Who is this Russell Brand?

I don’t mind having a reputation as a serious and spiritual person. I think that would be a nice reputation to have. Russell Brand.

During my slaving days in an advertising agency in the 70s in Calcutta, we were required to work closely with market research organisations. Some of these research companies were spawned by the advertising agencies themselves and the research folks sat cheek by jowl with the ad crowd at the office. This was a clever way of keeping all the business revenue, advertising and research, under one corporate roof. All that changed many years down the road but that’s another story. One of the many rudimentary lessons I learned during my interactions with research professionals was that you need to be totally objective in framing your questionnaire such that no bias creeps in when you go around quizzing respondents. For instance, it simply won’t wash if you ask a question to a housewife on the lines of ‘Madam, we think Golcate toothpaste is harmful to your gums. Do you agree?’ You will be guilty of leading the respondent. The makers of Golcate toothpaste will sue you for every last paise. Let me get back to the res.

What has all this got to do with the price of fish? I hear you ask. I indulged myself somewhat merely to give you, the reader, the impression that I have been around, know my onions and will be treading on solid ground with respect to what is to follow. You see, I have been scratching my head these past few weeks trying to figure out who this Russell Brand chap is and why our newspapers here in India are so keen on featuring his life, sexual peccadilloes and court cases on a regular basis.

There are wild allegations about this gentleman, assuming he is one, apparently a millionaire television personality by profession and a dangerous and rapacious predator by inclination. Ask Katy Perry, not that I know who she is. A sort of Jekyll and Hyde character, this Brand, but most people seem to think he is more of a Hyde and Hyde character, the Jekyll side of him being conspicuously absent. My point being, why talk about this Russell Brand, who might be worshipped as an anti-hero for his wayward lifestyle back in the U.K. but is a total nonentity here in India? Do The Guardian, The Sunday Times or even the Daily Mirror headline page 3 with a picture story of one of our Bollywood stars, take your pick, having an ugly spat with one of their girlfriends? I think not. So why must The Times of India feed us stories of this Brand fellow and others of his ilk from the western world?

As a conscientious blogger, I decided to surf the net to glean a bit more about Russell Brand instead of relying solely on what could be dodgy newspaper reports. YouTube provided plenty of snippets about him and his extraordinary persona. One nugget I picked up was that he married singer Katy Perry in Rajasthan’s Ranthambore tiger sanctuary, under Hindu Vedic rituals! Divorced fourteen months later, presumably under American or British rituals. While all this was of academic and perhaps, prurient interest, it did not in any way, give me a clue as to why Indian audiences should be interested for our print media to waste so much editorial space on the man. To be fair, he talks fleetingly about practicing yoga but that is about as much of an Indian connection that I can gather (besides the Ranthambore tiger reserve wedding), and one heck of a stretch at that. I can understand if stories concerning Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt were to be featured. Many Indians do watch their movies and can relate to them, but Russell Brand is a closed book.

It was then that I said to myself that I should not allow my personal bias to cloud my judgement. It is entirely possible that I am some kind of weirdo who does not even know the first thing about the world-famous Russell Brand, and that he could very well be the main subject of conversation at every cocktail party in all the metro cities of India. Not in any party I have attended, but in every other party. I recently wrote a piece admitting my non-existent knowledge of pop diva Taylor Swift and her songs and had half my readers coming down on me like a ton of bricks berating my ignorance and calling me a moth-eaten fuddy-duddy. That is when I arrived at the conclusion that I should do a quick dipstick study (I can do the jargon) to ascertain what the level of awareness is with respect to brand Brand, in my neck of the woods.

As indicated earlier, having had some exposure to the way professional research is conducted, I decided to spare no effort to proceed diligently in asking the right questions (actually just the one question) to a set of people to elicit the level of Brand (pun intended) equity Russell enjoys in our country. Or not. Clearly, there was no need for me to travel all over India to do this. A small but representative sample size chosen with care should do the trick. I decided to go with the random sampling method. I am on a roll here, folks. Onward and upward!

