Articles of Faith Read online

  Articles of Faith

  Russell Brand

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Introduction

  1 This year I’ll ride the snake like a soccer shaman

  2 A pitch-perfect ending to a sadly familiar song

  3 A pledge is not enough to make England shine

  4 Dark lore of Dyer and the Hammers’ hex

  5 Never mind Israel, I’ve been beaten by Bohemia

  6 Repent, for the kingdom of Steve is at hand

  7 Chelsea too small for these two randy stags

  8 His Grace Arsène, the shaman of our football

  9 Whatever next? Joe Cole on stilts?

  Interview between Russell Brand and David Baddiel

  10 My cathode carnival with Sir Alex turning green

  11 Who’s to blame for my impotent rage?

  12 First rule for life in the lounge: no swearing

  13 East will always be east for lovers of freedom

  14 My view from afar of Fergie’s flirtatious feuding

  15 I need a new way to feed my England habit

  16 This crimson blot will take three years to fade

  17 José makes my day…in another dimension

  18 Barwick must atone for the sins of his fathers

  19 Capello’s trunks more titillating than his titles

  Interview between Russell Brand and James Corden

  20 Inner sanctums reveal soul of Hammers family

  21 Watching Arsenal, thinking of Sting and Trudie

  22 Don’t let Harry head north for shooting practice

  23 If Keegan’s a messiah I want the Cockney Moses

  24 Is Morrissey talking the language of West Ham?

  25 Well done stern Fabio for defying our emotions

  26 Let’s revolt against Lucre-more’s ludicracy

  27 Potassium-rich fruit has no place in football

  Interview between Russell Brand and Noel Gallagher

  28 A lament for Gazza, whose gift became his curse

  29 Congratulations to Spurs for their lowly bauble

  30 Is this the right fertiliser for Grays’ grassroots?

  31 What’s the point in replaying a humiliation?

  32 Hurrah for super, special, Sunday soccer-day

  33 Capello’s words minced by sinister Nosferatu

  34 My adventures with Beckham in wonderland

  35 No replacing the man with a wiggle in his walk

  36 From Bridge to Boleyn with Littlejohn on a limo-bike

  37 Girls may turn my head but my heart is lost

  38 Enthralled by a giddy mist of climactic hysteria

  39 United to win – the Gods’ll never work this one out

  40 One little slip and happiness goes out the window

  Also by Russell Brand

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Introduction

  I am writing this intro so that you feel validated in purchasing this compilation of columns. If I don’t write it you might feel aggrieved that you’ve coughed up money (yuk! Who’d do that? You could only cough it up if you’d eaten it. I hate those people that eat coins and light bulbs and clock parts. Why don’t they get a proper job? Like me for instance, I write a lovely column – and intros to column compilations – you won’t catch me scoffing down change and chewing cogs then thrusting my coppery palm into your face for remuneration: ‘If you wanted money you should of kept those pennies instead of gargling them down your whorish trachea’ one might respond. I’m also against ‘beards of bees’ and, in fact, all records. I don’t know how Guinness have snided their way into the world of records – it’s none of their business, stick to booze, what’s next – the Benson and Hedges encyclopaedia of maritime mysteries? The Skull Bandits almanac of porn? The Olympics can fuck off an’ all – it’s just the Paralympics for people who haven’t suffered, it doesn’t make sense. Running, jumping, swimming, triple jump, high jump. Don’t they know there’s a war on? Do they know it’s Christmas? Timing things? Grow up. The only occasions on which my actions were timed were when my dad was tricking me into going to the newsagents. ‘Go on, I’ll time ya!’ he’d say. Though by the time I’d return the competitive element had dissolved, replaced by fag-snatching indifference. Where’s my medal? Where’s my tickertape parade? I wasn’t even allowed to keep the change. Luckily I nicked it anyway) only to read stuff you could’ve got for tuppence ha’penny with the Guardian, plus you’d’ve got all the ol’ news in that an’ all – not to mention those gorgeous tarts on page three and the weather. But with this book, you get all the articles – together at last, the cover picture, in which I am unadvisedly posing as Christ and interviews with famous football fans – providing I’ve had time to do them. What a bargain. I don’t know why I’m trying to sell you this book; you’ve obviously already bought it. Unless it’s a friend’s copy or you’re in a shop. If so, pop it in your jacket and walk out – I don’t care – I’ve already been paid plus I don’t really do it for the money, I do it for the honour and my love of the art of intro writing. I could sit and write intros all day.

  It just occurred to me that you might be reading this in the distant future, having chanced upon this in a second-hand book shop from the future. Should that be the case, get back on your hover-pod and watch the final glacier dwindle into naught and lament that you never knew the glory that was the 07–08 football season.

  It was an incredible season, beset with drama and fused with romance. I love the game itself, of course, but these articles focus chiefly on my reaction to the phenomena of football culture – Sir Alex Ferguson, who doth abide and will ne’er relent, like a face carved into the edifice of the national game as though it were Mount Rushmore; Kevin Keegan, who in the past brought Newcastle so close to success but now has the air of a Sunday league dad hollering ‘go on my son – they don’t like it up ‘em’ from the touchline; Avram Grant, poor unlovable Avram whose legacy is as murky and as difficult to judge as the dental blur that resides betwixt his lips; Ronaldo, a man allegedly labelled a slave by that flippant nit Sepp Blatter – a tag he did too little to shed (‘Yeah, I am like a slave – I remember that episode of Roots where Kunta Kinte, reclining in silver hot pants, got noshed off on a yacht by a never-ending procession of gorgeous floosies – no wonder he was peeved.’). Ronaldo has remained at United, wisely allowing his free will to be coaxed into acquiescence by the endlessly successful Fergie. I’m sure he’ll be a better man for it but how can he top last season?

  Then of course there’s my beloved Hammers, for whom it was a relatively uneventful year, which typically means that the subsequent season will see Upton Park burned to the ground or Lionel Messi join the club – West Ham cannot be mediocre with any degree of consistency, they are defined by volatility. Or should I say ‘we’ for Paulo Di Canio himself, one of the club’s most beloved anti-heroes, referred to the institution of West Ham as ‘you’ while addressing ‘me’. A team he played for for over four years and yet he grammatically acknowledged the strength of my allegiance. This is where the game’s power lies. When abroad, if I see someone in the shirt of a British football team, even Tottenham, after ascertaining that they’re not dangerously drunk, I will make eye contact and talk. About football. It gives us a common language. We recognise that whether you’re hollering for Hull City to stay up or for Manchester United to gobble up another cup, what you’re actually doing is submerging your identity as an individual into a whole that is common to us all. Separation is an illusion and in a game that is built around opposition we discover that ultimately we are all one.

  1

  This year I’ll ride the snake like a soccer shaman

  Today I am going to
watch West Ham vs Man City for the first game of the new calendar. The season’s commencement feels all fresh, lovely and new. We’ve rinsed away the horror and regret of last season; I suppose that’s another of the sublime delights entailed within the game – a terminable, manageable existence within defined parameters. Regardless of how spectacular or drab your term has been it’ll all begin again next August. That’s comforting. Better than actual life where if you hijack a bus and drive it into an old folks’ home yawping slogans and hurling fireworks the consequences will haunt you to your grave.

  I shall make my way to Upton Park all virginal and brimming with innocent expectation with a couple of chums, perhaps singing ‘three little maids from school are we’ from the Mikado. Noel Gallagher will be there in his capacity as a City fan elevating further the jeopardy for this already thrilling encounter as football kindly provides a context for good-natured banter and playful threats – again within defined parameters.

  The close season, or anti–season – a kind of negative un-time that exists only in relation to the Platonic, pure season – has been a fiscal torrent with cash flooding the Premiership and now buoyant corpses bloated with expectation bob towards the first whistle.

