Gig Review - Russel Brand, Manchester Apollo 05th February

As promised, although a little later than planed, here is my gig review for Russell Brand. Now ill say this at the start, I am a fan of his! I don’t care what you think but he is funny, has an amazing way with words and a great entertainer. This was a date at the Manchester Apollo, sold out of course, amongst a nationwide tour. We actually had pretty good seats on the floor so had a good view of the stage.

As with previous shows I have seen of his, his warm up act was Mr Gee. As with Mr Brand himself Mr Gee has a great control of vocab. Throw in a couple of well written poems and you have a truly great performer in the making!

So onto the main act, its clear they have had a fair bit of money to spend on this show, over head projectors, lights and a big screen! Needless to say much of the show revolved around the media storm of Nov/Dec. His intro was a two minute piece made up of headline news stories across various media. Let me make my thoughts on this clear, I believe what Mr Ross and Mr Brand did was wrong, clearly! Give them a fine, and suspend them yes, but did it really warrant to be the top news story for two weeks? Lets also realise that the young lady at the centre of it all is hardly whiter than white! I instantly lost any spec of respect for her the moment she went and sold her story to the Sun! Having said that, it was a private encounter and should not have been aired! The second thing for me is that fact that there were only two complaints during the show, ok two is more than what should be acceptable, but it was only after the Daily Mail got wind and got on its high moral horse that 39,998 more complaints came in! Seriously people do you not have anything better to do with your time?

Anyway, onto the show, most of it did revolve around the media storm of last year. The main gist of the show dealt with the extensive media coverage and that, if they had realised the best way to bring Mr Brand down a peg or two would have been to ignore him! Instead all the major news channels devoted hours of coverage to him, talk about inflating an ego!

But as ever a very good time was had, I do like Mr Brand, im not ashamed to say it! He always puts on a good show and I would say, keep an open mind and go see him! You wont be disappointed!