So This is Happening!
The titular heading of Russell Brand’s last YouTube video before the publication of credible accusations against him as a sexual predator, rapist and groomer. Since then, he has been largely silent, his only public appearance being his scheduled live show on the night of September 16th, which was after the release of The Times’ article but before the airing of the Channel Four Dispatches expose. The video served as Russell’s attempt to get out ahead of the publication of the accusations. It is almost certain that he did this without the support of his legal team - the standard advice is to say as little as possible, and the defence presented by Brand, “it was consensual”, was not particularly useful when you’re being accused of grooming a sixteen-year-old girl as a 32-year-old man. Above the age of consent, yes, but no longer compatible with public opinion - just ask Prince Andrew
On the one-week anniversary of that video, he released a new one, the imaginatively titled “So…”, sombre and serious, absent the jump cuts (has his editor quit?), a pitiful entreaty to follow him on Rumble (where he is still monetized) and painting himself as the victim of a sprawling conspiracy theory (main character syndrome?). Again, very unlikely to have been done in consultation with a lawyer - if he ever faces a jury, the very public lack of contrition and sickening “woe is me” will not play well against those he actually victimized. No lawyer would allow such an approach (well, maybe some of Alex Jones’ or Trump’s). Publicity is not his friend just now.
Over the past week of silence, Brand was probably hoping to sit out the shit-storm. It is essentially the same approach he took to the 2008 Sachsgate scandal, perhaps the last great British tabloid bruhaha. Brand weathered that storm when the faux-outrage started to wear thin, and it became apparent that the scandalized news media was doing more to retraumatize Brand’s victims than Brand’s original misdemeanour. However, times have changed, and it is perhaps ironic that Russell’s current conspiracy theory du jour, the so-called “Censorship Industrial Complex”, is based on the premise that Social Media has diminished the power of Mainstream Media. In the current scandal, the diminished mainstream has not been able to field a media circus or flurry of photographers to camp outside the portico of stately Brand Mannor in leafy Henley-on-Thames. Absent the feeding frenzy and phoney pearl-clutching of the media’s swooning-couch hysteria, there is nothing to shift the sympathies of the general public towards a supposedly victimized Brand. Instead, he has to invent his victimhood, citing the Chairman of the parliamentary committee on Culture, Media and Sport writing a letter to Rumble, enquiring if they will stop paying him. The fiends! This clearly goes all the way to the top! How dare an elected representative challenge a foreign, unaccountable media company funded by shady billionaires! (Including Peter Thiel, a creature so committed to freedom of speech that he sued the online muck-raking news site Gawker out of existence).
In place of the media circus, there has been a trickle of revelations - The Times reports that more women have now come forward, the Met police are investigating incidents that pre-date those set out by The Times and Dispatches, and the BBC have reported on a disturbing incident from 2008 where Brand cornered a woman in a bathroom, menacing her and exposing his penis, before bragging about it live on his BBC radio program just minutes later. People are now revisiting Brand’s public history with fresh eyes - his dalliances with 16-year-old Peaches Geldof and 16-year-old Kimberly Stewart, both of which triggered public confrontations with their fathers (Geldof and Stewart) - a theme, perhaps? After all, when he first met and dated his current wife in 2007, she was just 18 and he was 33, which her father objected to at the time.
Brand’s erstwhile anti-establishment fans are clamouring for everyone to just shut up and wait for the authorities to determine Russell’s guilt. A courtesy they did not extend to the targets and victims of his conspiracy theories. Brand has recourse to the civil courts if he wishes to defend himself against libel; he’s done so in the past. When one of his mates raped a girl in Russell’s flat, Russell objected to The Star’s coverages and walked away with “substantial damages”. And the rape victim? Cops dropped the case. There’s a surprise - Brand rewarded and the victim ignored.
With the release of his “So…” video, it is clear that this time, Brand is determined to argue his case to his fans - and whatever sliver of the public has an appetite for his line of nonsense - rather than to a judge and jury. By doing so, he has surrendered his fate to the court of public opinion. The fact that he hasn’t sought legal recourse is damning, but he’s done the maths; he knows the risk of losing spells financial ruin and more adverse publicity. Besides, all he really needs to do is maintain his fan base.
Will he ever see the inside of a criminal court? A slim hope given the track record of the UK police in successfully investigating and prosecuting sexual assaults, although collecting one big-name scalp to offset all those small-scale failures may be an incentive for plod. Rolf Harris was ultimately convicted on the evidence of a victim who only came forward after the initial accusations had been aired, angered by Harris’s denial. An important reason why we should not simply shut up about Russell. Mind you, the entitlement and claimed victimhood of that “So…” video of Russell’s is probably enough of a trigger for a few undeclared victims.
