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"Russell Brand has dubbed this month&amp;#039;s GQ Awards a &amp;quot;corporate ritual&amp;quot; that felt &amp;quot;absurd&amp;quot;. The comedian was reportedly ejected from the afterparty for the magazine&amp;#039;s annual ceremony after making comments regarding sponsor Hugo Boss&amp;#039;s connection to the Nazi&amp;#039;s regime.  In an article for The Guardian, Brand said that he felt at odds with the &amp;quot;fabricated fun&amp;quot; of the event. Brand said of his controversial acceptance speech: &amp;quot;I could see the room dividing as I spoke. I could hear the laughter of some and louder still silence of others. &amp;quot;I realised that for some people this was regarded as an event with import. The magazine, the sponsors and some of those in attendance saw it as a kind of ceremony that warranted respect. &amp;quot;In effect it is a corporate ritual, an alliance between a media organisation, GQ and a commercial entity, Hugo Boss. &amp;quot;What dawned on me as the night went on is that even in apparently frivolous conditions the establishment asserts control and won&amp;#039;t tolerate having that assertion challenged, even flippantly, by that most beautifully adept tool, comedy.&amp;quot; He continued: &amp;quot;The jokes about Hugo Boss were not intended to herald a campaign to destroy them, they&amp;#039;re not Monsanto or Halliburton, the contemporary corporate allies of modern-day fascism; they are, I thought, an irrelevant menswear supplier with a double-dodgy history.   &amp;quot;The evening, though, provided an interesting opportunity to see how power structures preserve their agenda, even in a chintzy microcosm.&amp;quot; Brand said that the evening subsequently &amp;quot;took a peculiar turn&amp;quot; when former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore drew parallels between the comic&amp;#039;s answerphone messages to Andrew Sachs and &amp;quot;the Sachs family&amp;#039;s flight 70 years earlier from Nazi-occupied Europe&amp;quot;. He explained: &amp;quot;It was a confusing tapestry that Moore spun but he seemed to be saying that a) the calls were as bad as the Holocaust and b) the Sachs family may not&amp;#039;ve sought refuge in Britain had they known what awaited them.  &amp;quot;Even for a man whose former job was editing the Telegraph this is an extraordinary way to manipulate information.&amp;quot; Brand also blasted foreign secretary William Hague and London mayor Boris Johnson for attending the event, asking why public officials are being photographed at fashion magazine ceremonies.   He said: &amp;quot;The reason I was there was because I have a tour on and I was advised it would be good publicity. What are the politicians selling? How are they managing our perception of them with their attendance of these sequin-encrusted corporate balls? &amp;quot;We witness that there is a relationship between government, media and industry that is evident even at this most spurious and superficial level. These three institutions support one another.&amp;quot; Brand said that he is not claiming to be an &amp;quot;estuary Che Guevara&amp;quot;, but the event raised questions about the wider implications of the relationship between government, media and industry. He added: &amp;quot;It was a daft joke, by a daft comic at a daft event. It makes me wonder though how the relationships and power dynamics I witnessed on this relatively inconsequential context are replicated on a more significant scale.&amp;quot; Noel Gallagher also criticised politicians in attendance on the night, saying that the event felt like &amp;quot;the Tory party conference&amp;quot;. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/showbiz/news/a515448/russell-brand-gq-awards-felt-like-an-absurd-corporate-ritual/>