Russell Brand on YouTube

Also see Russell Brand on heroin and Brand mobbed at Time Out party

* Sparking what became one of the biggest scandals in BBC history, Russell Brand last year left this message
on Andrew Sach’s voicemail (the actor who played who played Manuel in Fawlty Towers) telling his BBC Radio 2 show listeners that he’d had sex with Sach’s granddaughter.

The prank got 30,000 complaints and condemnation from the British prime minister. “Some commentators said it was the biggest UK media story since the death of Diana,” Brand tells Time Out. “Certainly in terms of newspaper inches – if that is any way to judge anything – it was big.”

Brand made this apology on his show the following week:

And then a more contrite apology when he later resigned from the BBC:

* Brand is no stranger to prank calls. Here he is, prank calling Dita Von Teese on air:

* Nor is Brand a stranger to tabloid kiss-and-tells. After he won The Sun newspaper’s Shagger of the Year award for the third year running last year, they renamed the award after him. “To have the Shagger of the Year award named after me is quite an accolade,” Brand tells us. “Just to know subsequent shaggers who take on that mantle will always, always just have to bask in the glint of glory afforded by my enormous obstructive shadow. Here he is prank calling a UK newspaper on air with a fictional kiss-and-tell:

* Brand has won various awards in his career, not least the Time Out stand up of the year award. Here he is making an acceptance speech for one he clearly doesn’t care about.

“Thank you very much for this award, but quite frankly, I do it for the sex,” he says.

* In his early TV presenting days, when he was smacked up on heroin, Brand made a series of outrageous documentary-style stunt shows called Re:Brand for a now defunct cable TV channel. “Jackass was a big deal at the time and I was charged with promoting that in UK so I decided to do more of a psychological Jackass where I’d do stunts of a more cerebral nature,” Brand tells us. “So I went to live with Nazis to see if I could change them

“I went to live with a prostitute to see if I could make her fall in love with me and then see what it was like to have sex with a prostitute if you knew her. And I did wank off a man to see if your innate heterosexuality can be overcome by committing a homosexual act.

“It can’t, incidentally. I also tried to seduce a little old lady and had a bath with a homeless man.

It was a funny couple of months. I’m curious about the fringes of psychological experience.

* Brand is now often a host of awards ceremonies. He called George W Bush a “retard cowboy fella” at last year’s MTV Awards. Here’s a clip of him responding to Bob Geldof calling him a cunt at the NME Awards in the UK.

And here are a few bonus random YouTube links.

* Brand prattling before a gig:

* A made up on the spot nonsense stream of consciousness:

* Russell Brand on his gerbils: “murderous, incestuous, infanticidal, cannibal little slags”: