Valérie Trierweiler and Russell Brand discuss their favourite books of the year. Their own.
Valérie: Bonjour, Monsieur Brand.
Russell: Call me Russ, love, everyone else does. I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but you’re a well fit bird, ain’t you?
Valérie: Qu’est-ce que c’est this “oiseau gymnastique”?
Russell: Good question, darling. I didn’t mean to offend you and I will try to curb my sexist language but I was overcome by your pulchrituditititinous...
Valérie: You are pas si mauvais yourself, though I generally prefer un homme qui est un lot smaller than vous.
Russell: I tell you what, my vision of greatest beauty, I was skimming through a few pages of your book before we met and I’d have given that Frankie a big smack. I mean if I was shacked up with you there’s no way I’d have been off on my moped to shag someone else, well not till I’d been going out with you for a few weeks at any rate.
Valérie: Oh Russelle! Tu parles les doucest of choses. Je regrette to say que I haven’t had time to lire ton livre parce que my eyes have been blinded by the larmes of the agony I feel at the way the president of France...
Russell: You’re French, love, I never knew that – no wonder you talk a bit funny...
Valérie: Speak for toi-même, grand garçon. Mais as je was saying, je crois que the intensity et the purity of mon amour était trop pour un commitment-phobe...
Russell: Sorry, what was that you was saying?
Valérie: Mais assez about moi and le façon in which I et les peuples de France was cruellement betrayed. Oui, that is pas trop fort un mot: betrayed. Dis-moi un morceau about your book...
Russell: To be honest, gorgeous, I’ve struggled to get through large bits of it meself, as when I went back and read through some of it sounded like complete bollocks, but what can you expect when you was a smack addict. Did you know I was a smack addict...
Valérie: Mon pauvre Russelle. Je sais comment you must have felt because pour un couple de jours après mon François had abandoned moi, j’ai hovered entre mort et vie quand les docteurs gave moi half un valium...
Russell: Yeah, yeah, thing is what I realised is that at the heart of everything the world has an inner consciousness that is, like, telling us through tantric vibes that we need to be a bit cooler and nicer with each other and have less money...
Valérie: Pas nous, surely?
Russell: Don’t be silly, sweetheart, it’s the bankers and the establishment who are to blame, along with some evil unknowable forces that only I know about because I have meditated upon it...
Valérie: Tu mention l’économiste français Thomas Piketty...
Russell: He’s some crazy fucked-up dude, though, isn’t he? I mean I could understand even less of what he was going on about than I can meself, but he sounds cool...
Valérie: Oui, bien sûr. Pendant les soirées avant le president de tout le monde had been getting son fin away avec une slapper, nous used to sit on the sofa ensemble at the Elysées Palais, while les staff brought nous several bouteilles de Margaux, et discuter how important Piketty was pour le futur de hommegentil.
Russell: That must have been well nice. Jemima and I used to do the same with every issue of Vogue. So what’s this Piketty guy on about?
Valérie: Il est très complex but basically he is disant que choses are a lot more complex que everyone but lui pensent, mais toi et moi should be tout droit parce que nous déjà avons beaucoup d’argent. Mais à parler la verité, François et moi didn’t get beyond the introduction either, parce qu’il était très boring...
Russell: I’ll tell you who is well cool, love, is that geezer George Orwell.
Valérie: J’adore Georges Oubien.
Russell: Yeah Gorgeous Georgie is a mate of mine, we hang out a lot together on Comic Relief...
Valérie: Tu es pulling mon jambe, Russelle. Georges died années ago.
Russell: You’re wrong there, mate, he’s very much alive and he’s just written this book called 1984 about the number of birds I’ve shagged.
Valérie: Ca, c’est très strange. That is precisement le nombre de femmes que François a shaggé aussi.
Russell: That’s what I was saying about how the world is really much more interconnected on a kind of deep spiritual level, so why don’t we both have a revolution or two ourselves...
