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Comedian Russell Brand's stand-up show this weekend had made headlines, but not for his routine. It was what he did off-script that has people talking.

Brand, the eccentric recent ex-husband of pop star Katy Perry, apparently grew frustrated by a male heckler who kept shouting Perry's name during a show at the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa in Atlantic City, N.J., on Saturday, so Brand unleashed a verbal thrashing on the unfortunate audience member.

Calling for the lights to be turned on, Brand jumped off the stage and walked up the theater floor to confront the offending audience member.

"Let's see you, mate. Let's see how your mental illness looks in the daylight. It's you, is it? Oh, dear.  I was hoping that your personality was as a result of physical beauty. I thought, 'this guy's confident probably because he's incredibly handsome,' but look at you! You look like someone who's fallen off the outside of a church," he said.

The insults continued, with the comedian casting aspersion on heckler's sexual prowess, telling him he had  the physical appearance of an ape and saying his mind contained a bizarre combination of alcohol and idiocy.

"They say of course, don't they, that empty vessels make the most noise," Brand went on. "What an enormous echo of nothingness from you … I think silence is your friend. I think keep your lips firmly, firmly clamped together, because everything that comes out of your mouth, from your idiotic announcements to your disgusting halitosis which is cutting through this room is an abomination."

The delighted audience laughed, clapped, cheered and whistled at Brand's roasting of the heckler.

The 36-year-old comedian filed for divorce from Perry, 27, in December, citing irreconcilable differences. The two had been married only 14 months, and it was rumored he wanted her to cut back on her partying.

"He wanted a wife who could settle down with him, have kids and have this normal lifestyle and she wasn't ready for that. She still had a bit of a wild streak in her," Ian Drew of Us Weekly magazine told "Good Morning America."

But new reports suggest the comedian may have had a change of heart about the split.

According to a report in the Daily Mail, Brand became jealous after seeing photos of  Perry cozying up to Florence and the Machine guitarist Robert Ackroyd.

Brand sent Perry an email in which he admitted he gave up on the marriage too soon, also according to the Daily Mail.