I'm really just here to introduce a brilliant,
brilliant man, a funny man, and a naught man.
Russell Brand, everybody.
(applause)
Good evening.
I suppose good evening is not an idiom that
is easy to illicit a passionate response from.
Like, it's not like, "yeah!"
It's not, it don't lend itself to emphatic
responses.
Good evening.
Yes, it is a very pleasant evening!
Particularly for the time of year!
It's interesting, when I do stuff for David
Lynch's TM Foundation, because of the sort
of corollary I suppose, and connection between
meditation and serenity, like, I'm normally
preparing to come out like, "Oh what's gonna
happen, Jesus Christ, aaaaah!
I'm not prepared!"
But, thankfully I have the tools of Transcendental
Meditation to access a wonderful world.
I'll talk about that stuff like in a little
bit, like I will talk to you about the nature
of TM and the spiritual element of it and
the having access to a system that connects
me I think to all of creation and all of creativity
and it makes a mockery of subjectivity, makes
me realize that we are all one, I'll talk
about that in a bit.
Let's not get bogged down in it now, let's
ease into it.
Perhaps you'd like to compliment me on these
trousers.
There are children here, aren't there.
(woman in crowd: No!)
What?
Someone said no children?
What do you mean?
What is this?
That was a peculiar response, where are we,
Hamlin?
Pied Piper of...
Ellen mentioned of course my affection for
TM in her brief precis on Russell Month on
her show.
It made me think of the person I'd most like
to see talking about TM would be Russell Crowe,
I think: "Oh yeah, I'm finding the inner peace
within myself - Get out of the room or I'll
smash you with a telephone!"
We got to get to him.
Me and Russell Simmons have got to do a Russell
intervention.
I love him though, Russell Crowe, actually.
I met him once at an intersection.
I was coming down a hill (laughter)...I was,
that is what happened, that's not even humorous.
I was coming down a hill, and at the intersection
I see Russell Crowe and he was wearing what
I would describe as the kind of clothes one
might wear if you'd just come out of bed and
not really planned an outfit.
He were ambling shambolically is how I'd describe
it, ambling shambolically at the intersection.
I see him and I'm sat next to my mate, and
I was driving, I'm not good at driving, I
drive erratically, I looked over and I go
to my mate, "That's Russell Crowe."
And Russell Crowe turns to see me mouthing
through the windscreen "Russell Crowe."
He sees that happen and he sort of came over,
"Alright mate."
And like a big Russell Crowe arm sort of came
through the window, rrrrrrrr.
Like that.
Like it had been, like it was being done by
Andy Serkis.
And like, you know like Andy Serkis does King
Kong, doesn't he.
(monkey noises) Andy Serkis is the guy they
do all the digital stuff with for green screen
things, he's King King, he's all the dinosaurs,
he's Gollum, he's everyone.
Well the arm came through, like from the,
like an avatar from another reality.
Brrrraaaahhh!
Right through my window.
"Alright, mate!"
"Hello, Russell Crowe," I said, and I was
enjoying the moment because that's Russell
Crowe, I'm also called Russell, what are we
gonna talk about, I'm wondering.
In this unique moment, in an arbitrary cosmos,
randomly generating situations perpetually,
endless, limitless, infinite possibilities
as we guide our way through, zig zagging our
jagged way through life, clashing into the
moments.
Over to you, Russell.
"Kanye West has done a song where he name
checks the both of us while addressing Russell
Simmons."
"Ah.
Thank you, Russell.
I've enjoyed this moment, but the lights have
changed."
Though I don't like to be bound too much by
them different colored lights and all the
other rules of the road because they are,
I find, a little bit restrictive.
It stops me being in my bacchanalian inner
self because there's too much rigidity to
the rules of the road.
Here's a tip, you know sometimes there's a
traffic jam, there's these two roads but in
the middle of road there's a yellow bit right?
And then another yellow bit, no one's on that
bit.
I call that the Russell Road.
Easier.
Let's talk for a moment briefly about Transcendental
Meditation now.
The reason...
I love David Lynch very much, and it's difficult
to say this because he's sort of THERE.
Like I say maybe it feels slightly disingenuous,
but I legitimately do love David.
But let's talk about him in the context of
this work.
The reason I love him is because, right, he's
the most obvious example of genius that I've
ever encountered, his sense of child-like
wonder at all things, I've been round his
house a couple of times, he's normally doing
something that you would expect a boy scout
to be doing.
"Hey Russell, I'm making a sculpture from
cheese."
Or something like that, honestly.
"I'm making a lamp from the stuff from Jurassic
Park, that the bug is found in."
Amber, I think.
Once, I went there and he was studying a dead
thing.
"Hey, look at that, watch this pigeon decay.
Have you noticed the beauty of the cycle of
life?"
We are in Los Angeles of course, so we're
living in a, we're living amidst the subterfuge,
we're trudging about in all this ludicrous
nonsense, aren't we?
We're entrenched in it.
Through Transcendental Meditation you get
access to another dimension that's consistently
and constantly there for you in moments of
doubt when you feel connected constantly to
material world, it's beautiful to know that
we have access to something else more real,
uber-real, actuality, a reality beyond our
reality, a reality that isn't moderated by
our media, a reality that is... because media,
like, you would think, I don't mean, I'm not
a Latin scholar, but you'd think the media
would mean something like medium, or mediate
it would be derived from that, so they should
just be like a tunnel giving us information.
Not like, Fox News doesn't behave according
to that dictum.
Fox News lacquers information with hatred
on its way to you, right?
It's not - yes, thank you.
Also, I've been watching Fox News for hours
now and I have not seen one story about foxes.
It's usually trying to make me anxious about
immigration.
"BE CAREFUL!
There are immigrants!"
Oh.
Why are they so worried about immigrants?
An immigrant is just someone who used to somewhere
else.
"Hey!
Have you always been there?"
"No, no I was over there for a while."
"AAAAH!
Get back over to where you originally were!"
It's to make us frightened and full of hate.
They spray the information with hatred as
it passes towards our eyes with the same louche
aplomb as that riot police officer spraying
the eyes of children during those recent protests.
Did you see that, when he pepper sprayed those
children in the eyes?
Of course, you know, I'm against human rights
atrocities, as such as that was.
But I mean if you are going to do a human
rights atrocity it's nice to do it with an
incredible sense of elan.
He looked like he was wandering down a Parisian
catwalk.
TSSSSSSSSSS Sort of no regard for consequence.
That's going into children's eyes.
That's like Karl Lagerfeld would at a hate
riot.
Remarkable, really.
Because like he didn't care that the pepper
spray was going into the faces of young children.
If you can divorce yourself from consequence
the world is a much easier place to live in.
If you don't care that your actions hurt people
life's probably like some amusement park.
Let's not go down that road.
So, yeah I'm only really here to generate
good will, and what was the thing I was gonna
say?
Like, in case you sort of think, "Oh, some
of the things he's saying are a bit weird.
These are...how is that helping us?"
You must remember that I'm doing this for
free.
In a way, I'm sort of doing you a favor.
Like, if I took you to the airport and you
didn't really like my driving, which you wouldn't,
you couldn't go, "Oh, I don't like the nature
of this favor, it's not exactly how I want
it."
Favor.
