Brandreth was born in Wuppertal, Germany, where his father, Charles Brandreth, was serving as a legal officer with the Allied Control Commission. After having moved to London with his parents at the age of three, Brandreth was educated at the Lycee Francais Charles de Gaulle (as it is called today), Bedales School, where he met his friend Simon Cadell, and New College, Oxford. He was President of the Oxford Union in Michaelmas Term, 1969 and edited the university magazine Isis. He was described in a contemporaneous publication as "Oxford's Lord High Everything Else".

He is a former European Monopoly champion, and President of the Association of British Scrabble Players, having organised the first British National Scrabble Championship in 1971. He is also the President of The Oscar Wilde Society. The society was founded in September 1990, by a group of fans of Wilde and his work, it is a non-profit organisation that aims to increase knowledge, enjoyment and study of Wilde's life, personality and works. It organises lectures, readings and discussions, as well as visits to places connected with him. Brandreth hosts an annual Oscar Wilde party to celebrate the writer's birth. These parties are often attended by such people as Stephen Fry, Joanna Lumley, Derek Jacobi, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and Julian Fellowes. The venues are often places of interest in Wilde's life, for example the Langham where A Picture of Dorian Gray was commissioned. In August 2005, he appeared in a production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at the Edinburgh Festival. He is an after-dinner speaker, and he held the world record for the longest continuous after-dinner speech, at 12 and a half hours, done as a charity stunt. With his wife he founded the Teddy Bear museum; formerly located in Stratford-upon-Avon for 18 years, it was relocated to the Polka Theatre in Wimbledon, London and as of 2016 it is on display at Newby Hall in Yorkshire. He is a patron of the National Piers Society and vice-president of charity Fields in Trust (formerly the National Playing Fields Association). He was appointed as Chancellor of the University of Chester in December 2016.

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