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. 

Sympathy for the Devil: why I feel sorry for Fred Phelps

The Westboro Baptist Church has just 40 members and yet its reach over the last ten years has been far greater than that tiny figure deserves. This miniscule sect famous for picketing the funerals of gay people, soldiers, Jews, Muslims and anyone else that fits its warped vision of the world has attracted opprobrium and documentary makers in equal measure. And often it feels that the Church has revelled in the hatred and the scorn and attention poured over it. 

In some respects the Phelps family have become a sort of extremist version of the Kardashians - a family you hate to watch but can't help watching - a bunch of nobodies who have found global fame for a one note performance. We love to hate them and they in turn love our hatred. Indeed documentary makers have queued up at their door. Louis Theroux has descended on them twice. Lily Allen's dad has poked them with his semi-retired snarl. They have even appeared on the Jeremy Kyle show. Yes really. Jeremy Kyle. So it hasn't all been a bundle of laughs on the road to salvation.

This is the sort of media coverage that the Quakers, with about half a million adherents, or even the Church of Iceland would kill a Messiah for. You probably didn't even know there was a Church of Iceland did you? I didn't until about 4 minutes ago. It has a quarter of a million followers. The Westboro Baptist Church has just 40. Did I mention that?

Forty. 

Slightly bigger than a class of kids in an English primary school.

Half the number of people you can fit on a Routemaster bus.

Ten fewer than the number of Liberal Democrat MPs in Parliament.

Yes - as small as that.

And now Fred Phelps, the leader of this inglorious bunch of inglorious Baptists, is reaching his very own end time. 

Predictably the reaction has been less than sympathetic. There is even talk of activists picketing his funeral and giving the Phelps family a taste of their own very toxic medicine.

And why not? This after all is the leader of a church that revelled in the deaths of innocent people in the 9/11 attacks and who issued a press release after the Boston marathon bomb that read:

"Here's a hint — GOD SENT THE BOMBS! How many more terrifying ways will you have the LORD injure and kill your fellow countrymen because you insist on nation-dooming filthy fag marriage?!"

This is the church that has been allowed - largely via the magic of TV - to get its very odd and cancerous view of the world out to millions more than it would ever have reached otherwise. If it were an alcoholic Louis Theroux would be guilty of enabling it. But it isn't. It's a teeny weeny church with just 40 members.  

I feel rather sorry for Phelps. I feel rather sorry for his family. Those 40 people who have been abused for most if not all of their adult lives. And it is abuse. And it is THEY who have been abused. Sometimes by themselves. Mostly by each other. 

Nobody else has been hurt as much by this freak show. None of their victims has been loved any less because of the picketing or the silly message boards. THEY - the Phelps family have been condemned to a life of isolation, of misery and of suffering because somebody somewhere convinced Fred that an extreme reading of the Bible was the answer.

Of course it isn't. The Bible doesn't teach you much at all really. Although there are some very good knitting tips in Ecclesiastes if you look hard enough.

Fred Phelps' brief time on this planet has been an exercise in futility. He leaves no legacy. He dies a figure of hate; unloved; mourned by none bar his very closest supporters - from nothing he came - to nothing he goes. Unmissed. Unfulfilled. Confused. And wrong. After a lifetime of preaching and professing he leaves a congregation of 40 - just 40 people - behind. And that - in its own purposeless way -   is quite sad.