Russell Brand seems to be everywhere - and this morning he is credited with a surge in listenership for BBC 6Music.
To quote my colleague Chris Tryhorn, who chimed with other coverage of the latest Rajar figures:
"With his Byronic good looks and a string of reputed conquests behind him, Russell Brand perhaps doesn't qualify as a "face for radio". But it seems the flamboyantly dressed star has a talent for the medium after audience figures published yesterday showed that his station, BBC 6Music, added 40% to its listenership over the past year."
Now, actually, this may be hyperbole, because Brand is just a small part of the 6 Music family and he was not the biggest reason for its growth - just the most photogenic (allegedly). Indeed the BBC can't offer a breakdown of the 6Music audience - although they say his podcast has proved very popular, reaching number 2 in the iTunes chart.
Not all 6Music fans are Brand fans too, as a brief glance at its talkboards would confirm. There is a particular campaign to ditch the endless adverts for his 6Music show. His co-presenters appear to have mixed feelings too. He found fame with Big Brother's Big Mouth - very popular on E4, but that's not necessarily saying a lot in the grand scheme of things. And as Davina McCall has proved, any old talentless fool can host a BB show and look good. It doesn't necessariy mean they will be good at anything else.
His E4 chatshow, Russell Brand's Got Issues, has not been a ratings success - the last in the series got 87,000 viewers.
I just don't get the Brand phenomenon: those skinny jeans, the rubbish beard, the ego, the endless tabloid stories about what a sex God he is.
My God, he's even got a column in the Guardian's fantastic sports section. That column - like most things about Brand - is not aimed at me. Largely, I suspect, because I'm a bloke and a sports fan.
