Big Issue: Owen Jones' Big Election

Roll up, roll up and read all about this week's star-studded Big Issue - guest edited by Owen Jones

With the general election bringing claim and counter-claim we wanted someone to navigate us through these confusing times. So we asked Owen Jones if he wanted to take control of The Big Issue and lasso some names who could offer new perspectives in the final days before polling.

Among those featured is revolutionary popinjayRussell Brand who disentangles his thoughts on politics and reveals whether he would run for office himself. Actor Michael Sheen offers his own prescription for saving the NHS. Queen legend Brian May talks about his journey from pop to politics by way of badgers. Brit-award winner Paloma Faith calls for more social responsibility, pub landlord Al Murray explains why he is standing against Nigel Farage in South Thanet...

The new supersized 'star-studded' big issue of the Big Issue edited by the starstruck star and stud Owen Jones is available now for £2.50.

Also contains Ken Loach and Paris Lees, who are a lot more interesting than Paloma 'Let me be your kooky girlfriend' Faith.

Fagburn promises to buy one, but may skip the Russell Brand kiss-in.

Question Time: That's Entertainment

They were standing under a tree, each with an arm round the other's neck, and Alice knew which was which in a moment, because one of them had "DUM" embroidered on his collar, and the other "DEE". 'I suppose they've each got "TWEEDLE" round at the back of the collar,' she said to herself.

They stood so still that she quite forgot they were alive, and she was just going round to see if the word "TWEEDLE" was written at the back of each collar, when she was startled by a voice coming from the one marked "DUM".

'If you think we're wax-works,' he said, 'you ought to pay, you know. Wax-works weren't made to be looked at for nothing. Nohow.'

'Contrariwise,' added the one marked "DEE", 'if you think we're alive, you ought to speak.'

'I'm sure I'm very sorry,' was all Alice could say; for the words of the old song kept ringing through her head like the ticking of a clock, and she could hardly help saying them out loud:

Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle!
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle.

Just then flew down a monstrous crow,
As black as a tar-barrel!
Which frightened both the heroes so,
They quite forgot their quarrel.'

'I know what you're thinking about,' said Tweedledum; 'but it isn't so, nohow.'

'Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'

'I was thinking,' Alice said politely, 'which is the best way out of this wood: it's getting so dark. Would you tell me, please?'

But the fat little men only looked at each other and grinned.

Unthought For The Day 2: How Thick?

'This attitude of churlish indifference seems like nerdish deference contrasted with the belligerent antipathy of the indigenous farm folk, who regard the hippie-dippie interlopers, the denizens of the shimmering tit temples, as one fey step away from transvestites.'

No idea - anyone?

From Russell Brand's ever-baffling book, Revolution.

Admittedly, it's hard to believe the allegations that Johann Hari has ghostwritten this flatulent gobbledegook.

The Guardian. Woo!

There are two types of people in the world, those who think Russell Brand is great, and those who aren't a bunch of stupid apolitical gubbins.

And wannabe celeb gay bum-sniffers.

Which makes three.

Russell Brand: The Revolution Will Not Be...

Russell Brand may have become the poster boy for people who love politics but hate politicians.

Tonight, however, he was forced into an old-fashioned political retreat when he cancelled a debate to launch his new book after guests including the leading human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell expressed concerns about the make-up of the panel.

Activist Laurence Easeman, who appeared with Brand on a recent video to highlight the plight of an under-threat community in London’s East End, had been due to join the panel at London’s Hoxton Docks to discuss the issues raised byRevolution – the comic’s treatise on the travails of the modern British body politic.

Mr Tatchell said he flagged up concerns with Brand having been alerted to a series of blog postings by others which, if accurate, would suggest that he and Mr Easeman may not share all the same political views...

The Independent.

Oops! 

Next stop... Russell meets our Owen!

People should storm the cinemas and pay nothing on Thursday for my chat with Russell Brand. And demand they give their workers a living wage
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) October 19, 2014

Only just realised this, OJ?

Why did you agree to speak there in the first place, then?

Johann Hari, Owen Jones, Morrissey, Peter Tatchell...

Can anyone explain this gay love-in with the great phoney Brand?

If Russell Brand is taken seriously as a left-wing thinker, then no wonder our movement's fucked. 

PS Saint Peter interviews the even babier-faced Mr Jones in 2007!

UND! Russell Brand tries to go gay for his little missed TV show, RE; Brand. And here he is interviewing two flucks fom Westboro Baptist Church. The second's much better.

Update: Evan Davis does Russell on Newsnight.

'Evan, mate.. what a lot of people in your line of work misunderstand is that we don't want some pedagogic figure coming in and didactically shouting at us...' LOL!