In the past, I’ve made joking references to the laying on of hands at Russell’s live performances as “hug a sex pest sessions” - a joke so good I made it twice. These were only half jokes. I have long since considered it a cause for concern that someone with a history of “sex addiction” should be put into a position where he could access vulnerable people, such as the clients of the charities that Brand has supported who help women recovering from drug addiction. I figured that his involvement with Los Angeles’ Friendly House rehabilitation center was a blend of his then-wife Katy Perry’s interest in feminist issues twinned with Russell’s interest in addiction recovery. I was surprised to see his involvement continue after his 2012 divorce from Perry, including this visit to promote his book “Recovery” in 2017. Russell’s association with the Plymouth, UK-based Trevi, the country’s only residential rehabilitation center where addicted mothers can remain with their children, also raised an eyebrow. Trevi has now severed all ties to Brand and his Stay Free foundation. These are relatively small organizations, and I hope that they have processes in place to ensure that even the wealthiest and most charismatic of sponsors are not left alone with their vulnerable clients.
I know that these are pretty vile insinuations on my part, and a fear of tarring a potentially innocent person with such a dark slander has prevented me from making them before now, but The Times and Dispatches pieces hint at a pattern of predation and grooming; these were not the acts of some selfish and indulged lothario carelessly trampling over groupies or succumbing to an overactive libido. The targeting and manipulating of a 16-year-old school girl as a 32-year-old man, engineering situations where he would be alone with female employees in compromising situations, luring victims into his home on false pretences.
By now, we’re all aware of these very credible allegations levelled at Brand. They paint a picture of yet another abuser who “hides in plain sight” (sad that this is now a cliche). The reporting from Dispatches, in particular, sought to paint a picture of a predator accommodated and even enabled by the institutions that platformed and profited from Brand. On the Monday after publication of the accusations, we heard about BBC cars being used to collect Brand’s 16-year-old victim from school.
Of course, Dispatches is broadcast on Channel 4, a media outlet highly associated with Brand and which saw him appear on prime-time TV up until 2019. I imagine Channel 4 were keen to avoid the mistakes of the BBC’s handling of the Jimmy Saville scandal and demonstrate their willingness to investigate and publicize Brand’s abuse.
But much of the behaviour described happened before “MeToo”, so these institutions get a degree of leeway in asserting that they’ve already learned their lessons and implemented improvements. Although revelations that the BBC failed to respond to a report of the bathroom flashing incident made to them in 2019, may undermine that position, and considering that Brand was an “open secret” in the industry, Channel Four may regret airing his appearance on Celebrity Bake Off that same year, where he made cookies inspired by his wife’s vulva.
David Yelland of the Sun made an interesting point when he questioned the responsibility and accountability of Brand’s new media owners: "We are all looking back at the BBC … and Channel 4. Russell Brand still has a platform on YouTube, he has 6.6 million followers, which is 100% owned by Google. The story is not the reputational risk at the moment, and the crisis is not about the legacy media institutions, it is what is happening right now, and we are not talking about it."
Of course, Russell has carefully manoeuvred himself into a position that is less vulnerable to “cancellation”. Some may doubt that Brand has the forethought and the planning capabilities to engineer such a move - I’d point out that he bought his studio and established the Stay Free business entity a year ahead of his announced move to Rumble.
More than a decade after Brand had groomed her as a schoolgirl, one of his accusers set out her experiences with him to his management agency in 2020 - she was brushed off and threatened by lawyers. This timeframe happens to coincide with Russell’s lurch to the right on YouTube (the Conspirituality Podcast episode 97 identified his last YouTube video of 2020 as the watershed). Another thing that happened in December 2020 was Joe Rogan's move to Spotify in a $100 million deal. I figured that Brand’s lurch was motivated by a desire to duplicate Rogan’s financial success, and, while I still believe that this is the model that Brand worked to, his primary motive might’ve been to better insulate himself from the looming “MeToo” that he had been alerted to.
Since then, Brand has cultivated an audience on a medium that does not feel obliged to “de-platform” the anti-social. A medium that is largely free from regulation. He has trained and recruited an audience that is conspiracy-minded and is happy to accept his current predicament as being an attack from the establishment that Brand is critical of. An audience that is a large part American and can easily ignore a British scandal. Brand’s live tours have now been “postponed”, reluctantly, by a promoter who said, “We don’t like doing it- but we know you’ll understand” - a reluctance I hope they come to regret voicing - but it is likely that he will be able to continue to post on YouTube and Rumble.
