Russell Brand had been up to more hi-jinks in the tabloids this week, but on the Andrew Collings show we were eating wheat free ginger biscuits, which is about the most physically exciting thing that has ever happened in the studio when we've been there. Brand had been lured into a honey trap by a Mirror journalist who had gone back to his house, refused to sleep with him and then written down all the things he'd supposedly said to her to try and persuade her to take her clothes off. Given that it would be weird in these circumstances for a man not to try his luck I think Brand deported himself rather well. Not getting angry that he was being teased and led up the garden path and finally offering to call the woman a taxi. I can imagine a lot of men (including myself) who might have been a lot less gentlemanly and yet the article seemed to be mocking Brand rather than questioning the tactics of its own journalist. Ine the headlines they had made a mistake with the asterixes so it read something along the lines of "He wanted to see my t***s". Obviously it was meant to be tits, but someone had slipped on the asterix key and now it was suggesting a much ruder word. Andrew bless him didn't understand what I was getting at when I discussed this on air. I was saying I wasn't surprised that he'd want to see her t***s, especially given that she was unusual in that she had more than one. Who wouldn't want to see a woman with two t***s?
Finally Collings twigged and moved the show onwards from the festering pool of filth that I had, as usual, caused it to plunge into.
But I can't help thinking it's time for our newspapers and by extension us as a nation to grow up. Is it really a story worth publishing that a single man tried to have sex with a single girl, or that people who are in Bog Brother (that was a mis-type, but I think I prefer it so it will stay) have previously had sex with other people and may have enjoyed it? Wouldn't it be more newsworthy if a grown person had never had sex with someone or if they had done, but had got no pleasure from the experience? At least that would be unusual. I mean I am glad that the papers are full of this kind of stuff cos it is easier for me to do my childish commentary on and also because I get some kind of prurient enjoyment out by imaganing what it would be like to be Russel Brand for just a week or so (and of course this is the purpose of this stuff, not to judge the people doing it, but to give all the people who aren't some kind of vicarious thrill).
I don't really envy him too much and to be honest think I prefer ginger biscuits. I was very naughty. I had two of them. I expect it will be in the Mirror next week.