Rather a lot of creepy, patronising touching there, Russell, would you do that to Paxman?


Mr Brand does come out of that quite well, for a raving idiot.

Fagburn thinks he'll do a David Icke before long.

Owen Jones: No

Please stop writing about gay stuff, Owen, it is quite embarrassing.

PS Our Owen will be in conversation with that other leading left-wing intellectual Russell Brand on October 23rd - it will be broadcast live via Picturehouse Cinemas.

Let's hope Picturehouse's underpaid workers have called off their boycott by then, eh?

Johann Hari: Brand Management

Eagle-eyed comrade Huw Lemmey has spotted Johann Hari's amazon.com bio for his book, Chasing The Scream: The First And Last Days Of The War On Drugs.

Johann Hari became a columnist and reporter for The Independent at the age of 23, and he has also been a contributing editor at Slate. He has reported from dozens of countries, and has won several leading journalism awards, including, twice, the Newspaper Journalist of the Year award from Amnesty International UK, and the Stonewall Journalist of the Year. He currently produces Russell Brand's podcast and YouTube channel. Hari's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Slate, The New Republic, and The Nation.

Some things are screamingly noticeable by their absence here; like Hari leaving The Independent under a rather large cloud, and subsequently losing his Orwell Prize for Political Writing for bringing shame upon his profession.

Hari's fall from grace in 2011 came after he admitting plagiarism, harassment of other journalists and of committing the supreme crime of 'making lots of stuff up'.

One can only wonder why he hasn't been stripped of his other awards for journalism.

But what's this that Johann clearly considers one of his most notable achievements; 'He currently produces Russell Brand's podcast and YouTube channel.'

Zoink!

Here is said YouTube channel, The Trews.

Welcome to my channel and my daily show 'The Trews' where I give you the true news so you don't have to invest any money in buying newspapers that charge you for the privilege of keeping your consciousness imprisoned in a tiny box of ignorance and lies.

Probably not a good idea then, dear Russell, to collaborate on it with a journalist who is now best-known for being outed as a serial liar.

Nor is it a good idea, dear Johann, to collaborate with a man who is quite clearly a political idiot.

It has been rumoured that Hari was ghostwriting Brand's new book, called - no irony here - Revolution.

Some suspect that Hari has assisted Brand with his political tracts/rants, such as his New Statesman essay, Russell Brand On Revolution, though they are so incoherent - literally and politically - it's hard to believe this (apparently the person who subbed his Guardian piece on the 2011 riots 'still breaks out in a cold sweat whenever the original copy is mentioned').

Conversely and perversely, some of Morrissey's recent public statements on True To You and his lyrics about the state of the world are so garbled and politically puerile they seem to bear the influence of his new BFF Russell Brand.

Brand also gave a puff quote for Owen Jones' The Establishment - presumably the publisher thinks the 39 year-old appeals to ver kids - though this appears to have been removed from the front cover.

[Edit: The quote in full reads; “Owen may have the face of a baby and the voice of George Formby, but he is our generation’s Orwell”].

Presumably the publisher realised many potential readers think Brand is a bit of a joke.

Jones, of course, replaced Hari as the youngish, leftish and gayish columnist on The Independent. Though Owen left for The Guardian of his own freewill.

I've wondered before how often Hari has helped Elton John with his articles on gay issues and HIV/Aids (they have co-authored at least one piece).

Soon after waving goodbye to The Independent, Johann visited Elton at his house in the south of France, who he may have met when Elton 'guest-edited' The Independent.

By serendipity, Hari's new opus comes with a puff quote from Sir Elton; 'An absolutely stunning book. It will blow people away.'

In 2012 Milo Yiannopoulos asked; 'Who is bankrolling Johann Hari?'

Though as Chasing The Scream - which has taken three years of globetrotting, researching and writing - is published by Bloomsbury, the answer is most likely to be 'Harry Potter'.

This is all sounding like an incestuous circle jerk, isn't it?

The sort of thing Mr Hari writes gay porn stories about, in fact.

Owen Jones: The Establishment

The Guardian today publish an exclusive extract from our Owen's latest book, The Establishment, about how the political, social and business elites have a stranglehold on the country.

Sounds good, Jonesy. 

Thankfully, it seems Penguin are not going with the original front cover quote from that ridiculous berk Russell Brand, a man with the political acumen of the Chuckle Brothers, who dubbed OJ; 'Our generation's Orwell'!

This is about 

In his weekly Guardian column, Owen writes; 'The confines of acceptable political opinion are narrow and zealously guarded, and those presented as outsiders are actually the establishment in undiluted form.'

How true, Owen, how true...

PS Did 38% of Guardian journalists go to Oxbridge? Were half of leading newspaper journalists privately educated? Press Gazette.

