Hi. It was a friggin joke.

British comedian Russell Brand has been asked to host the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards after giving the network a 20% ratings bump over last year's show. However, he's reluctant to accept after MTV censored some of his jokes aimed at Republican presidential candidate John McCain. Russell sat down with The Sun to talk about his experience:

On the gravity of hosting the VMAs:
"The VMAs are the hardest thing I have ever done and I will think very carefully before accepting their kind offer of doing it again. I spent a lot of time suppressing the urge to scream a career- ending remark during the show. The knowledge that you could say something that would make the world go nuts was difficult.”

On being censored:
But incredibly the script we heard was the clean version after MTV insisted he scrap some of his bravest gags. He revealed: “I had JOHN McCAIN gags pulled. And they asked me to tone down the gags about SARAH PALIN."

On what he couldn't say about Sarah Palin:
“I wanted to say she was forcing her teenage daughter to have a baby because she is so anti-abortion. But also, as a Republican, she is pro-execution so she is going to give her the electric chair for being a little sl*t. They weren’t keen on that one."

Somewhere Bill O'Reilly just fell in love with MTV. Unfortunately, he can't do anything with that love until Rush Limbaugh gets back with the Mexican Viagra. Life's a bitch sometimes.

But it turns out that Brand’s wild ways have gotten him in deep trouble before — he was even fired from the network that has given him his fame today. Brand’s first major hosting gig was as a veejay for MTV in the U.K., but he thought it would be funny to come to work dressed as Usama bin Laden after 9/11. His contract was consequently terminated.

"We then hired him back in a swirling haze of scandal," Van Toffler, the MTVN president, said in a statement earlier this year. "We’re definitely gluttons for punishment, since we already know he’s sought advice from some of his British colleagues, like Amy Winehouse, about how to behave in public."