Live review: Russell Brand @ New Theatre, Oxford - 'Russell's own Brand is so painfully funny'

Russell Brand couldn’t have hoped for better pre-gig publicity for this show in which he explores the world of politics and the cult of personality.

A neatly argued defence of why he has chosen not to vote in a TV interview with Jeremy Paxman a few weeks before, set tongues wagging all the way from the Corridors of Power to our local pubs.

In the face of, by Paxman's standards, a mild grilling, Brand argued that he found our limited participatory ‘democracy’ irrelevant, insisting the choice was “unappetising”. By contrast, his show at a packed New Theatre focused on a quartet of more palatable figures; cult icons who inspired him — despite their flaws. And who were these figures? Perhaps surprisingly, Gandhi, Che Guevara, Malcolm X... and Jesus Christ.

What followed was hilarious yet insightful and inspiring, Brand speaking with an eloquence and clarity so lacking in those parliamentarians he despises.

The tour was called the Messiah Complex — a recognised psychological condition, particularly prevalent in the hospitals of Jerusalem, we are told - where wards are filled with such delusional souls ("I'm the Messiah," "No, I'm the Messiah," "I forgive you," "Oh, good move!").

The flowing-haired Brand, clad in trademark skin-tight leather trousers, a sleeveless vest and a set of oversized worry beads, is not afraid to mock himself for his own misguided egotism. In doing so he reveals a very human and sensitive side which stands in sharp contrast to the image of the bullish celeb portrayed by the national media.

So what does he admire in these figures? Gandhi for his compassion and devotion to peaceful resistance, though not for his hypocrisy (he tells us the Indian independence leader denied his dying wife Western Penicillin for religious reasons, but was more than happy to accept British imperial medicine himself when he fell ill himself).

He loves Che Guevara for his principles, for turning his back on his privileged background, and his bravery. He respects civil rights activist Malcolm X for his principled stand against institutional racism and segregation in the USA, and for his cool welding of power and influence, and Jesus for many reasons — not least of them, because they look alike.

At moments the show bordered on surreal — such as when he called on stage his dog Brian — a huge white wolf-like creature which he referred to as a "white supremacist dog" (he actually belongs to his current partner Jemima Khan, who lives nearby, in the Cotswolds). Brian promptly jumped off stage, disappeared into the stalls and was never seen again.

Russell made his own walkabout too, delighting fans with banter and the occasional hug - and made short shrift of the inevitable inebriated heckler, inviting the hapless interrupter to admit his own self-loathing. Which he did.

Brand’s message and delivery was flawless. But was it funny? Yes... painfully. Yet it was also fascinating — both as an insight into the mind of a celebrity who knows all too much about the cult of personality, and as a mirror to our own eagerness as consumers to cling to oversimplified icons we can believe in.

Brand may have no truck with party politics, but if he stood for election, I have no doubt at all that he’d soon be parking those skinny cowhide trousers on the green leather benches of the House of Commons.