It would have been a shock if Sachsgate had been ignored on the opening night of Russell Brand’s national tour. Sure enough, clips of the coverage filled the onstage screen before Brand swaggered on, thanking the audience for coming “after what I done”. Removing his leather jacket to reveal a black mini-dress, he was never likely to skirt the issue. What followed was not a
90-minute apology but it did help to explain his antics. And it was very funny, too.

Scandalous is a show about inappropriate behaviour, clearly Brand’s speciality. He repeatedly explained that his “mental illness” makes decisions that he cannot cancel. This was why, as he bashfully confessed, he recently offered Helen Mirren his dirty pants on a film set. This may have been why he called George W. Bush a “retarded cowboy” when hosting the Video Music Awards. And it may have been why he left those phone messages.

Yet it is Brand’s lack of an edit button that also makes him a fantastically original stand-up comedian. With his constant self-examination and boundary-pushing notoriety, he is probably the nearest this country has to the legendary Lenny Bruce. Like Bruce, Brand mines his own chaotic life for material and confronts ideas that others would never dreaming of voicing.

Sounding like a cockney who had swallowed a dictionary, he brilliantly dissected his own national debt-sized ego. A sublime moment that summed him up was the revelation that it was disconcerting seeing himself on the news one night — for him, he is the news every night.

Make narcissism an Olympic sport, put Brand in Team UK and that is one 2012 gold in the bag.
7, 12, 13 February, Hammersmith Apollo; 10, 11 February O2 Brixton Academy (0870 534 4444, www.ticketmaster.co.uk)