My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up by Russell Brand Read Free Book Online

it again as recently as the night before I wrote this very para-graph.
    I was at a do and thought, “Russell, why don’t you just go home? Tomorrow morning will still be tomorrow morning, what ever you do now. Why not forgo the opportunity for a sexy adventure and wake up on clean sheets with a clean mind?” Alas 36

    Shame Innit ?
    the demons were unwilling to negotiate and more flowers were damned. This is why I currently find myself turning to celebrity hypnotist Paul McKenna to brain-ma-tise me into change.* But if celebrity hypnotist Paul McKenna can’t help me, who else is there to turn to? V
    * Paul McKenna is a hypnotist and self-help guru rumored to be the highest paid entertainer in the UK. He is also, now, my friend—and peculiarly, rhyming slang for a “tenner”; see above.
    37

    4
    Fledgling Hospice
    I like animals very much—lovable, dumb chums, loyal, decent and lovely—and if I’d had my way I’d’ve been reared in a menagerie. In my childhood there always seemed to be massive obstacles between me and any simple pleasure; as if I were unwittingly a character in a peculiarly trivial Greek tragedy. For instance, I really wanted to get another dog, but my mum was always opposed to this idea. Until one day, my dad, in typically irresponsible fashion, purchased this huge, dopey German shepherd, unwittingly starting an inter-parent canine arms race where my approval and love were sought through dog acquisition.
    Toby was the name of my dad’s preemptive strike—a really lovely, big-footed, lumbering, daft dog. When my dad cleared off to live in Düsseldorf with the woman who later became his third wife, he left Toby with my tiny nan, this huge great beast filling her mid-terrace house, as if it were a pebble-dashed waist-coat he were wearing to the dog Oscars.
    He used to sit on her lap, while she peeped round to join the chatter or watch the telly. My nan’d never mutter a word against him, as if to do so would be sacrilege. She knew that it was the manifestation of my dad’s id, Toby being more dogma than dog.
    Off they’d go for bone-crunching walks round the estate, await-38

    Fledgling Hospice
    ing the appearance of an inevitable cat who’d send them both off on a ridiculous, sledless husky ride down the concrete slopes of Dagenham. Her busted hands belatedly evolved into a twisted glove fit only for clasping a constantly taut leather lead; if this painful development troubled her, it was a burden she endured silently. As with many women of her generation and class, this unspectacular martyrdom was never remarked upon, as it was simply her duty to give and be a mother.
    My mum struck back at the Toby purchase by acquiring us a four-legged financial drain of our own. Alas, she got it from a refuge for delinquent hounds. I was not involved in the selection process. I was disappointed that it weren’t little enough: I wanted it to be more of a puppy, so I could share in the joy of its infancy and mold it into a bespoke companion adhering to some rather unique requirements; the mutt was due to be my only friend and salvation, you can’t just get them off the rack. I’m sure when God was selecting Jesus for his mission to redeem the people of Earth he didn’t just hurl a potato out of his offi ce window shouting, “Whomever this spud may strike, boy, have I got a job for you!” I imagine there was a rigorous selection pro cess, a kind of celestial X Factor, although, given the story’s dénouement, perhaps ✝ Factor would be more fi tting.
    Life’s never a postcard of life, is it? It never feels like how you’d want it to look. I suppose my very specific canine pref-erences would probably have been formed by reading Enid Blyton.* I really enjoyed her as a child—even books like Th e
    Naughtiest Girl in the School, which were only meant for girls.
    I was a cross-reader, feasting on the forbidden fruit of girl
    * Enid Blyton is a children’s author who was recently voted the most pop ular