Some people are so childish...

PS Is Ed Miliband protecting and courting Owen Jones? Dan Hodges' Telegraph blog.

Dan - Glenda Jackson's son, incidentally - once famously called Owen 'The Justin Bieber Of The British Left'.

Update: Statistics should provoke Britain's media into prolonged period of self-reflection. They probably won't, since 54% of top 100 media professionals went to private schools, Owen writes in Thursday's Guardian.

Owen neglects to mention that the new Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission's report also says that 47% of newspaper columnists went to Oxbridge.

Johann Hari: Rebranding

If he has any hope of rekindling his career, it's pretty crucial that plagiarist, incest-porn aficionado and Wikipedia bully, Johann Hari, picks his next project carefully.

Thankfully, we might be in luck. Word around the watercooler is that Hari is connected to a project to get a political documentary off the ground. One featuring a new kind of political hero. A celebrity who seems to have become BFFs with Hari...

... Russell Brand.

FYI: Apparently Michael Winterbottom is in the frame to direct it too.

Popbitch.

Johann spent much of last year galavanting around the globe researching and writing a book, Chasing The Scream: The first and last days of the war on drugs. It is due to be published next January.

Morrissey: World Peace Is None Of Your Business - Advertisement

Well, this isn't completely embarrassing, is it?

Always good to hear a multi-millionaire tax exile complaining about governments keeping people poor.

The whole lyric is so politically juvenile and pseudo-radical you'd think she'd been hanging round with Russell Brand or something.

Oh hang on...

Update: She joined Twitter on Wednesday. What could possibly go wrong? etc etc.

And finally... Ambridge here we come?

Morrissey's been in the news quite a lot this week - just a shame she hasn't got a new record to promote.

Russell Brand: P**fs!

Fagburn could not be less interested.

PS This is from the ever hopeless Independent - now officially Britain's worst newspaper (after the Daily Express).

Thought For The Day: Rupert Everett

“Today the world has gone full circle. Gay people seem to be doing all the decent things the straights used to do – getting married, having babies and recycling. I feel like an old grandmother, sitting in my rocking chair, writing to you, dear Russell, during a break from my knitting. The past is all twinkling lights in the woods on a snowy night. Was it revolution? Or were we just crashing up and down on a much deeper wave, as history ploughed on regardless? Did everything change in ’67 with the new law? Was Stonewall the defining moment? Were we as free as we felt in the Seventies? Are we as free as we think we are now?”

From Rupert Everett's article on how far we've come from Wilde's day.
In the new New Statesman - guest-edited by Russell Brand.
In the shops now, but not online til Monday for some reason.

PS And here you can watch a bunfight between Mr Russell Brand and Mr Jeremy Paxman on last night's Newsnight.
Some have told me they detected a distinct homoerotic undertone.
Whatever, pseudo-radical wankers across perfidious Albion appear to have taken this as a stirring (not) call to arms.

The Sun: Showbiz!

The Sun.

Tweet Of The Day: Russell Brand

With respect to the ol' transgender community, I didn't have it off with the antiques kid off Wogan. My favourite media lie ever though.
— Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) September 4, 2013

Russell Brand responding with wit and grace to Lauren Harries claim they had "a romp" once.
Or as the Daily Star put it; 'EX-swap CBB star Lauren Harries claims she had a secret affair with bed-hopping comedian Russell Brand'

Simon Amstell: The Dating Game

“My technique with someone I like is basically just hope I run into him again.”
This segues into a story of a summer walk with an unnamed friend, a confident man who strides through life, demanding and winning girls’ phone numbers. When Amstell points to a young man that he fancies, his bold friend approaches, insisting that they join him and his companions for a picnic. Amstell is mortified. “Get his phone number,” the bold friend orders. Squirming, he does. “Call him now and see him tonight,” the friend insists. Amstell, gulping down his fear, “grabs the moment” and, in doing so, gets laid.
“That was Russell Brand,” he tells me and we both fall about giggling. Who else could it be? Russell Brand teaching Simon Amstell how to pull. Don Juan with Prufrock as his wingman. “He showed me how to feel that fear and do it anyway,” he says.

Simon Amstell in The Times.

The Sun: Sorry Lads!

KATY PERRY'S last video featured her naked while reclining on a candyfloss cloud.
And her next effort is likely to raise a few eyebrows as well. But not for those reasons.
The promo to accompany Fireworks features a gay smooch.
And sorry lads, this time the chart-topper ain't kissing girls.
Instead shots show two men puckering up.
RUSSELL BRAND must be relieved his wife to be didn't ask him to make a cameo appearance in this one.

The Sun, where double standards come as standard, Katy Perry Has A Gay Old Time