Daniel Sloss received death threats for calling out Russell Brand
- Daniel Sloss has spoken about receiving threats to his life after he appeared in the Channel 4 documentary Russell Brand: In Plain Sight, in which he accused Brand of being a sexual predator
- He told fellow comic Russell Howard that he was going to make his next stand-up show about the "reactions" to his testimony
- "There was, you know, death threats and 'you're part of the Illuminati and this is about a powerful man and you're trying to bring him down'" he told the Russell Howard: Five Brilliant Things podcast
Daniel Sloss received death threats for speaking out about Russell Brand, he has revealed.
The only comic to feature in Channel 4's 2023 Dispatches episode Russell Brand: In Plain Sight, which disclosed allegations of rape and sexual assault against the older comedian, Sloss had to hire security when performing in the US after the film aired.
Sloss told Dispatches that claims that Brand was a predator were an "open secret" in the comedy industry. And now he says that his next stand-up show will be about "reactions" to his testimony.
Although he didn't substantially reference Brand in work-in-progress performances of his show Can't last year, Sloss is returning to the Edinburgh Fringe in August with a run at the Just The Tonic Nucleus venue.
Brand continues to deny the allegations. But speaking on Russell Howard's Five Brilliant Things podcast, Sloss was sceptical about Brand's conversion to Christianity and embrace of right-wing views following his move to the US, arguing that he was cultivating a protective fanbase.
Sloss made the observations on the Patreon, subscribers-only Five Brilliant Questions part of Howard's podcast.
But, in comments trailed at the end of the free, public access podcast, he said that in his next live shows "I'm definitely talking about the Russell Brand thing and reactions to that.
"99% of [the reaction] was very good, a lot of survivors coming forward."
Sloss' 2018 show X focused on the rape of a female friend by another friend and the need for men to speak out about the predators they discover among themselves.
And he told Howard that in the wake of the Dispatches documentary, "a lot of my own fans [were] like: 'Hey! Congratulations, you're not a fucking hypocrite.
"'You said you were going to talk about this and call it out and that was really good.'
"And then there was, you know, death threats and 'you're part of the Illuminati and this is about a powerful man and you're trying to bring him down.'"
Also on the Patreon, Howard recalled meeting the Canadian singer Rufus Wainwright who was surprised to find him a nice guy after hearing stories about his conduct. Along with other examples of people in North America acting strangely towards him, this prompted him to worriedly speculate that they had mistaken him for his near-namesake Brand.
In January, the BBC published the findings of an internal review into Brand's time as a presenter for Radio 2 and 6 Music between 2006 and 2008 and apologised to staff who felt they could not speak up with concerns about his behaviour because he was seen as "too influential" and they felt he "would always get his way and therefore they stayed silent."