X-Rated: Revolutionary brand

The greatest gift celebrity bestows is not mountains of money nor global recognition. It's a soap box.

Being famous allows the acclaimed to ascend the pulpit, confident that an audience of millions will be salivating at the prospect of being fed nuggets of wisdom. Russell Brand knows this and is reinventing himself as a modern-day Che Guevara with his new book, Revolution.

Brand has spent the last 18 months trotting around England and the US, stirring up revolutionary fervour by pointing out the pointlessness of voting, "annihilating" - according to the blurb on the book - political commentators on TV and calling on the downtrodden dregs of society, whom capitalism has forgotten, to take up arms.

Our officials were smart enough not to allow him to enter South Africa.

Revolution is Brand's manifesto but the chances of it leading to the overthrow of anything more significant than his own self-righteousness are slim.

The irony of a former drug addict turned Buddhist multimillionaire calling for the overthrow of the democratic capitalist system by selling us a book from which he will profit isn't lost on Brand.

He takes great pains to point out that he is a member of the 1% he is trying to overthrow, then swiftly moves on to something more pressing, such as his fondness for mystics.

Unfortunately, the book reads more like the guilt-ridden ramblings of a man who has tried everything a few times and is now bored than Das Kapital.Revolution is bursting with haphazard anecdotes, mildly funny witticisms, attention deficit disorder-fuelled bombast and spiritual smugness.

If Brand were to have his way, corporations with revenues greater than the GDP of some small nations would be done away with. He doesn't say what he would do with the newly unemployed.

Despite his half-baked plans for taking the world backwards by a few centuries, Brand is funny enough to hold half our attention while the rest of it searches for something better to do. The humour creates a common ground where his naive optimism and bored cynicism can meet for a spot of tea.

In his quest to yank society out from under the crushing millstone of its consumerist vices, Brand confirms that fame and money can't buy you happiness, but they can give you on outlet for boredom.

• 'Revolution', published by Century. R323 at Exclusive Books