It’s not all plain sailing on the socials, however. YouTube has now demonetized Brand - this will be a considerable blow to his income, and he will no doubt be looking for alternative revenue streams. Hence the pitiful request that his followers should all switch to Rumble, where he is still monetized. Rumble has vowed to stand by Russell, but they are now seeing big companies pulling advertising from the site. Maybe not a big deal if Peter Thiel is your sugar daddy, but for a platform masquerading as politically neutral and trying to appeal to the mainstream, it risks dirtying its already tarnished reputation. Russell heralded Steven Crowder’s move to Rumble shortly before Crowder was exposed as a vile domestic abuser and sexual deviant; with the decision to full throatedly support Brand, Rumble risks joining the likes of 4-chan or 8-kun in the public's perceived internet sewer. Just as advertisers are now reluctant to appear there, so too might users or creators who do not want to be associated with a company making a name for itself by platforming rapists, groomers, and abusers. Free speech loving Rumble might discover that the self-censorship of the mainstream media is less about conspiracies of global elites and more about self-preservation in the free market.
But for Russell, Rumble alone will not pay the bills; the estimated $300K per year made from Rumble is dwarfed by the $1 million estimated from YouTube. He may start looking at subscription models again, but I doubt it (I believe the Luminaries paywall did not serve him well). Elon Musk has tweeted support several times, and a Twitter/X move is not inconceivable. However, Musk is not totally blind to public opinion, and we’ll have to see how the backlash plays out. Russell has also received some support from Ben Shapiro, of the “he’s a creep but not a criminal” variety. Maybe Shapiro’s The Daily Wire (coincidently founded by Russell’s new besty Tucker Carlson) could end up recruiting him. The Daily Wire were willing to offer $50 million to Steven Crowder only last year; I’m sure they’ll be delighted to scoop up a slightly shop-soiled Russell Brand at a much-discounted rate, assuming he hasn’t spoiled completely. Maybe Brand and Shapiro can get together to share in their mutual misogyny and laughably sanctimonious puritanical critiques of Cardi B’s WAP featuring Megan Thee Stallion (Brand, and Shapiro). Although they might have to overcome the objections of The Daily Wire’s own Candice Owen, who, despite having been interviewed by Brand several times, the last time just three days before the Times and Dispatches revelations, has bucked the right-wing grifto-sphere and come out against Brand, somehow finding a morsel of moral fortitude that was able to assuage her hunger for rightwing affirmation (and money).
Brand could serve as host or actor- his recent outing in Death on the Nile was surprisingly tolerable, even though I spent the first half of the film thinking he was Tamwar from off of Eastenders. The Daily Wire is making a move into movie-making with the release of Run Hide Fight, and the resurgent American Christian right is hungry for scripted entertainment that panders to their partisan politics and culture war fever dreams. Formerly charming British actor Laurence Fox, who took a dive off the far right cliff around the time of Brexit, brought some actual acting chops to Breitbart-produced “My Son Hunter”, alongside cancelled Mandalorian actor Gina Carano and the 2023 surprise box office hit “The Sound of Freedom” is a sex-pest authored, Q-adjacent fantasy that was filmed by Fox, shelved by Disney and ultimately released by Angel Studios, a Mormon/Christian media company that is injecting high production values into the traditionally low-quality Christian movie market.
At the scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel end of the spectrum, both Alex Jones and Steven Crowder have expressed their support for Russell - Alex, with a particularly charming version of the “why would he need to rape anybody when there are all these women throwing themselves at him?” routine. Having fallen on hard times recently, Steven and Alex have joined forces to establish a new streaming venture on Rumble featuring a would-be rogues’ gallery of never-has-beens who were unable to even reach a level of celebrity to be cancelled from in the first place. Russell could be a valuable addition, and these pariahs REALLY won’t care how damaged or soiled the goods are.
Russell has presented himself as an outsider and an anti-establishment figure. A large part of this blog has been about revealing his hypocrisy as the Squire of Henley on Thames. Far from being a heterodox challenger of the establishment, Brand has been a towering figure within the British light entertainment and comedy scenes. He has used his position to access victims, hide his crimes and silence his accusers. More are speaking up.
Brand has no hesitation to wield the power of the establishment when it suits him. In 2014, he and then partner, Jemima Khan, obtained an injunction to silence accusations from a masseuse who alleged that Brand had assaulted her - Kahn and Brand split up almost immediately after obtaining the injunction. Curious timing?
