Drugs nearly ruined Russell Brand’s career but his £225 ‘wellness’ retreats are total wokescreen, says Julie Burchill
RUSSELL Brand is the latest celebrity to jump on board the wellness industry, which is worth £594million in the UK, and came under fire for plans to charge a £225 entry fee for a three-day meditation and yoga event he is helping to organise this summer.
Guests can stay close by at a luxury campsite – if they cough up as much as an extra £995 to sleep in a four-person tent.
And he wants those present to make “green” donations, to compensate for carbon emissions.
Profits will go to an addiction recovery charity.
Brand, 47, will host the event, which includes an appearance by extreme athlete Wim Hof, from July 14-17 in Hay-on-Wye, Powys.
While wellness lovers might argue that events like these have the nation’s health at heart, writer Julie Burchill tells Claire Dunwell enough is enough.
WHAT is Russell Brand up to these days now that booze, drugs and sex with supermodels are off the menu?
Well, he’s still interacting with women — but in a caring way because, like a lot of savvy showbiz grifters, he has signed up to the wellness fad.
It is ironic that Brand should be the latest ringmaster urging women to part with their cash — and their sense of humour, no doubt — as they contort themselves into pretzels and waft various potions around their nether regions.
“As a person who’s trying to live a decent, spiritual life, misogyny is not part of my current palette of behaviours,” he once said, attempting to draw a line under his life as an unrepentant shag-monster and his re-envisioning as a pure-hearted friend to womankind.
He makes an appropriate cult leader for this new religion which, in effect, separates women from their money with the same readiness he once separated them from their clothes.
It’s a smokescreen, or rather a wokescreen
Brand has covered himself with the usual cry of altruism (it’s for charity!), but this is surely a smokescreen — or rather, a wokescreen — behind which he can indulge his obsession with getting high on life itself rather than on those Class A drugs which almost ruined his career.
Wellness has been a tried-and-tested way to make a lot of money by claiming that holding people upside down and shaking the change out of their pockets does wonders for their chakra alignment.
The value of the global wellness industry is set to soar to £5.75trillion by 2025, a sign of these anxious times.
The average Brit spends more than £200 a month on health and fitness routines.
Hashtag #wellness has been used on more than 61million Instagram posts and has 8.5billion views on TikTok.
Though Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop website leads the field in the celebrity peddling of various forms of organic “remedies”, Elle Macpherson’s WelleCo, Halle Berry’s Re-Spin and even once unrepentantly bad girl Kate Moss’s Cosmoss are all cleaning up by preaching clean living.
Wellness is one of those things that looks like self-esteem but could also be viewed as self-loathing — a lot like its frivolous older sister, “pampering”.
Under the banner of indulging women, it implies that their bodies are so revolting that even “me time” must be dedicated to turning them into living dolls if men are to be prevented from running away in horror.
Spa junkies seek “treatments” — how telling that word is — in order to improve themselves.
But rather than take into consideration the fact that they may be dissatisfied because they are obsessed with the surface rather than the substance of life, they hope that one more treatment will put things right.
Wellness has an air of virtue about it; don’t bother that poor, busy doctor with your ills, do it yourself!
But substituting “clean-eating” for dieting can still hide a multitude of eating disorders.
No one ever went broke seemingly playing on the insecurities of young women.
Selling them high-priced vitamins is a crafty way of monetising problems which likely could be far better solved with a walk in the sunshine or having sex.
There’s something unintentionally hilarious about the likes of Paltrow advising mere mortals to have passionate liaisons with jade eggs at $66 a pop.
Closer to home, Lily Allen is regularly photographed living her best life — or at least her most photogenic one — with her new husband and blended family while merching masturbation aids for a whopping £89 to the lonely and the loveless.
And it’s not just this most basic unlearnt behaviour that is being sold to people with more money than sex.
How about an electronic device that teaches you how to breathe for £160?
And don’t forget pedometers — helping you put one foot in front of the other since 1980.
Why are women such suckers for seeking answers in the hall of mirrors that is wellness?
The one thing we know for sure is that our place is always in the wrong.
So we turn to “self-care” — soothing ourselves into a state where the confusion of the modern world can’t penetrate our cocoon.
In the course of my career I’ve had reiki, reflexology and a bunch of “treatments” — and I loathed them all.
My schedule for happiness involves a couple of hours volunteering a day, a couple of dirty martinis of an evening and a lot of laughs 24/7.
What puts a smile on our faces differs from person to person, but every serious study of happiness suggests that the more you do for others, the happier you will be.
And the more you obsess over yourself, the more miserable you will get.
- Awful People, a play by Julie Burchill and Daniel Raven, is at the Brighton Fringe Festival from May 22 to 25. Tickets here.
‘Wellness isn’t just a fad, it’s essential’
MUM Hannah Verdier, 50, swapped kebabs for kimchi when she turned 40 and has no regrets.
Hannah, who lives with daughters Mimi, 14, and Evie, 11, in Sydenham, South East London, says:
“Full disclosure, I used to be allergic to wellness.
From hating PE to wasting an expensive gym membership by only using the sauna, I preferred pints of lager and kebabs to green juice and kimchi.
But that all changed when I hit 40 and started to see the benefits of healthy eating, exercise and a big dose of gratitude.
Around that time, my dad – the sportiest man I know – had a horrific cycling accident and could no longer do any of the things he once loved.
That made me realise just how much I was taking my own health for granted.
What started with stumbling across a friendly mums’ group workout in the park escalated to me doing daily Pilates, yoga and kettlebells and qualifying as a personal trainer five years later.
Now, mysterious things such as porridge, gong baths and gut health are part of my routine.
Gin and crisps are still important, but it’s about balance – and my afternoon micro-nap and belief that yoga can turn your day around make me feel amazing.
Do I think people who hate wellness are lazy? Well, I think they’re running away (probably quite slowly) from the truth, like I did.
Wellness isn’t just a fad, it’s a way of life.
You have to look after your body and mind and I get so angry when people only associate wellness and exercise with weight loss and the dreaded diet culture.
I’ve gained a few muscles from working out five times a week, but more importantly it makes me really happy.
Being aware of how you treat your body isn’t “woke”.
With NHS waiting lists – particularly for mental health issues – at a record high, why wouldn’t you want to do what you can to help yourself?
People laugh at Russell Brand and his ice-bathing festival of wellness, but he’s the one reaping those healthy benefits.
We’re more clued up on our health than ever and if a wellness fad is a step too far then no one is really going to embrace it. The right sort of wellness isn’t wacky – it’s essential.”