“If Charlie is unwell, as the media believe, then it’s not entertainment and not a subject for amusement,” Brand tells me when we meet at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. “I happen to know Charlie and I like him. My opinion is that Charlie Sheen is cool. I’ve had problems myself and would certainly make no judgment of him.”
Brand, who boasts that he has slept with literally thousands of women, including nine in one night, has been married to singer Katy Perry for six months and is a doting and faithful husband although he says: “Marriage was a massive, massive transition for me but the longer I stay married the more I like it.”
Appropriately enough Brand is playing the wealthy alcoholic playboy Arthur in the remake of the 1981 comedy which starred Dudley Moore.