Comedian Russell Brand is known for his edgy material, flamboyant personality and being Katy Perry's ex. He gained worldwide notoriety with his role as Aldous Snow in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him To The Greek, and has had his hand in radio, TV, awards shows, books and virtually every other form of media. He's made no secret about his problems with alcohol and substance abuse, and rather than run from it he's incorporated it into his act. His style is quite polarizing, straying into offensive territory often and a cloud of controversy has hovered over for him for much of his career. Brand was fired from MTV when he showed up to work on September 12th, 2001 dressed as Osama bin Laden. Years later he would return to the channel in a big way, as a host of several of their awards shows. At the 2008 VMAs, he compared Jesus Christ to Britney Spears, repeatedly ripped on the Jonas Brothers and insulted then-president George W. Bush. His performance on the show allegedly led to him receiving death threats, but the ratings warranted a return in 2009. It was his appearance at the 2013 GQ Awards, where he accepted the Oracle Award, that really created an uncomfortable moment. During his speech, in addition to mocking the award itself, Brand called out British politician Boris Johnson, labelled GQ as "Genocidal Quips", and made reference to Hugo Boss's past designing clothes for the nazis with the following quote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYQG66S-nTE "Also glad to grace the stage where Boris Johnson just made light of the use of chemical weapons in Syria, meaning that GQ can now stand for Genocide Quips. I mention that only to make this next comment a bit lighter. Cause if any of you know a little bit about history and fashion, youll know that Hugo Boss made the uniforms for the Nazis. And the Nazis did have flaws. But they did look f*cking fantastic, lets face it, while they were killing people on the basis of their religion and sexuality. Russell Brand was ejected from the event, and instead of embarking on a PR campaign to save face, he proceeded to poke fun at those involved. When GQ removed him from the magazine issue, Brand tweeted: "GQ cleansed me from their issue. That's what they do when they don't like something. I guess that's why they dig the Nazis." And then he followed it up with this zinger: "GQ editor: "What you did was very offensive to Hugo Boss." Me:" What Hugo Boss did was very offensive to the Jews." #GQAwards #nazitailor. Zero f*cks, indeed.
Brad Hamilton is a writer, musician and marketer/social media manager from Atlanta, Georgia. He's an undefeated freestyle rap battle champion, spends too little time being productive and defines himself as the literary version of Brock Lesnar.