  ‘I shall make my way to Upton Park all virginal and brimming with innocent expectation’

  There has been much condemnation of the way in which the influx of money has poisoned the game and it’s difficult to dispute that recent events have tarnished football’s romance. But the effects of rampant capitalism are not confined to peculiar transfers and boardroom espionage – it’s ballsing up the entire planet. I saw in a red top that cocaine was found in the lavvies at 25 per cent of Premiership grounds, implying that the clubs are somehow culpable. People take cocaine; people go to football, that is all that’s been proven in that barmy cistern survey. Similarly the whole world is governed by an ideology that demands that the acquisition of money must subjugate all else: morality, spirituality and good old-fashioned sexiness are secondary to commerce, and this cannot be blamed on Carlos Tevez, Malcolm Glazer or even Thaksin Shinawatra, although he might’ve been closer to the nub of the problem in his last job.

  When caught up in the magic of live football it’s easy to believe that the power of the crowd is what ultimately matters; the inherent unity feels like socialism but each of the screaming 34,000 has been taxed on entry and however loud they may sound their voices are seldom heard. It is apparently futile to resist progress although tiny victories are occasionally achieved: disenchanted Manchester United fans have established FC United, a collectively financed club that truly belongs to its supporters. Presumably, though, were the club to clamber through the multitude of leagues to penetrate the national consciousness and challenge for trinkets the inevitable tide would also consume this idealistic vessel.

  Myself, I get all caught up in the rhubarb, I’m intrigued by escalating transfer fees and bonkers wages, I enjoy the soap opera. How can United fail to win the title this year? They’ve assembled a terrifying gang of world-class players, and quaint idealism aside I’m tantalised by the prospect of seeing Tevez hook up with Rooney. Chelsea’s current injury problems may impair them early on but that Malouda bloke looked good in the Community Shield and they know how to scrap. I’d like Liverpool to do well – Torres is a handsome devil and I’m sure he’ll cause all sorts of bother. Arsenal have a stability which oughtn’t to be underestimated and were coping without Henry for the majority of last season. And I suppose we’ll all be interested to see what Spurs do with their panoply of strikers.

  There’s been more diverse transfer activity than in recent memory but I’ll still be surprised if the top four in May ain’t the typical blend of red and blue. Newcastle, Villa, Pompey, Blackburn, West Ham and Sunderland will be shuffling around the Uefa places and I think Reading, Bolton and Wigan might be auditioning for the fizzy pop league.

  Apart from the obvious top four element I’ll be interested to see how those predictions pan out because I have an unscientific mind fuelled chiefly by emotion and whimsy. I shall be utterly agog if come next August the above paragraph doesn’t appear to be the result of a drunken, myopic pianist being deceived that my keyboard is a futuristic Steinway and told to ‘just go nuts’.

  I shall enjoy this year’s football; I’ll ride the snake, like Jim Morrison as a soccer-ball shaman. I’m not going to focus on the incremental erosion of the essence of the beautiful game because it is symptomatic of a much larger problem. I’d like to suggest that we enjoy the football then come late May, in the unseason, instead of watching the to-ing and fro-ing and the ‘I’d rather not going’ we unite under one glorious banner, march down Whitehall and kick off a proper revolution.

  2

  A pitch-perfect ending to a sadly familiar song

  Sven-Goran Eriksson’s Manchester City commanded play at Upton Park last week with such assurance and grace that far from seeming a hastily assembled squad of mercenaries from around this dirty little circle we call ‘world’, they appeared to be afloat in a transcendental love affair with each other and the randy boffin who compiled them.

  Flicks and dummies, winks and one-twos, it had the gleeful complicity of a well-administrated orgy at a hostel for handsome backpackers. What’s a bit annoying from the perspective of an Englishman is that now Sven can utter the damnation that secretly we all suspected to be true; he can manage perfectly well once liberated from the tiresome obligation to select only sons of Albion. As he said himself: ‘There was no Elano to pick for England.’ Blast.

  Rolando Bianchi, who got City’s first, ran directly over to the dugout to give Sven a cuddle, publicly consummating the Manchester love right in front of the embarrassed West Ham fans. We didn’t know where to look; most people opted to rest their disillusioned peepers ‘pon Dean Ashton, warming up on the sidelines for most of the match with a peculiarly erotic, slow-motion, sexy karate-robot dance.

