Being a dad and moving to Oxfordshire has given Russell Brand a new-found state of domestic bliss. Tim Hughes finds out more...

RUSSELL Brand has a new obsession.

The comedian, famed for his hedonistic party animal lifestyle, claims to have put his carousing ways behind him and settled down to a life of domestic bliss as a new dad.

The 41-year-old self-confessed “reformed womaniser” became a father for the first time in November – his fiancée Laura Gallacher giving birth to their baby Mabel at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital.

It follows his move to Oxfordshire, spending a reported £3.3m on a thatched property beside the Thames at Aston, near Henley, complete with mooring.

So how’s it all going?

“I am enjoying Oxfordshire life,” he tells me.

So, any favourite places? Where does he hang out, eat and drink?

“I like the John Radcliffe Hospital where my daughter was born,” he answers. “And I like the Spires midwife-led maternity unit – but I wouldn’t go there for food.

“What would you have? Tap water and placenta. It would be a bit disgusting.”

The star of Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek is no stranger to Oxfordshire, having previously had his feet beneath the table at Kiddington Hall, near Woodstock, with ex-squeeze Jemima Khan, daughter of the late billionaire James Goldsmith.

“It was nice,” he recalls of his time in the area. “I like that town called Woodstock. I like Blenheim Palace and I went to Churchill’s grave. It’s an area densely populated with history and places of historical significance.”

Making his name as a stand-up, and as host of Big Brother’s Big Mouth, the former GQ Man of the Year has never shied away from controversy – defending the oppressed populations of Gaza and Tibet, attacking capitalism and calling for political revolution at home.

His YouTube series The Trews: True News with Russell Brand also earned him a massive online following as did his pronouncements on the rights and wrongs of voting before the last General Election and that Jeremy Paxman interview on Newsnight.

But as he embarks on another stand-up tour, calling in at the New Theatre Oxford next Wednesday, it is fatherhood that occupies his mind and which has inspired his new show Re:Birth.

“It’s called Re:Birth because it is about how I’ve been personally reborn as a result of the birth of my daughter. But it’s also about whether or not there is a thing that you can call your ‘essential self’, how you can get in contact with it, and how you find your way to the truth of who you are.”

And he insists there’s something in it for all – parent or not.

“I think that if you’re a parent and you come to see this show the story of the birth of my daughter will be resonant. I didn’t realise until I started talking about the birth how many moments were wrenching apart my consciousness as surely – although perhaps not as graphically as they did other aspects of my female partner’s anatomy – because it changes everything.

“It changes how I think of the world; the fact that she is my daughter changes the way I think about gender. And being a father is a massive download; it is a massive reboot. It’s the equivalent of when you turn off your computer by pulling the plug out instead of shutting it down the proper way – it’s like you’ve turned it off by tipping water on it. My whole head feels different and unusual – it has inspired loads of different thoughts.

“It’s also made me look at the last year when I was involved in politics in the UK and beyond that. t has made me look at that time differently – it hasn’t made me change my principles or what I believe in – but it’s made me look back differently.

“There are some very funny old clips in the show – clips of me on Paxman, funny clips of me outside Downing Street, funny clips of Donald Trump criticising me, of David Cameron – I talk about all that in the context of being a father.

“I also talk about how it feels to be a reformed womaniser in a monogamous relationship and how that’s changed my feelings about sexuality and sex. So the show has got quite a lot in it.”

The former lothario admits he has changed his lascivious ways.

“Now, when I talk about sex, and I talk about my hedonistic past, it’s different because I’m not living it any more. It’s determinedly a time that is over. I’m talking about that behaviour from a completely different point of view – as a father to a daughter, obviously that looks different.

“I hope that’s not just an evolution of my own selfishness – now that I am personally affected, now that I have got skin in the game, now I care about sexism. It’s not that – it’s like an epiphany. It’s a massive change – a massive change in the way that I see sex, the world, women, politics, myself, everything.

“Once you experience a change in the way that you look at yourself then the way that you see everything is going to change.”

He admits it marks a distinct change from his previous shows, with his crazy rock & roll stories of excess.

“I feel like earlier shows might have been about me living in this mad, glittery world,” he says. “But very early on in the process of writing this show, before I had written or performed any of the stuff about my daughter, I spoke to Jimmy Carr. Jimmy said ‘this is going to be a show about a mad person now having to live a normal life, it’s going to be amazing to hear you talk about normal experiences’.

“I really wanted to talk about politics, The Trews and all that – and that stuff is in there – but now I am living in a normal monogamous relationship with a woman, with a child, with two cats and a dog.

“In a way it is a bit like the end of Goodfellas when he says ‘now I get to live like a schmo,’ – except of course I don’t feel that – I have never been so blissfully happy. But it does provide an incredible context when I think about how I used to live and how I used to behave.

“Now I live an identifiable life. Nothing is more normal and spectacular than seeing a child being born and nothing is likely to have a more profound effect on you.

“In this show I am commentating from a ringside seat on the process of childbirth – of being in the room and watching it happen, and watching how it made me feel. But I’m also looking back at my past and thinking ‘oh my God, I’ve done all these things’ and looking towards my future and what I am going to be like as a parent, what I am going to be like as a father, and what that means for the world that I live in, and the world I want to live in.”

He is full of praise for the staff at the JR.

“I think there are 15 or 20 really surprising things that happen over the course of childbirth,” he says. “I am also very proud and glad to say that it took place in a NHS hospital and the NHS midwives were fierce warriors of the labour ward – it was incredible to be around those women, and to be a man in a maternity ward is to know your place. It was a very, very humbling experience – the birth of a new life, and the imposition of quite clear boundaries of who’s got the power.

Some of the material is graphic. What does the famously private Laura – sister of TV presenter Kirsty Gallacher – think of his new material?

“I do rigorous joke-checks with my girlfriend and I really try and make a pitch for them,” he says. “So far she has only banned one joke and charmingly and typically of her, that was in order to protect the midwife rather than her!

“She’s been incredibly, may I say, open about the information that she’s allowed to be revealed about her most private, personal, bodily details and experiences.”

And why does he feel such a compulsions to share his very personal experiences?

“I think it’s because I am a show-off. And I want to be understood,” he says. “I really feel connected when I am showing off.

The reason I am doing it from that place of truth is because for me that is the most important thing. When I am on the stage telling a story of how I felt when I was having a particular experience, if I can feel that there is a direct connection with the audience then I don’t feel like I am so alone in the world.

“It makes me feel personally hopeful when people are laughing at that stuff. My belief is that whilst we are all different, there is something very profound that connects us.

“If I am speaking of things that are very, very truthful and couldn’t be more personal – like my personal observations of watching the birth of my child – it’s obviously a very deeply, deeply private thing, but that’s why it becomes the material of the show, because for me – and I know this sounds slightly grand – it is where the magic is coming from.”

And does he have a message to fans who will be coming along to see him?

“Hello! Come and see the show. It will be intense!”

Russell Brand Re:Birth is at the New Theatre Oxford on Wednesday, May 10. Tickets from £31.65 from atgtickets.com