It is now alleged that an investigation by Vice News was shut down by Brand in 2018 via a Super Injunction - The Establishment once again geared to defend the wealthy elite and crush their victims. It is further rumoured that the threat of the Vice News story breaking and a mid-season cancellation caused all episodes of the Brand-hosted Comedy Central show, Comedy Roast, to be rushed to air in one week rather than in weekly instalments. But this was a last straw of some sort, and Brand’s behaviour, supposedly long known as an open secret within the UK comedy scene, now triggered his co-host, Kathrine Ryan, to confront him on set and in front of cameras (her “roasts” being cut from the final edit). This marked a point of inflection in the comedy industry for the diminishing fame and influence of Brand, and the ascendance of Ryan. He was subsequently dropped from the show, and this incident appears to coincide with his disappearance from mainstream British television - with final outings on both QI and Celebrity Juice that year marking a full stop to his career on comedy panel shows. 2018 also marked his seventh and last appearance on Loose Women and his last of three Sunday Brunch appearances (although there was the 2019 Celebrity Bake-Off). Note: in the September 23rd release from Pod Save the UK, Nish Kumar indicated that the rumours that he was aware of circulating within the UK comedy circuit related to alleged assaults that were not covered by The Times and Channel 4: there is more to come.
Every monster has his origin story, and Russell's father obviously plays a massive role in this one. Largely absent during Russell's childhood, Russell claims that he lost his virginity to a prostitute procured by his father and in a bed adjacent to one where his dear old dad was having sex with two more prostitutes. As Brand grew to adulthood, he has claimed that he would visit his father's flat to watch porn while his father had sex with prostitutes in the next room. There is no excuse in this for Russell - he, of all people, should've realized that he was repeating the sin of his father by forcing his disfunction on to others - but there is something truly heinous about Russell's father intentionally passing on his disfunction and imprinting his own warped failings on to his child. I thought parents were supposed to strive to raise children better than themselves?
While Brand has been the target of this blog, one of the things I’ve enjoyed in researching it has been exploring the individuals, groups, structures and systems that form the media ecosystem within which Russell dwells. Researching Jeffery Sachs found a snake oil salesman using his academic credentials to launder Chinese and Russian talking points in return for well-paying “prizes” and positions in pseudo-academic organizations. It revealed a world of shadowy NGOs blurring boundaries with the UN, harvesting cash to greenwash authoritarian regimes. Russell’s objection to economic sanctions against Russia provided an opportunity to learn about how the UK government had set up its entire financial industry to launder the stolen wealth of Russia’s robber baron oligarchs. We’ve seen networks of “citizen journalists” who are in the pocket of the Chinese and Russian governments and whose anti-imperialism is, in fact, just a different kind of imperialism. And it seems like with this new crisis, there are opportunities to learn about the structures and systems in the UK establishment, especially in the entertainment industries, that not only facilitated or turned a blind eye to Russell but, in many ways, created the monster.
Russell was elevated to celebrity by his former manager, John Noel, who packed a drug and drink-addled Brand off to a rehab in 2003. A recovering Russell was then able to pick up a gig with Channel Four on a companion program to the Big Brother reality show. The 12-step rehab program, based on the Jungian idea that addiction is caused by spiritual inadequacy and that surrender to god will return the addict to the straight and narrow, then became the centrepiece of Russell’s personal spirituality. It is not uncommon to encounter recovering addicts who have embraced religion, but I am unaware of anyone who actually seems to have turned the 12-step program itself into a quasi-religion as much as Russell has. He also claims that this is where he was exposed to the kindness of a practising Hare Krishna, and this has formed another strand of his spiritual identity.
In distancing himself from Russell’s current troubles, John Noel claims that he “never had any complaints” about Russell’s behaviour. That didn’t stop him from sending Brand for another 12-step rehab In 2005, this time for “sex addiction”. But who was John Noel to diagnose this “addiction”, and how was he qualified to prescribe this remedy? I find myself wondering what might have been if Russell’s behaviour had been confronted and treated professionally rather than the hollow palliative of a spell in rehab. Can a sexual predator of Russell’s ilk even be treated?
Russell claims to have again used the 12-step program to recover from a porn addiction. He has launched his own 12-step program, which was set to be tarted up and rebranded in his planned, but now cancelled, 2024 book. He claims to repeat the 12-step program every 2-3 years, with a strong emphasis on the self-audit and make amends steps (that’s 4. "Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves", and 8. "Make a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all"). And yet it took him over a decade to reach out to the victim of his Sachsgate scandal, a former girlfriend (22 while he was 34), whose life he ruined: estranging her from her family and sending her into a spiral of drug abuse and despair.
