This bonfire night/Guy Fawkes’ Night, that time when we light a fire, bob for apples and let off fireworks to commemorate the 1606 Gunpowder Plot, a modern-day incarnation of the treasonous martyr is more palpable than ever, in the form of one Russell Brand. Now, before his legal team jump on us. We’re not saying Russell’s about to attempt to blow anything up, apart from all media outlets with his own hot air, but there really are more than a few similarities:
Spirituality
While Guy was Catholic – so Catholic, in fact, that he travelled across Europe fighting Protestants (in wars, not random punch-ups outside mead taverns or anything) – Russell is resolutely atheist. That said, he still totally vibes off the Catholic thing to stir up controversy. His last stand-up tour, The Messiah Complex, included a load of references to Jesus, and he once quipped, ‘I treat my entire life as a Jesus audition.’
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The beardy long-haired thing
Russell’s previously alluded to the similarity of his and Guy Fawkes’ looks. This time last year, he went along to Anonymous’s Million Mask March in London (they want to protest the fact that, as they say, ‘Liberty no longer exists’) wearing a Guy Fawkes mask. Everyone else there was wearing one – they’ve adopted it from dystopian graphic novel and film V For Vendetta, where ta protagonist fighting against a fascist state wears one. They all wear them to symbolise their anonymity and their equality to one another. Except Russell, well, he put his on his head. Because he looks so much like actual Guy Fawkes, he doesn’t need to wear a mask!
The marriage thing
Some historians claim that Guy Fawkes married and had a child, but there has been no confirmation of this. Similarly, Russell’s marriage to Katy Perry was so short (18 months) that sometimes we forget it happened, too.
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The treason thing
When Guy Fawkes tried to make a political stand by attempting to assassinate King James in the Houses of Parliament (as he wanted James's daughter, a nine-year-old Catholic, to be made Queen), he was captured, tortured and eventually hung, drawn and quartered. No, he wasn’t flung onto a bonfire. The whole bonfire thing is meant to be in celebration of the King’s escape from assassination. And when Russell makes a political stand? He gets a lot of money going into his bank account, touches up political interviewers on Newsnight and gets cusses on Twitter from people calling him a ‘babbling malapropist & periphrastic twat’.
There is one glaring difference between Russell and Guy, and that is in Guy’s day, there weren't many ways to speak out about the status quo – there were no public printing presses to vent frustration on a large scale.
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Now? You can publish a whole book about anarchy and you’re treated as semi-serious political fodder. Then again, Russell Brand’s never tried to kill the Queen. The closest he’s got is joking about that time he met her at the Royal Variety Awards in 2007. ‘In the back of my mind I’m thinkin’ “grab her fucking tit,”’ he’s said. Which is an entirely different crime altogehter. Something tells us Guy’s revolution was a lot more sincere.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.