Russell Brand

At this point in time, his career could be assessed into two parts: pre-'Sachsgate 'and post 'Sachsgate'. It's just a year since stand-up comic, presenter and writer Russell Brand had to resign from his BBC Radio 2 show, co-hosted with Jonathan Ross, over the now notorious message they left on actor Andrew Sachs' answering machine. The boast to Sachs that he had slept with the Fawlty Towers star's grand-daughter Georgina Baillie – but expressed more crudely on the actual message – was considered an offensive prank too far, even for a comic whose avowed mission is to "triumph over conformity". Ross was merely suspended for 12 weeks; Brand seemed exiled to the career wilderness of the 'celebrity' rejects he once encouraged audiences to ridicule during his stint presenting Big Brother's Big Mouth.

But the bouffant bad boy has been booted out of high-profile positions before, and consistently staged a customary flamboyant comeback. The most infamous sacking was from his job as a presenter at MTV, after introducing Kylie Minogue to his friend Gritty backstage. Brand had come to work dressed in camouflage flak jacket, false beard and with a tea towel on his head. The sacking of the 'Osama bin Laden' lookalike wasn't just because Gritty also happened to be his drug dealer; the date in question was 12 September 2001.

Whether or not it was funny, outrageous – or both – what is more interesting is Brand's admission that at that period in his life he was "wrapped in a duvet of heroin". Despite the seemingly flippant title of his 2007 autobiography, My Booky Wook, his frank depiction of the life of an addict gives an insight into another, often unseen world. Alcohol "makes you sick and gives you a headache" and most other drugs don't do it for him either, he wrote. But during his 20s, heroin gave him "a great big smacky cuddle". He never had a problem getting it. "Heroin was everywhere in Camden; little blue bags the size of two peas. I started hanging out with homeless people in the West End of London, scoring heroin with them, and realised that there's this secret culture of people going up and down Oxford Street, whistling to each other in a kind of tropical slang – men on BMX bikes delivering £10 bags of heroin; West Indian housewife-type women perambulating past, cheeks wedged with packets of smack. You don't see this bustling underworld until you need to." He realises he must have cut a ridiculous figure, dressed in MTV presenter attire, "jostling along with homeless people in search of a bag in Covent Garden".

Brand's much-commented-on sartorial style is still something of the Regency dandy, like a grubbier version of Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen on speed, or as he himself says "an S&M Willy Wonka". But, despite the years of drug abuse, at 34 he appears the picture of health. He also defies sexual stereotyping, at one level feminine and camp, yet, as he says "hysterically heterosexual". Sex is something he's "very good at", especially, he says, because he's "not good at any sport. I just have a lot of energy. But I'm not a sex addict, nor a pervert. It would have been convenient to be gay, because of the grooming, the narcissism. But I'm repulsed by men sexually."

His girlfriend is singer Katy Perry, who has made her own contribution to the subject of gender-bending with 'I Kissed A Girl'. Brand appears more reserved in discussing this relationship than previous ones. As for his once avowed addiction to sex, he likens his more recent restraint to his passion for chocolate: he can't have just one, he has to eat the whole box, he says. "As I am with chocolate, I am with everything."

Chocolate, and food in general, provided both comfort and instilled guilt when he was growing up in Essex. An only child (his father departed the family home when he was a baby) Brand's chubbiness and depression were to cause bouts of bulimia and self-harming when he was still only 11. Being an overweight schoolboy, displaying a feminine side and showing no interest in sport was only one side to a lonely, troubled childhood: his adored mother had cancer three times by the time Brand was 17.

It was around this age that he was re-united with his father, and the two went on holiday to Thailand where, he says, part of their intended bonding involved picking up prostitutes. Father and son still have an uneasy relationship, but he remains very close to his mother. Male friends include Noel Gallagher; an admiring Helen Mirren dubbed him "a genius" after playing opposite him in The Tempest. Brand can be sensitive too – and is the type of man not afraid to acknowledge it.

Whether that will sustain his fledgling, two-month-old romance with Perry, whom he met at the recent MTV Video Music Awards, remains to be seen. But gone are the days when he bragged about dating Kate Moss; he wants to keep his private life just that.

So is he really changed since leaving that laddish message on Sachs' voicemail last year? Has he achieved a balance between 'edgy' comedy and not causing personal offence?

There was no malicious intent in that message, he told The Observer in the days after what he calls "Manuelgate". "If you're asking me to inhibit what is spontaneous and good about my performance, then I can't do it. I can't let it change what I do." But maybe he's only joking.