Russell Brand

I confess to not subscribing to the love-or-hate-him, Marmite view of Brand; I think he's quite easy to both love and hate. More frequently, I'm just annoyed by my inability to figure him out, but this run of shows helped with that, with its vertiginous wobbles between self-deprecation and self-loathing, its precarious juggling of meretriciousness and idiocy and bawdiness. 'Just shut up for a minute!' I thought during one episode and then I realised I had tears of laughter on my cheeks. Perhaps the most moving - and telling - moment came when Brand was recalling being cornered by rowdy fans at Upton Park, an incident that seemed to provoke in him a crisis of masculinity.

4Laughs Review

Resplendent in his he/she fashion, Russell manages to deliver some very witty monolgues on everything from Coco Pops to climate change. The format, however, is somewhat run of the mill.

New Statesman Review

Russell Brand's Ponderland is the latest attempt by Channel 4 to find a vehicle for the station's outrageous star. However fast Brand talks, however many rude words he uses, it's still a teased pompadour of perfection, every line worked to within an inch of its life by its writers. This is not to say that it's not funny, because it is. But with its use of a studio audience whose titters sound weirdly like a laugh track (were they so timid that Channel 4 had to overdub them afterwards?) and its Clive James-style use of archive film, it has a manufactured quality that is somewhat at odds with Brand's increasingly worked-up Frankie-Howerd-meets-Ozzy-Osbourne persona.

I'll declare an interest and reveal that I am a fan of ubiquitous, outrageous, kohl-eyed Russell Brand, which some people my age apparently find strange. But beneath the back-combed hair lies a smart if unconventional mind. Russell Brand's Ponderland, showing each night this week, combines reminiscences on various topics with archive and newly-filmed segments, plus phone calls to supposedly 'unsuspecting' targets. Last night's opener was about the fears and confusions of childhood and the phone target Russell's dad Ron, who was called upon to reflect on the difference in colour between boys' and men's willies. Well, Brand has never been known for holding back, though I sensed a slightly less wild Brand than hitherto. There were even some grains of common sense amid the hilarity, the f-words and the 'awright' accent.

The material was funny, and predictably lyrical, juvenile, smutty and sophisticated all at once. But to keep the fun factor and prevent seeming stale - it needs to move at a slightly quicker pace and be a bit more experimental.

Time Out Review

Jigging energetically around the stage, firing off volleys of falsetto observations and faux-aristocratic impressions, he's like an energetic Frankie Howerd in a Worzel Gummidge wig, sending up video footage of acne-scarred teens playing retro computer game 'Track & Field', while lamenting the use of fear as an educational tool for children.

Radio Head: Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation

Rowland Rivron, Sandi Toksvig, Mark Steel, Mark Thomas, Jo Brand, Graham Fellowes, Russell Brand . . . the list of modern comedians that divides the nation is a surprisingly lengthy one. And it will be only part of the listening public that will be rearranging its life to be in front of the wireless when the latest series of the sociopolitical lecture Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation kicks off next Tuesday (Radio 4, 6.30pm).