To be on the safe side, I called up one of my old pals, a whiz in the research business, explained my dilemma, and sought her guidance on how to go about this Brand project. Incidentally, for reasons I cannot put a finger on, the market research business is dominated by the female of the species. Always has been. I can only put it down to their superior analytical prowess and empathy which enables them to draw people out of their shyness and start talking. Fair play to them, I say. There is hardly any point in embarking on a research exercise if you can’t get a sensible word out of the party of the second part, or the respondent. My friend, the research pro, asked me to proceed on my Russell Brand study strictly on pre-determined lines. I had made copious notes in my little black diary. I mean a leather-bound notepad with ruled pages, clip-on pencil and stuff. Not one of your digital affairs.

As soon as I stepped out of the main gate of my apartment block, I was to buttonhole the second human being I spied, and pose the question, ‘What does the name Russell Brand mean to you?’ Following this instruction to the T, I stopped a young lady who was ironing clothes for some customers in our block. She could only speak Tamil, but I had my instructions, and I could converse fluently in Tamil. Accordingly, I lapsed into the vernacular and posed the question to her about Russell Brand. She looked quite blank and mildly alarmed. Thus far, she had conversed only with my house maid. I took her awkward silence as a ‘don’t know,’ licked the tip of my lead pencil, jotted it down and proceeded down the road.

I then walked a little further, turned left and stopped at the third house on the right. This is called random selection. Whether I knew the resident of that house or not would have been entirely a matter of coincidence. In the event, I did not. I rang the bell, a dog barked and the door opened to reveal a well-dressed gentleman. As I did not look like a door-to-door salesman, he greeted me and let me in. The Jack Russell frisked about, sniffed at my ankles, thought better about lifting its hind leg, concluded I was not a threat and sat down next to me. ‘I will only take a minute, Sir. I am doing a small survey. I see your pet is a Jack Russell terrier. Speaking of which, does the name Russell Brand mean anything to you?’

‘I have heard of Russell Crowe. Good actor, Gladiator,’ replied the man of the house. ‘Would you care for a cup of tea?’

‘Thank you, Sir. I have taken enough of your time. I have more visits to make. Another time, perhaps.’

He saw me off at the door, with the Jack Russell yapping away in the background. Given the level of response so far, I may as well have asked the terrier what he thought of Russell Brand.

Still, ours not to reason why. I took out my little notepad and sauntered off in the direction of my next stop. ‘Take the second turning right and halt at the third bungalow on the left.’ I did that and faced a Nepali security guard who viewed me with suspicion. Since there was not much point asking him if he was aware of one R. Brand, I requested him to show me into the palatial bungalow. After what seemed an eternity while he spoke on the intercom, a sprightly teenage girl wearing a Coldplay tee-shirt skipped out and told me her Mummy and Papa were out of the country and could she be of any help. This was the light at the end of the tunnel. The Coldplay tee-shirt won the day. ‘What do you know about Russell Brand?’ I queried.

‘I know zilch about him, but my friend in London says he is a perv, but quite sexy. That is all I can tell you.’

Didn’t quite strike pay dirt, but near enough. Job done. I could have hugged her but wiser counsel prevailed. She might have taken me for a local avatar of Russell Brand. Thanked her profusely and departed, the Nepali guard still eyeing me warily. Literally putting one foot in front of the other, I completed seven more planned random encounters, including one with a Dunzo courier, who was chatting with his girlfriend on his mobile, and who abused me in guttersnipe Kannada. I decided to call it a day, came home and conducted ten telecom interviews asking the same question to people I did not know from Russell Brand. Without exception, all of them cut me off, one of them threatening to make a police report about a crank caller.

There you have it, my friends. I ask again. If no one in India, or at least in my two-kilometre radius, consisting of a representative sample in Bangalore, knows anything about Russell Brand, why is my daily newspaper so wrapped up in him? It’s not as if he is Justin Trudeau or something. Not to put too fine a point on it, I too must wonder why I spent so much time writing about this non-entity. Duh!