One of rock music's biggest and least inhibited personalities, Courtney Love has always had a fabulous gift for outrageous storytelling, making her a popular guest on TV chat shows over the years. But very few of her telly appearances were as memorable as her guest spot on The Russell Brand Show on December 1, 2006.
The controversial comedian's chat show only ran for five episodes on Channel 4 in the winter of 2006, but he was able to attract some big names to join him on his Friday night programme, including Sharon Osbourne, Amy Winehouse, Morrissey, Primal Scream and The League of Gentlemen stars Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton. But it was former Hole vocalist/guitarist Love's appearance which proved to be TV gold.
Just a matter of weeks before the show was filmed, Love was the subject of a profile in The Times newspaper, during which she revealed that she had once met Prince Andrew in the company of Creation Records boss Alan McGee: "Prince Andrew said that I made the best cup of tea he'd ever had," she told her interviewer. But it turned out that this wasn't Love's only brush with the man British tabloid newspapers used to love to call 'Randy Andy'.
While flicking through her book alongside the host, Love tried to find "a really good picture of me and Prince Andrew", which promoted Brand to ask about a rumour that the prince once showed up unannounced at Love's Los Angeles home.
"He wanted to party," Love confirms. "Prince Andrew turns up at my house at one in the morning, and he wants to party... I don't know what he expected at my house. I answered the door and he was there, with a bodyguard, and I was, like, [tentatively], Hi. At one point, he did ask me on the couch, 'So what do you do all day?' What do I do all day? Sheeesh..."
Brand then steers the conversation to a recent near-naked photo shoot that Love did for the Winter issue of Pop magazine, saying, "you're comfortable with nudity."
"I'd done the interview, and Chris Rock has this great thing he says, at 20 they're community titties, at 40, they're someone else's titties... but these photographers were so good, it was Ibiza, it was the sun, and the stylist had brought armour, and none of it fit, so I said, Fuck it, give me some stockings, and a sweater, and a pair of knickers, and... [mimes taking off her clothes]"
Later in the show, Love casually semi-jokes that one of her pre-gig rituals was shooting up - "it does help you relax if you take quite a lot of heroin before a show" Brand interjects, before suggesting that doing hard drugs isn't advisable ("Do them a bit, then stop") - and reveals that she used to consciously refuse to do anything that Madonna had done before her.
"There's a hotel that I now stay at that I didn't stay at for years because Madonna stays there," she says.
"Do you think she might have left a whoopsie in the corner of the room?" Brand asks.
The most memorable sequence in the show, however, was a comic sketch where Brand plays James Bond in a take on On Her Majesty's Secret Service, with Love playing Queen Elizabeth II. The sketch opens with Love, as the monarch, leading Brand into a room, purring "I want to show you my private chambers James", before hitching up her robes to display her lingerie and giving the secret agent a lapdance. After grabbing 007's er "dinkle", HRH says, "Eat me Bond", leading to a pay-off in which the singer, in a mock-Cockney accent, indignantly asks, "What are you talking about? I watched me snatch this morning."
The Noughties were a different time.
Watch the episode in full below:
