When Jimmy Savile was posthumously unmasked as a prolific sex offender it was often said that he had been hiding in plain sight. Russell Brand was never hiding – with him the prolific sex wasn’t a secret, it was an integral part of his act.
He guest edited the New Statesman. Even more extraordinary though was one of his greatest love affairs – with the Guardian
Now, as he is remanded in custody ahead of a being sent to prison on Monday, Brand may well reflect that he wasn’t merely the author of his own downfall but provided an evidential trail that helped convict him.
Brand in his noughties pomp revelled in his swordsman reputation, speaking and writing about it freely countless times. His sexual prowess was always performative. He even won awards for it: he was the Sun’s ‘Shagger of the Year’ three times in a row.
In his memoir, My Booky Wook, Brand wrote about losing his virginity, to a Bangkok prostitute commissioned by his father, in bleak detail: ‘In the course of the rest of that holiday, I had sex with loads more prostitutes; always got a hard on, never wore a condom.’
In the second volume, Booky Wook 2, he wrote of having, ‘four [women] in the bed, two in the kitchen, three in the hot tub and still the doorbell rings.’
Where most celebs were guarded, Brand was perfectly content discussing subjects like his ‘all time orgasm record’. (For the record the answer was: ‘Once in Dublin, nine. Not even in a day, an evening. I felt exhausted the next day.’)
According to Fleet Street legend, at least two journalists sent to interview him returned with a more intimate insight than their commissioning editor might have hoped for. He could turn it on at will.
Even when this exhibitionist finally sued a newspaper over a sex story – successfully, against the Sun on Sunday in 2014 – the case turned not on whether he had slept with the glamour model in question but when: as the dates in their story would have meant he was cheating on then girlfriend Jemima Khan.
And sex was central to what, until now, was the most notorious episode of his career – the moment in 2008 that propelled him to becoming a household name. Sachsgate, as it became known, involved Brand and his then friend Jonathan Ross goading the veteran actor Andrew Sachs in a telephone message played on air that he had been sleeping with his granddaughter.
It caused national outrage but the fury was mostly aimed at the radio station and Brand managed to come out of the scandal if anything enhanced by it. He got a free pass. It was just loveable, priapic Russell up to his old tricks.
The ultimate manifestation of all this cavorting in plain sight was him joking on the stage of the Hammersmith Apollo in 2009 about picking up girls in the audience for sex. The audience laughed along. But, we now know, he was telling the literal truth. And the 21-year-old girl he settled on was subsequently raped in the most brutal way.
Some did try to call him out. In 2006 – by coincidence the year the phrase ‘Me Too’ was first coined – Dannii Minogue denounced him as a ‘vile predator’ after he tried repeatedly to add her to his long list of conquests: ‘I certainly don’t think he has cured his sex addiction, that’s for sure,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t take no for an answer.’
But moments like this were rare. The general reaction was approval. And what’s curious with hindsight is where much of that approval came from. Because by 2008 Brand had moved on from the Sun and was being taken up by more respectable outlets. That Sachs episode, for example, occurred on BBC Radio 2 where he had his own show. It doesn’t get more ‘mainstream media’ – to use his phrase – than that. He would go on to appear on Newsnight, twice, where he was so warmly received that Paxman was practically stroking his leg rather than challenging statements that included the suggestion that 9/11 may have been a set-up.
He guest edited the New Statesman. Even more extraordinary though was one of his greatest love affairs – with the Guardian.
Here was a man whose literary output included passages like this one: ‘Perhaps you’re wondering what formulated my peculiar sexuality? It ain’t that peculiar. I’m a bloke from Essex who likes birds with big bottoms and big boobs, lovely dolly birds.’
And yet here he was sharing a billing with the likes of Seumas Milne and Polly Toynbee. Owen Jones even shared a stage with him. George Monbiot made him his ‘hero of the year’.
How they squared this with the rest of the Guardian’s worldview I never understood but for several years it became routine to see Russ holding forth in its pages. He even did star turns in news conferences with pious Alan Rusbridger. He was the paper’s celebrity shag.
This period came to an end when he endorsed Ed Miliband in the 2015 election – and it didn’t bring out the youth vote, as hoped. And at this point, as he did with every relationship, Brand got bored and moved on, this time to the wacky world of self-broadcasted conspiracy theories.
And it worked – he soon had many millions of ardent internet fans. When I prodded that hornet nest with a denunciation piece a couple of years ago I got death threats. I doubt that this will attract them now. His friends have abandoned him, and his followers will too. The YouTube years are over.
When he was first accused of sexual impropriety, by the Sunday Times and Channel 4 three years ago, his denial was characteristically florid: the accusations were part of a ‘baroque’ conspiracy against him, he claimed, which he could disprove.
But by the time his case had reached the Old Bailey, he struck an altogether different note. By now he had been baptised. He had read the Bible – even if he couldn’t remember exact page references.
And he was, at least partially, penitent. He had misused his position very selfishly, he said. He had once dedicated his life to reckless philandering and idiocy. But now he was a husband and father and older and wiser. But it was too late. The jury knew who he was. We all knew who he was. He had spent 25 years telling us.
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