Russell Brand to play Manchester Apollo 1st December

Britain's favourite bad boy brings his show Doing Life to Manchester.

Russell Brand has the dubious honour of being the only person Big Brother has catapulted to success. True, he had been attracting the attention of the comedy press with his stand-up shows and had enjoyed a brief stint as a presenter for MTV before being fired for turning up dressed as Osama Bin Laden the day after the September 11th bombings. But it was with Big Brother's Big Mouth that he first became a household name.

Since then he has presented TV shows including The Russell Brand Show and Ponderland, turned his experiences of heroin addiction into material for his sell out stand up tours, brought over 400,000 listeners to BBC digital radio and won awards ranging from Best Stand-Up 2006 (Time Out) to World's Sexiest Vegetarian (PETA) and Shagger of the Year 2006 (Sun).

He is also about to bring out his first book, titled My Booky Wook and will be signing copies at Virgin Megastores (Arndale Centre) on 1st December before appearing at the Apollo that night with his latest tour, Doing Life.

RUSSELL BRAND

Manchester Apollo

1st December

£18.50