Russell Brand’s Touring Australia In October And He Wants To Make Things Uncomfortable For Tony Abbott

Over the years, Russell Brand has been controversial as a comedian, divisive as a self-appointed revolutionary and incredibly effective in his quest to be a total shit-stirrer. Now, after taking a noted interest in our country through his regular webseries The Trews he’s announced a nationwide tour of Australia for later this year.

Things are about to get interesting.

From October 17, Brand will be presenting a new political comedy show called Trew World Order in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane and Sydney. At least, we guess it’s some kind of political comedy show. The press release announcing everything this afternoon vaguely described it as “a rabble-rousing stab at creating, through the power of the crowd” and then trailed off to talk about “TREW freedom” and freeing us “from our petty desires”.

Basically, it sounds like an IRL version of the YouTube series he currently films from his bedroom with/without a shirt. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

In the past few months, Brand has used The Trews to take aim at local issues such as our government’s treatment of asylum seekers, Tony Abbott’s reaction to the Human Rights Commission findings from Australian detention centres, and the executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. And, though these rants are always delivered with his trademark rambling fury, they’ve contributed to ongoing conversation about each subject and exposed some of our domestic failings to a larger international audience.

Even when he joined the rest of the world in talking about Barnaby Joyce’s plan to murder Johnny Depp’s dogs last week, Brand used it as an opportunity to draw attention to the larger problems our nation faces:

“Australia seems to be going through some exertion of its national identity type stage,” he said. “Every time you see Australia in the news, it’s always ‘Australia Kick Poor People Into The Sea’, ‘Australia Staples Flag To Back Of Woman’s Head’ … Another aspect of Australia’s assertion of its national identity is the setting up of real mad detention centres and refusing to let immigrants into the country. Tony Abbott has said the boats have stopped, they ain’t.”

In an exclusive interview with news.com.au, Brand has revealed that we’ll be seeing more of this on stage. “We’ll be talking about the immigration situation [and] there’ll be loads of stuff about your crazy Prime Minister,” he said. “I might try and gay marry him when I get there.”

Problem #1: Brand has also just essentially proposed to Irish radio personality Terry Wogan via Twitter so I doubt how committed he is to poor Tone.

Get this Eurovision under me belt then over to Dublin to marry Wogan pic.twitter.com/shjwzhZVsv

— Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) May 23, 2015

Problem #2: Even with the majority of the Australian public now pushing same-sex marriage and a huge number of us showing support for Ireland’s legalisation overnight, the PM’s views on the matter remain unchanged.

It breaks my heart to say this — because holy shit, that wedding would be spectacular — but it probably won’t be happening this time around.

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RUSSELL BRAND ‘TREW WORLD ORDER’ NATIONAL TOUR

MELBOURNE: October 17, Rod Laver Arena.

ADELAIDE: October 18, Entertainment Centre.

PERTH: October 20, Penrith Arena.

BRISBANE: October 22, Entertainment Centre.

SYDNEY: October 23, Sydney Opera House.

SYDNEY: October 24, Qantas Credit Union Arena.

Pre-sale tickets are available at 12pm Wednesday May 27 via Ticketek. General sales open at 9am on Tuesday June 2.