Russell Brand – Running an Aussie TV station is like running a boot menders
Dr Mumbo has a theory why last night’s debut of The Gruen Transfer was down slightly on last year. It was because anyone who worked in advertising or media was at The Ivy for the Time Out / Russell Brand party.
Brand certainly proved to be a drawcard, with 600 on the guest list, meaning that many of Sydney’s shiny people found themselves in the unusual position of having to queue.
The set up, which saw the British comedian’s table cut off from the hoi polloi by the pool so he was elevated to something between a throne and a stage while most of the party goers gazed at him, must have been somewhat discombobulating for him. Which may explain his Tweet this morning: “That party was bizarre I felt like an exhibit in a nitwit zoo.”
Brand – who lost his BBC radio job earlier this year after making a call to Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs in which he announced that he’d slept with his granddaughter – hasn’t lost his taste for prank calls.
On a video posting on his own web site, he tells how, while guesting on radio station Nova, they called Seven Network’s programming boss Tim Worner, who has bought Brand’s TV show Ponderland. Brand said: “If you make prank calls from an English radio station, the consequences can be diabolical.”
But Worner was unfazed about being thrown on air, casually telling presenters Merrick and Rosso: “I saw some clips – it looks funny.”
According to Brand: “No-one cares that much in Australia. They run TV stations in Australia the way they run a farm or a boot menders.”
