In Booky Wook 2, the follow-up to his widely acclaimed memoir, My Booky Wook, comedian and actor Russell Brand acknowledges on the very first page that he was "born to be famous," even if it "took decades for me to convey this entitlement to an indifferent world." Being anonymous, he writes, "was an inconvenience" and a "penitentiary," and when his "years of rancid endeavor" were eventually rewarded, Brand finally felt at ease in the universe. There are people who want to change the world and who accept fame as the byproduct of achievement, and there are people who want to be on television so badly that they'll film themselves taking baths with a homeless person. Brand has typically identified himself unapologetically as the leader of the second camp, but recently he seems to have had a change of heart.
Revolution, Brand's newest book, is ostensibly a manifesto arguing for the peaceful dismantling of capitalism and the establishment of small anarcho-egalitarian communities without centralized power structures. It's been criticized for spelling out possible paths to this utopian end only in the vaguest of terms, and for getting various facts wrong, and for Brand's widely uttered admission that he doesn't vote, and thinks that anyone who does is wasting their time. He also preempts any categorization of himself as a Champagne socialist, referring to his chauffeur-driven Mercedes as "the anesthetic of privilege, the prison of comfort," and acknowledging that "now I am a tourist in poverty."