Brand: 'I had breakdown over comedy show'

Russell Brand has claimed that he suffered a "mental breakdown" on his short-lived TV series RE:Brand.

The comic, who began his career as a video-jockey on MTV, admitted that his 'obscene' Channel 4 prank show was a "cry for help".

He told Playboy magazine: "That entire show was probably a cry for help. I was a junkie when that show was on the air. Within two or three months of it ending, I was in rehab. That was the last dice throw of a desperate man. It was less a cry for help than a mental breakdown on film.

"Jackass was a popular TV show at the time, and I was trying to do a psychological version of [that]. When I watch it now, I still can't believe half of what I was doing."

Shown in 2002, RE:Brand saw the star challenging his father to a boxing match, meeting the leader of the Youth BNP, inviting a homeless man to live in his home, meeting a disabled daredevil and taking a pensioner out for a dirty weekend.