Bez vs Brand

You know Bez. Everyone knows Bez. The Happy Monday's mood man. The inspiration for the band's second single 'Freaky Dancin', a kind of living medical experiment who has turned over more drugs than a provincial high street Boots. One of the few people in Britain it is impossible to hate. The Madchester jester that NME once (unfairly) put in a list, alongside Linda McCartney and Andrew Ridgley, of band-mates whose contribution to famous acts was negligible. Bez was no Linda. He shook his spindly arse across the second summer of love like a demented genie let loose from its methadone bottle. And if nothing else Bez was unarguably the greatest Manchester based maraca player of the late 20th Century. 

Earlier this week the northern icon declared his intent to run as an MP at the next general election. His aim is to fight the revolution from within and if you read his manifesto which took the form of a  Guardian Q and A it is a short sharp shot of fresh air - and not in a UKIP/Farage breath of stale nicotine fresh air way - I mean a genuine breath of fresh air. The kind that doesn't make you retch. Pundits often talk about what 'the Commons needs' well here he is -  Bez is what the Commons needs. He has seen more, lived more, met more normal people than most of the stuffed shirts in parliament have or will in a lifetime. You wouldn't necessarily want Bez to be Chancellor of the Exchequer but then that's not going to happen is it. He'd make a mean fucking Minister for Love though.

Bez has nailed a lot of narcotics but better than that he's nailed being a famous human being. He is passionate, down to earth and genuine - rare commodities in anyone - rarer still in celebrities - almost non existent in politicians. This isn't because politicians are necessarily lacking in those characteristics to begin with - but rather because it gets squeezed out of them until by the time they take their seats they have turned an inevitable shade of beige.

Compare and contrast:

Yesterday in Vienna, Russell Brand addressed the UN's 57th Session Commission on Narcotic Drugs - if you watch it - and frankly there's no real need to do that if you've watched any of Brand's word conjuring "serious" performances of the last years - you can sense the frisson of excitement in his audience. They aren't actually listening to what he says, but they are giggling a lot. This is what happens to normals in the presence of A listers. It's the same reason people used to go to the theatre to watch Madonna claim she was acting. Nobody gave a fuck about the play. It was all about being under the same roof as an immortal that mattered.

Brand is undeniably fascinating and not wholly unlikable. You don't get to where he has got by being stupid, although I suspect that if he looked less like Che Guevara and more like Lofty from It Ain't Half Hot Mum we might never have heard of him. But it is true that that he is very good looking and a live-wire and a fairly unique character. A prodigious force - with 7 million twitter followers and an adoring fanbase. And yes - a lot  of quite sensible people like Brand - just like a lot of quite sensible people believe in God. 

There is a good argument that having come through addiction himself (Brand not God) he has every right to stalk the international circuit professing his widely held, though not very original view that drugs prohibition doesn't work. Rusty believes that the only reason drugs are still illlegal  is because Western politicians are afraid of what the opinion polls and the Daily Mail might think. 

To which the only sensible and academic response is DUH - REALLY?

I mean that's hardly revolutionary is it. Lord Rees-Mogg believed something similar and you never saw him doing arena comedy. It's pretty much the mainstream view and something the Lib Dems have been banging on about for years.

A few years ago a now defunct TV channel called RE:Brand paid Rockets a quarter of a million  quid to make a short series on whatever took his fancy. In one show he invited a homeless smack addict called James to 'come and live with him, in my own flat like, for real, for good - this will be his new life.' It is one of the most cynical pieces of rehab porn you are ever likely to watch. In one particularly telling scene Russell climbs into a bath with James and literally cleans his wounds. Yes! Just like Jesus! Geddit!!??! When after two days James decides to leave, Brand becomes so eager to reassure viewers that it has been his choice to go that he repeats it rhetorically five or six times before making James say it directly to camera. The faux-cheery chappy act grates at the best of times, but here the mask falls and exposes him for what he is. An inauthentic eidolon who cares about one brand and one Brand only - Russell.

And in that there is very little difference between him and other global do-gooders like Angelina Jolie and that woman who was in Sliding Doors - photogenic prophets, profiteering from their photogenic proselytising.

The great issue that has dogged both popular culture and politics since the 1960s is authenticity. We the people say we want it and they the providers are eager to give it. The problem is that, like love, authenticity is an exhaustible commodity. Brand still hasn't made up his mind as to whether he's Peter Cook or John Lennon. He is neither. He is plastic soul. White reggae. Donovan doing his best Bob Zimmerman impression. 

Vote for Bez Salford. He's vinyl in its original sleeve with a big Moroccan lump of happiness. You could do a fuck of a lot worse.