Russell Brand on how fatherhood has changed him and his new stand-up tour, Re:Birth

We caught up with the controversial comedian ahead of his show which visits Lighthouse in Poole later this month on Wednesday, April 19 and the BIC in Bournemouth on Tuesday, March 27 in 2018.

Why is the tour called Re:Birth?

It is about how I’ve been personally reborn as a result of the birth of my daughter. But it’s also about whether or not there is a thing that you can call your ‘essential self’, how you can get in contact with it, and how you find your way to the truth of who you are.

Do you think this applies to the people coming to watch this show? Will they care?

Yeah, I think they will care. I think that if you’re a parent and you come to see this show the story of the birth of my daughter will be resonant.

I didn’t realise until I started talking about the birth how many moments were wrenching apart my consciousness as surely (although perhaps not as graphically as they did other aspects of my female partner’s anatomy) because it changes everything.

It changes how I think of the world; the fact that she is my daughter changes the way I think about gender. And being a father is a massive download, it is a massive reboot.

It’s the equivalent of when you turn off your computer by pulling the plug out instead of shutting it down the proper way – it’s like you’ve turned it off by tipping water on it.

My whole head feels different and unusual – it has inspired loads of different thoughts. It’s also made me look at the last year when I was involved in politics in the UK and beyond that.

It has made me look at that time differently – it hasn’t made me change my principles or what I believe in - but it’s made me look back differently.

There are some very funny old clips in the show – clips of me on Paxman, funny clips of me outside Downing Street, funny clips of Donald Trump criticising me, of David Cameron – I talk about all that in the context of being a father.

I also talk about how it feels to be a reformed womaniser in a monogamous relationship and how that’s changed my feelings about sexuality and sex. So the show has got quite a lot in it.

On the latter, in terms of the womanising – it’s interesting that this show has given you a chance to talk about that part of your past in a new light.

Yeah, because ten years ago – and it’s weird because it feels like I’m talking about a century ago – but times were very different then. Or times weren’t very different then and I was just being very insensitive about sexism!

But now, when I talk about sex and I talk about the past, and my hedonistic past, it’s different because I’m not living it any more.

It’s determinedly a time that is over. I’m talking about that behaviour from a completely different point of view – as a father to a daughter, obviously that looks different.

I hope that’s not just an evolution of my own selfishness – now that I am personally affected, now that I have got skin in the game, now I care about sexism.

It’s not that – it’s like an epiphany. It’s a massive change – a massive change in the way that I see sex, the world, women, politics, myself, everything.

Once you experience a change in the way that you look at yourself then the way that you see everything is going to change.

In terms of the overall material, this feels like the most relatable content that you have done. In your previous shows, people have been watching this celebrity who is living this mad life, and the laughter has come from these mad experiences that you relate to people. But this show feels different – there is an element of that still – but it is much more inclusive. Are you enjoying that part of it?

I really am. I feel like earlier shows might have been about me living in this mad, glittery world. But very early on in the process of writing this show, before I had written or performed any of the stuff about my daughter, I spoke to Jimmy Carr. Jimmy said ‘this is going to be a show about a mad person now having to live a normal life, it’s going to be amazing to hear you talk about normal experiences’.

I really wanted to talk about politics, The Trews and all that - and that stuff is in there – but now I am living in a normal monogamous relationship with a woman, with a child, with two cats and a dog.

In a way it is a bit like the end of Goodfellas when he says ‘now I get to live like a schmo,’ – except of course I don’t feel that – I have never been so blissfully happy.

But it does provide an incredible context when I think about how I used to live and how I used to behave.

Now I live an identifiable life. Nothing is more normal and spectacular than seeing a child being born and nothing is likely to have a more profound effect on you.

In this show I am commentating from a ringside seat on the process of childbirth – of being in the room and watching it happen, and watching how it made me feel.

But I’m also looking back at my past and thinking ‘oh my god, I’ve done all these things’ and looking towards my future and what I am going to be like as a parent, what I am going to be like as a father, and what that means for the world that I live in, and the world I want to live in.

Q: What is really interesting is the reaction of the audience when you are talking in quite a lot of detail about the lead up to the birth, about the night itself, about the experience in the hospital, and of the birth itself (and you actually got pretty involved yourself, it wasn’t like you were stood in another room drinking tea). It’s really interesting to hear some of the audience reactions from the people who have gone through childbirth – the women who have actually given birth, or the husbands and the part that they have had to play.

RB: I think there are 15 or 20 really surprising things that happen over the course of childbirth. I am also very proud and glad to say that it took place in a NHS hospital and the NHS midwives were fierce warriors of the labour ward – it was incredible to be around those women, and to be a man in a maternity ward is to know your place. It was a very, very humbling experience – the birth of a new life, and the imposition of quite clear boundaries of who’s got the power.

How does Laura feel about you discussing all of this in intimate detail?

I do rigorous joke-checks with my girlfriend and I really try and make a pitch for them.

So far she has only banned one joke and charmingly and typically of her, that was in order to protect the midwife rather than her!

She’s been incredibly, may I say, open about the information that she’s allowed to be revealed about her most private, personal, bodily details and experiences.

Q: I don’t think that people have heard talk about birth in the way that you do – so explicitly, and in the detail with which you do. It sparks memories for them - ‘of course, of course they do give you that!’ or ‘they do talk to you like that!’

RB: I think prompting those memories is an important thing about comedy. When you think of great observational comedians like Jerry Seinfeld or Michael McIntyre, they make you say ‘yeah!’ – they say things that you recognise. I am, I would say, a different type of comedian to that, but nonetheless there is that sense in which you find things that people are aware of and you just bring that awareness to the forefront – that’s part of telling a story. For most people present at a birth, at the time, you are so caught up in the emotion and the intensity that you don’t always recall the details. But for me it had the opposite effect, it was so emotional and transcendent that it was all landing. Quite soon afterwards I was telling one of my friends, David Baddiel, about my experiences at the birth. His children were with him at the time and he said to them, ‘that’s not how everybody sees the world, children’. And he was actually saying that what we were seeing was quite beautiful, in this instance. That made me feel encouraged in the material, I realised this is what the show needs to be about.

Q: What is it about your experiences that make you want to go out and tell those stories to people? I don’t think all comedians have that. You tell stories that are very personal to you. Why do you do that? Why is that important to you and why is that part of your performance?

Q: You have always loved talking to audience members, and now there’s actually a big chunk of the show where you do more of that. How have you noticed the audiences over the years have changed and what are they like now, are you surprised by the people that come to see you?

RB: I am surprised. I am surprised by how elderly they are! No, the audience is encouragingly diverse – there are people drawn from all manner of sex and society, there are young people and older people. And mostly what I am surprised by is their willingness to share the most intimate details about their personal and private lives on a form – which surely, clearly and obviously to anybody, was going to be read out loud, to other members of the audience. There’s nothing like performing live. You can’t be misunderstood when you’re in the room with everyone – they can see your face, they can hear the laughter. It’s the most exciting thing that I do, I think it’s the best tour that I’ve ever done.

Now that you’re in front of an audience again, that must be so enjoyable for you. It must be the best part of your job. That you get to meet people and see how they really react towards you?

There is a warmth and connection that is very difficult to describe.

It’s not the same connection after the show that there always used to be! But during the show we’re all in the same bed together.

These days, I would have to say that if anyone did invite me back to their bed after the show, I am so tired from being a father I would probably just go to sleep!