A media circus engulfed Russell Brand as he turned up to open his new café on the New Era estate which will employ recovering drug addicts.

A media circus engulfed Russell Brand as he turned up to open his new café on the New Era estate which will employ recovering drug addicts.

A crowd of around 100 photographers, journalists and interested members of the public swarmed around the outside of Trew Era, a tiny café in Whitmore Road as arrived yesterday morning to officially open it.

Named after Brand’s You Tube media channel The Trews, is the latest venture of the comedian turned activist and is being funded by sales of his book Revolution.

The social enterprise is located on the New Era estate, whose 93 residents faced eviction by US firm Westbrook Partners, which wanted to treble rents last year.

Brand stepped in to help residents organise protests generating negative publicity, leading the company to sell the estate onto a housing association.

As Brand arrived on Thursday morning last week to officially open the venue, he held up his book, which describes his plans for complete social and political upheaval, and said: “In this book, I wrote about how the way to change politics is not depending on the existing political class and the existing political system, but for us ourselves to start grassroots movements like what has happened on the New Era estate.

“This cafe is going to be run by people in abstinence-based recovery. It’s a model which is not for profit, a fully self-supporting new economic enterprise.

“We’ll start more and more of these social enterprises.

“Eventually, we will trade with one another in our own currency.

“We are going to create our own systems, our own federations, our own currencies, our own authorities.

“Politics is dead, this is the end of politics. What we are discussing now is what comes after.

We have an opportunity to create something better and it will start with small enterprises such as this.”