Russell Brand is the future, like it or not

I write at a difficult time. The balls are in the air, but we know not where they will land. Perhaps, by the time you get to read this, more will be clear. Right now, however, we know only that Ed Miliband has been interviewed by Russell Brand. We do not yet know what he said.

Or what Brand said. Probably he said more. ‘That was interesting enough, but Russell Brand was a bit restrained’ is something that nobody has said, after any conversation, ever. Most likely he’ll have quite liked Ed Miliband. They’ll have friends in common. Probably even girlfriends, what with them both having such voracious sexual appetites. Plus, earlier this year, when Brand popped up on Question Time and everybody said he was an idiot, Miliband popped up afterwards and said he wasn’t. So there’s good blood there.

You can mourn the rise of Brand and to be honest I often do. He’s a vexing combination of clever and ignorant, and most infuriatingly seems to feel that his ignorance is everybody else’s fault. His childhood does sound like it was horribly rough, but he’s pushing 40 and he’s been off the drugs for at least a decade, and he doesn’t have kids or a day job. So he might have found the time to read the odd book by now, or at least to have had somebody explain to him how graphs work. His biggest failing, I think, is a sort of holy solipsism. When Russell doesn’t understand a thing, invariably it’s the fault of the thing.