  For me the opening day of the season was an oscillating mind waltz of conflicting emotions. The Irons were pretty shoddy, disorganised in midfield, lacking in imagination up front and a nerve-jangling ballet of tipsy confusion is what passed for a defence. Only Robert Green in goal and Mark Noble looked comfortable.

  The ignominy was exacerbated by the prior knowledge of an after-match meeting with Noel Gallagher in Christian Dailly’s box. Most people are aware that the Gallagher brothers are arrogant as a default setting, a feat they performed whilst supporting an unreliable and often risible football team. Well let me tell you that all the swagger and bluster we endured as discs went platinum and Brits were won were as nought compared to the gloating, showboating, puffed-up rhubarb I had to silently tolerate in a senior player’s box after Saturday’s misdemeanour.

  I’d rather hoped that it would be me bragging and strutting, perhaps whilst chuffing on a cigar, consoling a tearful Noel that the season is yet young and that he’d made some jolly good records. Instead me, my dad, my mate Jack and Robin the hippy black cab driver (there’s an anomaly – if you leap into his carriage unawares it’s like a magical mystery tour as he recites poems and demands a more lax immigration policy) moped about, overjoyed to be amongst adored West Ham players (James Collins was also there like a big, twinkly beefcake) but irked by the unanticipated defeat.

  ‘Strolling on to the eternity lawn at the Boleyn makes my brain stop gurgling and my eyes do crying’

  Then something magical happened. Dailly, who was about to take his adorable trio of wee Daillys to have a kick-about on the pitch, turned to us and said ‘Do youse wanna come down an’ all?’ None of us have ever been on the pitch at Upton Park. I’m not a man who is much at ease in any arena designed for physical activity but to walk on to the turf of the team you’ve supported all your life, were deigned to support, even before birth, is like climbing into the telly or being given the keys to Wonka’s chocolate factory and being told, ‘Here, just take it, I’m dispensing with all these bonkers tests and riddles – too many children have died. Poor
, dear Augustus Gloop.’

  Although, retrospectively, running a chocolate factory is probably a pain in the arse, whereas strolling on to the eternity lawn at the Boleyn makes my brain stop gurgling and my eyes do crying. On the way we sneakily looked into the away dressing room – which looked like it had played host to a tea party for giant toddlers. There were bottles and grass and fruit scattered about the room like Jackson Pollock working in litter. You could still feel the echo of the departed, triumphant City players, you could envisage them congaing out behind Sven, covered in victory and streamers.

  Then we were in the tunnel. A mural of West Ham legends adorned the walls; Brooking, Dicks, Moore, Devonshire, lit by the glare from the end of the tunnel, the light reflecting green. A few more tentative steps with the opening notes of Bubbles played by a phantom orchestra (or possibly covers band) and there it was, Upton Park, scene of misery and celebration, venue for rites of passage for hundreds of thousands of men, barely an hour before fizzing with hope, then saturated in defeat, now silent, empty, and Bagpuss was just a soppy ol’ stuffed cat…

  But there amidst the burgeoning nothing, chatting to Dailly, all normal, stood Dean Ashton, radiant with health, which is odd ‘cos he’s a few weeks off full fitness. My mate Jack stuck out a hand. ‘All right, Deano.’ Dean being, in reality, a bloke rather than the subject of an unrelenting sonnet rolling around the mouths of 30,000 even before he’d kicked a ball, simply replied: ‘All right.’ I scuttled over like a ninny and accosted Dean. I don’t remember what I said but it can’t have been great because I felt the necessity to impersonate Dean’s warm-up dance routine which, looking back, strikes me as an act of desperation.

  Dean laughed. As did the few people remaining in the ground, mostly in the directors’ boxes. Then I met Alan Taylor, scorer of two Hammers goals in the 1975 FA Cup final, while my dad, Jack and Robin the hippy cabby kicked a ball around the Bobby Moore Stand end of the pitch with Christian Dailly’s kids. ‘Come on Russell, join in,’ someone shouted. I declined; I could only have tarnished perfection.