A tale of two tricksters: writing a children’s book with Russell Brand

Never out of the limelight for long, Russell Brand will publish a new book later this week, but one in a very different vein to his recent highly controversial offering, Revolution. Russell Brand’s Trickster Tales: The Pied Piper of Hamelin is the first in a series of reinterpretations of classic children’s fairy tales by the comic, and has been illustrated – with trademark panache – by the Observer’s very own political cartoonist, Chris Riddell.

“I was full of all sorts of preconceptions about Russell, not least after seeing his interview with Jeremy Paxman and the evidence he gave in front of a select committee about how drug addiction is treated,” says Riddell, sitting at his desk in Norfolk working on the next instalment of Goth Girl, his Costa prize-winning children’s series. “But he is this extraordinary mixture of the comic and the profound. When I read his first draft of The Pied Piper earlier this year, I thought ‘Goodness! I can really hear his voice – it is unmistakably him, this isn’t just a book by Madonna, this is something different.’”

Intrigued, Riddell set off to London to meet the man. And having just been introduced to Instagram by his daughter, he decided: “If I’m sitting on a train to go and meet Russell Brand, I should do a little doodle with a note about what I’m up to”, sharing it with people “because it’s such an odd experience”. The drawings printed here are a selection of the many brilliant doodles he did of his meetings with Brand this summer.

The pair met “in a hotel-cum-private members’ club” in Shoreditch. Riddell says: “Russell was exactly as I imagined him to be but, at the same time, he was thoughtful, said interesting things and was very insightful as we talked about what this book might be. And I thought, ‘Actually, this could be a lot of fun.’”

Agreeing to illustrate the volume in time for autumn publication, Riddell had a manic few months on his hands, having already committed to a book with Neil Gaiman and a new Goth Girl title. Once Brand had seen Riddell’s preliminary sketches and ideas (“He was very specific about what costume the Pied Piper should wear, and his notes on the preparatory work were brilliant. Russell has a real designer’s eye, a flair for summing up a mood,” recalls the artist), he wrote more. The book eventually doubled in size, leaving Riddell just one month to create 64 colour illustrations. “It was the craziest experience I’ve ever had,” he says. “By the end of it, I’d run out of paper, paints, Conté crayon – everything.” Once it was finished, Riddell put all the artwork in his portfolio and went to meet Brand in London. “I was full of trepidation, but it was a lovely meeting, and he was incredibly charming and he really got it… We were completely on the same page.”

But what was it like working on a children’s book with a self-professed revolutionary? “I haven’t read Revolution, but I certainly think there are aspects of it that are meant to be provocative and comedic – those are his great strengths. The same with the Pied Piper; there is a Rabelaisian quality to his work, that mixture of satire and humour and over-the-top bodily functions, that I must say I rather like.”

Russell Brand’s Trickster Tales is published by Canongate (£14.99). Click here to order it for £11.99