EXCLUSIVE: Drug & Sex Addict Russell Brand's Secret Vice: Dead Animals

“I was fixated with dead animals and death,” Brand admitted to Strauss.

“The driving ideology behind what I was doing was pretty safe, right? And I felt that people were spellbound, like they’d been hypnotized, and I had to wake them up. So I would do things to wake them up. Like I’d have a load of dead rats or dead chicks, like baby birds, on stage.

“And I’d smash them up with a hammer and then throw them into the audience and go, ‘Why are you disgusted?  I’ve just rearranged their atoms.  They’re dead already.  Nothing’s happened. You’re being shocked by nothing.’”

“He was clearly on drugs when he smashed the animals on stage,” Strauss told RadarOnline.com about his take on Brand’s bizarre behavior.  “Also, the whole show was about shock value, because at the time he was hungry for attention because he had just started out.

“He thought this was art, it was important to him - this was him trying to be a rockstar, trying to make a point about what is really right from wrong since the animals were dead before he ‘killed’ them. Funnily enough, since then PETA has embraced him and called him the sexiest vegetarian.”

In his interview Brand also admits that several years ago, while he was behaving so wildly, he was facing a very trying time in his life.

“I was addicted to crack and heroin at that time and was...I’ve always had some destructive tendencies and I was unstable.  I had no off switch.  I was unable to manage it.  Up until then I’d never had money in my life and as soon as people gave me money, I just hit the f**k it button and blew up.”

The 36-year-old English-born comedian, actor, columnist, singer and author has since turned his life around and fallen in love and married sultry songstress Katy Perry.

“Russell is just very charming, charismatic and smart.  But I’m sure he would have been more outrageous if I’d have interviewed him during his drug period,” Strauss admits.

“This is a guy who dated Kate Moss and all the time he was thinking ‘maybe her boobs are too small or maybe I can do better.’

“We’ve stayed in contact and the last time I talked to him he was head over heels in love with Katy, this was not a guy who was planning to be a player but a guy who really loved a person, which is amazing.

“It’s the difference between having a fake relationship with someone who is famous and good looking against having a real relationship with someone who you have intimacy with.

“I haven’t talked to him since they got married but let’s hope it’s gotten even stronger.”