How are multiple 12-step programs for different addictions even supposed to work? If addiction is an absence of god, and you overcome it by surrendering to god, how does it make sense to have residual addictions that persist after the act of surrendering to god has cured the first one? In Russell’s case, not once, but twice!
The prevalence of 12-step programs is a subject worthy of further investigation - it is the one-size-fits-all only solution presented to most addicts, well, unless you’re Jordan Peterson, then the only option is to be put into a medically induced coma by a shady Russian “doctor” (actually, I shouldn’t sneer, this is remarkable similar to a treatment advocated by William S Burroughs). There is surprisingly little clinical evidence on the efficacy of the 12-step program, even for alcohol addiction. And it’s foundation in Jung’s spiritual woo-woo is fundamentally unscientific.
But how did we all participate in the farce of a supposedly recovered sex addict constantly talking about his promiscuous and voluminous sex life? Ffs, the Sun named him “shagger of the year” (gross) in 2006, 2008, and 2012, all after his supposed recovery! Imagine a recovered drug addict telling you about all the heroin they’re currently enjoying.
How does this fit in with Russell’s avowed approach that abstinence is the only suitable approach to addiction?
Danni Minogue recognized this fact in 2006, declaring Brand a “Vile Predator” in this story in The Mirror, which then bizarrely goes on to brag about hosting Brand’s dating tips. Really? F*ck the UK tabloid press.
It’s been suggested that Brand “groomed” his comedy audience with his sexual content. Brand belonged to a long tradition in British bawdy comedy. Of end of the pier music halls and saucy postcards. He was the inheritor of a tradition that includes Kenneth Williams vocking the Polari on Round the Horn to plant scandalous double entendres into the living rooms of grey and staid Britain. Of Frankie Howard, who could “never quite get it… Up Pompeii!”. The Carry On films, where sex was always something that everyone else was doing, and whose frustrations were illustrated with slide whistles and timpani.
Innuendo in comedy always involves an element of discomfort, the tension released through laughter: the homosexual innuendos of Williams and Howard at a time when gay sex was still illegal, the deflating glissando of a thwarted Carry On advance. Russell didn’t even need to craft jokes about sex to get a laugh, as depicted in the Dispatches video and witnessed by your dear author; he would claim of some crudity spoken during his routine, “That’s not even a joke. That’s just a sex tip” and we would all laugh. He used his metrosexual Beau Brummell image to present himself as a good-natured fop, harmless, a ludicrous clown, an overgrown man-child to be indulged. But he peppered his routines with ghastly admissions of his crimes masquerading as humour, possibly to draw the sting of a potential discovery or to belittle a potential accuser. It seems that Russell may not be alone in that approach to comedy in the UK circuit, which appear to be overdue for a MeTo moment. Perhaps this would be another thread worthy of tugging at.
So what of this blog, then? As I said earlier, part of the fun in researching for it has been finding out about the bellends who feed and support Russell’s output. As such, I’ll probably finish up the outstanding parts two and three of my current series (subjects are David Sirota, and then the grifters promoting the “Censorship Industrial Complex” conspiracy theory). But after that? I suspect the sources willing to be seen with Brand will dry up, and his influence will be much diminished. Ironically, investigating Russell's conspiracy fantasies is an excellent opportunity to learn about the forces, structures and individuals that actually shape our world; the opportunity to investigate outside of his shrinking media echo chamber will become limited and will show us less and less about the world we live in.
One of the motivating passions when I first embarked on this project, when I first started posting to the socials to draw attention to Brand’s COVID nonsense, was the thought that he might drag some of his pre-COVID audience into anti-vax conspiracy land. By this stage, however, I believe that we are long past the point that any of his old fans would have either jumped ship or else already spiralled down the plug-hole with Brand. His new audience? They know what they’re getting into. More so now.
Another motivating passion was a fear that he would be able to simply walk back into the mainstream once COVID had gone away. I’m not so deluded to think that I could influence that in any way, but I thought a record of Brand’s COVID scepticism and misinformation would be a thing of value. Obviously, I don’t see Brand being able to return to the mainstream fold at any point in the future.
As Brand will inevitably sink further into the morass of the right-wing culture war, I see less and less appeal to paying attention to him. He becomes another Steven Crowder or Ben Shapiro, Dave Ruben, Tim Pool, or any other nonentity on the periphery of the media. Another goombah in the increasingly packed ranks of the right-wing internet grifto-sphere competing for billionaire sugar daddies and access to trailer park rubes.
I’m sure there might be incidents worthy of comment, but there are other projects I want to engage with, and I can’t see Russell Brand taking up too much of my attention after this series is complete.
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