Controversy was never a stranger to the GQ Men of the Year awards. In their pomp, we held the annual event at the Royal Opera House, a deliberately august venue in which to create a little havoc. We celebrated everyone from Samuel L Jackson and Keith Richards to Yoko Ono and Tony Bennett, from Michael Douglas to Madonna. The awards were like the Met Gala on steroids, and they were a hell of a lot of fun.
One year, however, proved challenging, when I was forced to throw Russell Brand out for insulting our sponsor, Hugo Boss. In 2013 he had pranced onstage, cocky as ever, and started berating Boss for producing Nazi uniforms during the war. Having willingly accepted his award, he used his moment on stage to insult our sponsor, demean the other winners, and make a spectacle of himself. So I threw him out onto Bow Street. The true story of Boss’s involvement with the German fashion label was slightly more complex than Brand had made out, and it transpired days later that he had solicited some Boss clothes for an appearance at an Oscar party earlier in the year.
