London - As befits his taste for only the very best of things, Russell Brand’s new home in the Hollywood Hills is a sumptuous affair of sunlit rooms and period vaulted ceilings that hark back to the golden days of the movies.
Owned by Laurence Olivier in the Thirties, it has its own cinema, plus five bedrooms and five bathrooms. On an evening, Brand can recline amid the scent of oleander trees on a candlelit balcony, with its own outside bar offering stunning views of the twinkling city below.
With an estimated £15-million in the bank, he recently ecame the proud owner of the Los Angeles pad.
So how does this fit in with his rallying cry on BBC’s Newsnight for a “socialist egalitarian” revolution, an end to “massive economic disparity” and belief that “profit is a filthy word”?
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One suspects that last assertion might come as something of a surprise to the “high-net-worth individuals” that Brand is currently trying to charm into investing in his new film. After all, as well as offering the potential for big returns on their stakes in the movie, Brand’s company is also promising that most unsocialist of sweeteners – massive tax breaks for those willing to put up their cash.
All of which leaves the revolutionary Brand open to accusations of raging hypocrisy.
Not least, I can reveal, because the model for his company’s plans to raise the cash to finance the project, a documentary called Happiness, is a controversial film partnership scheme.
The firm helping to finance Brand’s film is called Mayfair Film Partnership Limited (MFP). The comedian is listed as one of its directors, along with his UK manager and UK business manager.
This week, I contacted Brand’s business manager Andrew Antonio to ask him about the venture. Before clamming up, he told me: “It’s a film fund, a bit like Ingenious.”
Ingenious Media offers a controversial way for the rich to make tax-efficient investments in potential Hollywood blockbusters. Recently, a British High Court judgment revealed such schemes were described as nothing more than “scams for scumbags” by Britain’s former top taxman, Dave Hartnett, who ran HM Revenue & Customs until last year
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It is not the first time that Ingenious — which strenuously denies claims it has helped rich individuals avoid millions of pounds in tax – has come in for criticism. In February the firm was named as being among companies that exploit British government tax breaks intended to encourage the film industry.
It must be pointed out that none of this is against the law,
but how embarrassing for a loud-mouthed Leftie like Russell Brand that his manager should link him to such a rampantly capitalist concern.
In fact, look a bit closer and holier-than-thou Brand’s lavish lifestyle and his banging of the drum for the downtrodden masses starts to look a little hollow.
Certainly guests at the Savoy, where he is a regular visitor on his jaunts back home from Los Angeles, might look askance at his man-of-the-people routine.
When he visited the swish London establishment at New Year, he was spotted making use of one of the Savoy’s butlers to do some belated Christmas shopping for him in the hotel shop. Likewise, he is equally fond of the Dorchester, where rooms start at more than £400 a night.
Such extravagance is made possible by a network of business ventures set up to cash in on his bankability.
In the UK, Brand is the director of three entertainment companies, Mayfair Film Partnership, Pablo Diablo’s Legitimate Business Firm, and another called One Arm Bandit Limited.
Mayfair turned over more than £1.5-million last year, making close to £800 000 for its shareholders. Latest accounts for the latter two firms, meanwhile, show they turned over more than £370 000 last year, which means Brand’s British businesses alone grossed £2-million.
But the really big money is to be found in Hollywood, where Brand remains hot property and can command up to £5-million a movie.
Two years ago, he and his manager, Nik Linnen, set up production company Branded Films, which operates from offices at the Warner Bros Studios in Burbank, California. At the same time Brand negotiated a lucrative “first-look” deal with Warners which gives the studio exclusive rights to any of his future projects.
To add to his bank balance, Brand is working on the third instalment of his autobiography My Booky Wook after agreeing to extend his £1.8-million deal with publishers HarperCollins.
His latest stand-up world tour, titled Messiah Complex, which sees him appearing in Britain this week, also takes in America, Israel, Lebanon, and Palestine. (Brand is heading to Cape Town to perform at the Artscape Theatre on November 19 and 20 as part of the South African leg of the tour.)
What is beyond doubt is that Brand has become a card-carrying member of the richest strata of society that he professes to so despise.
(In August, Brand’s father 67-year-old Ron – a former photographer with whom Russell has had an often fractured relationship – appeared before a bankruptcy court in Surrey, England after racking up £13 000 in unpaid rent on a flat in Camden, North London. He is said to have refused to ask his famous son for help.)
Brand bought the LA house in the name of a trust run by his US business manager Lester Knispel, who is said by one of his clients, former basketball player Shaquille O’Neal, to be a “tax genius”.
Friends say that when Brand settles into his new home, the comedian will install a Mexican housekeeper named Gabby and a gardener called Polo. If that’s true, then no doubt he would argue that retaining domestic staff is one way of keeping in touch with the working classes. – Daily Mail