then one day without warning a gang of rats bowled into the town and began causing a right rumpus…
So begins Russell Brand’s wildly funny and surprisingly wise retelling of the classic tale The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Whether you’re a kid or a grown-up kid, you’ll be chuckling the whole way through this zany story that bypasses Brand’s more adult humor for the outrageous, the madcap, and the just plain silly.
Maybe you’ve heard about the Pied Piper before, with his strange music and those pompous townspeople and pesky rats. Or maybe you haven’t. But one thing is for sure: you’ve never heard it quite like this.
Martino Sclavi 'It's eerily joyful to write a foreword for Martino Sclavi's book because five years ago I accepted that he was going to die.' Russell Brand.
Diagnosed with fatal brain cancer, the treatment that follows renders the writer of this extraordinary memoir unable to recognise words. This is the inspiring story he can no longer read. With a foreword by Russell Brand.
This is the story of a successful Italian-born, London-based film writer who is suddenly, wholly unexpectedly diagnosed with stage four brain cancer. The prognosis is bad: there's a 98% likelihood he'll be dead within 18 months. He undergoes two operations, including one in which he must remain awake throughout. Part of his brain is removed, the part that enables us to recognise written words - to read. As someone who relies on words for their livelihood, their very identity, this presents impossible questions as to what happens next.
Defying all predictions, Martino is still very much alive five years on, and is writing and being read to by a monotonous computerised voice he calls Alex. His marriage suffered, his relationship with his young son - whom he will never read bedtime stories to again - must be reconfigured and he is made to question all that his previous life gave him, along with his habits, dreams and beliefs.
As Sclavi faces the reality of the narrative he's been presented by doctors, he shows us that with determination, it is possible to change that narrative, and in doing so inspires and empowers us all to believe that it is possible to change the story of our lives.
'Whenever I see Martino I am reminded of how little I know about life and death compared to him. How we don't know what is within us or what may life on the other side. I hope it's as magical and beautiful as this book.'
Russell Brand.
(P)2017 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
John Rogers Join John Rogers as he ventures out into an uncharted London like a redbrick Indiana Jones in search of the lost meaning of our metropolitan existence. Nursing two reluctant knees and a can of Stella, he perambulates through the seasons seeking adventure in our city’s remote and forgotten reaches.
Foreword written and read by Russell Brand.
When John Rogers packed away his rucksack to start a family in London he didn’t stop travelling. But instead of canoeing up the Rejang River to find retired headhunters in Sarawak, he caught the ferry to Woolwich in search of the edge of the city at Crayford Marshes.
This Other London recounts that journey and many others – all on foot and epic in their own cartilage-crunching way. Clutching a samosa and a handful of out-of-date A-Zs, he heads out into the wilderness of isolated luxury apartment blocks in Brentford, the ruins of Lesnes Abbey near Thamesmead, and the ancient Lammas Lands in Leyton.
Denounced by his young sons as a ‘hippy wizard’, Rogers delves into some of the overlooked stories rumbling beneath the tarmac of the city suburbs. Holy wells in Lewisham; wassailing in Clapton; a heretical fresco in West Ham. He encounters the Highwaymen of Hounslow Heath, Viet Cong vets still fighting Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket in Beckton, Dutch sailors marooned at Erith pier; and cyclists – without Bradley Wiggins’ sideburns – at Herne Hill Velodrome. He heads out to Uxendon Hill to witness the end of the world, Horsenden Hill to learn its legend, and Tulse Hill to the observatory of the Victorian Brian Cox.
This Other London will take you into the hinterland of the city. The London that is lived in; the London where workaday dormitory suburbs sit atop a rich history that could rival Westminster and Tower Bridge. In an age when no corner of the globe has been left untrampled-upon by hordes of tourists, it is time to discover the wonders on our doorstep.
This Other London is your gateway through the underexplored nooks of London. As Pathfinder wrote in 1911, ‘Adventure begins at home’.
Reviews
‘Leave the Oyster card at home and set out in your walking shoes with Rogers as a companion – and be prepared to see London in a whole new way.’ Time Out
‘Rich with surprises …Rogers conjured up magical little worlds that we would otherwise pass by.’ Metro
‘The author’s love of exploration is infectious. Anyone who reads This Other London will find themselves with an unexpected itch to visit the Welsh Harp Reservoir or Hounslow Heath … [John Rogers is] the Brian Cox of topology, inspiring wonder and curiosity.’ Londonist
‘John is endowed with a gentle, humorous wisdom, which is evident throughout these pages… You, like me, could have no better guide than the man who has written this book.’ Russell Brand
