LONDON-
Russell Brand has said he’d love to be a dad to lots of kids – even if he’s not ready for settling down.
The comedian and Hollywood actor turned children’s author, was previously married to Katy Perry and is said to have split from Jemima Khan.
‘I don’t know if I want to settle down though, but I certainly would like loads of children,’ he said.
Russell is set to turn 40 next year and he has no problem with the milestone. ‘I think by the time I reach 40, I’ll be ready,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I’ve done the things that I’m here to do. I don’t feel like I’ve really begun yet.’ Russell penned his version of The Pied Piper Of Hamelin, in which the adults and the children – and the rats – are all as vile as each other, apart from one child.
‘Someone told me, ‘Forget the adults, they’re all doomed, if you want to change the world you’ve got to influence young minds’,’ he said of his move into young fiction.
‘Also, I have a very comfortable and natural rapport with young children. A lot of the work I’ve done up to now has been adult, because it’s intellectually challenging or puerile and scatological and saucy.
‘I’ve not really had much access to children. I love kids and when I was a child I felt a bit lost and lonely, and I like the idea of being able to reach into that place of desolation and offer something hopeful and optimistic to children.’ He added: ‘The Pied Piper is a folk tale that’s been told to children for hundreds of years because there’s something in that order of events that’s an important message. It’s not easy, but life isn’t easy.’
