Russell Brand is sort of good-looking but not, a range of emotions constantly flickering over his face, which at times can look twisted. Brand admits he’s twisted. It’s hard to imagine there can be anything more to his sex life than he’s already told us, and in detail. The matter of his former heroin addiction is also out there. He’s a hard man to discredit because so much that’s discreditable about him is already a matter of public record. Brand is entertaining and daring and possibly also serious. This week he called for a revolution. ( TT here ; Direct link to interview, YouTube here

Brand doesn’t vote and has urged others not to do so. Appearing on the BBC program Newsnight, Brand was challenged by host Jeremy Paxman – you want a revolution to overthrow elected governments, but what sort of government would you replace it with? ”I don’t know,” replied Brand, grinning like a wildcat. ”But I’ll tell you what it shouldn’t do. It shouldn’t destroy the planet, it shouldn’t create massive political disparity, it shouldn’t ignore the needs of the people.”

The burden of proof is not with him, he argued. It is with those with power.

In The Guardian, Nick Cohen pointed out that Brand’s claim that politicians were liars who were betraying the interests of ordinary people was the same claim employed with startling effect by Adolf Hitler during his rise to power in the 1930s. I thought that was pretty much the end of the argument until I read the comments at the bottom of Cohen’s column. Many readers – possibly a majority – sided with Brand.

I read two outstanding articles on the matter. The first was on Channel 4’s website by its culture and digital editor, Paul Mason. He wrote of Brand: ”Though he looks like a survivor from Altamont, his audience do not: they are young, professional people; nurses, bank clerks, call-centre operatives. And what Russell has picked up is that they hate, if not the concept of capitalism, then what it’s doing to them. They hate the corruption manifest in politics and the media; the rampant criminality of a global elite whose wealth nestles beyond taxation and accountability; the gross and growing inequality; and what it’s doing to their own lives.”

Paul Mason looks to be about my age. He concluded: ”While on my timeline everybody over 40 is saying, effectively, ‘Tee-hee, isn’t Brand outrageous?’, a lot of people in their 20s are saying simply: ‘Russell is right, bring it on’.” It’s an interesting exercise – ask around.

Read the full Martin Flanagan opinion, Fairfax here