Russell Brand

Lily Allen says rape jokes made by Noel Fielding, Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand on C4 show were 'horrendous'

Lily Allen has reflected on "horrendous" lewd jokes made at her expense by Jonathan Ross, Noel Fielding and Russell Brand on a Channel 4 panel show. The singer-turned-actor was discussing a past appearance on annual comedy series The Big Fat Quiz Of The Year, which went viral after rape allegations surfaced against Brand in September.

Russell Brand: BBC says it received five complaints about presenter

The BBC has said a total of five complaints have been made about Russell Brand's behaviour while he hosted radio shows between 2006 and 2008.

Russell Brand: Extra accuses comedian of film set sexual assault

Russell Brand has been accused of sexually assaulting an extra on a film set in a civil lawsuit filed in the US.

Russell Brand makes up to £350,000 from Rumble video views after rape claim

Russell Brand's bizarre rants and conspiracy theories have racked up 43 million views on website Rumble - which says it is "immune to cancel culture" - since September.

It's been a month since the Russell Brand allegations became public. This is how women in comedy are feeling...

GLAMOUR speaks to Sophie Duker, Grace Campbell, Jen Ives and Alexandra Haddow on the subject.

Ed Byrne: 'Russell Brand is a TV problem - not a comedy one'

Ed Byrne has been moving audiences to belly-laugh oblivion with his observational comedy for the best part of three decades now - and he's noticed something about his industry of late.

Myleene Klass on declining Russell Brand's unwanted advances

Mum-of-three Myleene Klass has today opened up on declining Russell Brand's unwanted advances.

The 45-year-old presenter said she had felt uncomfortable in an encounter with Brand and "trusted her instincts and got out".

The Sun remains certain that there is only one institution retrospectively responsible for Russell Brand's alleged sexual misbehaviour. "BBC's shame over flasher Brand - 'Exposed himself' then joked on air," the front page of the paper shrieked on 22 September, over the story of a 2008 incident when the comedian was hosting a Radio 2 show.

The paper even printed a transcript of Brand and his co-presenter Matt Morgan boasting on-air at the time about how he "showed his willy to a lady", and fumed that "bosses are under pressure to explain how the pre-recorded segment was ever deemed suitable for broadcast".

Did the Sun object to it at the time? No, judging by the fact that that year the paper re-awarded Brand its "Shagger of the Year" title, dreamed up for himin 2006 by then showbiz columnist Victoria Newtpm, who, in a sign of how much things have changed since that distant and alien time of the mid-2000s, has now been promoted to editor-in-chief of the entire Sun.

To be fair, however, in 2016 the Sun did come down hard on a different Radio 2 presenter whom it claimed has "flashed at a colleague almost every day for two years", reporting that "the ordeal left her traumatised and on anti-depressants" (a very different tone from that which the Sun took when jocularly reporting a number of the presenter's nudity incidents during the 1990s, see Eye 1423). When a criminal investigation was launched into the alleged incidents, the Sun was delighted, boasting that the man in question was "the most high-profile [o]BBC[/io] star to be quizzed by police over historical sexual assault allegations". The police investigation was subsequently dropped.

That presenter, however, was Chris Evans, against whom the Sun was then running a determined campaign of vilification for his temerity in being paid lots by the BBC and taking the Top Gear job from which its own columnist Jeremy Clarkson had been sacked. So what happened next?

Demonstrating once again its long-term moral flexibility on such issues, in 2018 Sun owner News UK snapped up Evans' service as the eye-wateringly well-rewarded presenter of the breakfast show on their own station, Virgin Radio, and the paper has published not a single word of criticism about his turn-of-the-century excessed ever again.

In the past fortnight, claims of more sex crimes by Russell Brand have surfaced, with the Met Police confirming it is investigating "a number of non-recent allegations" which are in addition to those already revealed in the media. Attorney-general Victoria Prentis also took the highly unusual step of issuing a "media advisory" notice about not prejudicing "any potential criminal investigation or prosecutions".

Meanwhile, more information has emerged about the legions of expensive lawyers the counter-culturalist guru has employed over the years to protect his reputation. As the Eye revealed, Mark Thomson of Thomson Heath & Associates has been handling enquiries on Brand's behalf as the joint investigation by the Sunday Times, Times and Dispatches inched towards completion. Now however, his firm appears to be have been supplanted by BCL Solicitors, who specialise in both "serious and general crime" and "private clinet - high net worth representation".

Last Thursday, four days after Brand released a video entitled "ARE WE BEING SILENCED?" requesting fans to send him money so he could continue to resist "the global media war against free speech", BCL contacted press watchdog Ipso requesting that in order journalists to stay away from Brand's country home and cease harassing his staff and security team on the grounds that "neither Mr Brand or his family, or anyone empolyed by or associated with him, have any intention of interacting with the press". It also pointed out that Brand denies all the allegations.

BCL is, however, merely the latest in a long line of legal eagles. The Daily Mail has revealed that its publisher received a legal letter on Brand's behalf in 2017 from Schillings complaining about sister paper Metro's perfectly accurate coverage of a joke about sexual assault he had made on live TV.

In 2015 the Mail on Sunday was threatened over claims made by one of Brand's ex-partners, during the period when Brand was lecturing anyone who would listen about the need to look beyond a "pre-existing paradigm which is quite narrow and only serves a few people" and instead to "look elsewhere for alternatives that might be of service to humanity". The threat was issued on Brand's behalf by Archerfield Partners, "a boutique law firm based in Westminster, London, specialising in... media, entertainment and tax matters".

None of these firms, however, was responsible for the legal letter that played the most prominent part of the recent expose: the one sent on Brand's behalf to the pseudonymous "Alice", who claims to have been "groomed" into a sexual relationship by the comedian when she was a 16-year-old school pupil and he was 30, which she says ended up with him sexually assaulting her. Alice contacted Brand's literary agent Angharad Wood in 2020 requesting an apology for his past behaviour. Wood told her that her famous client had instructed Thomson "in relation to this matter". But that November Alice received what she describes as a "very aggressive" reply from another lawyer entirely, who claimed to act for Brand and told her: "You have made contact on three occasionss and I suspect you are trying to obtain money from him. That would be a most serious matter if it were the case."

It was sent by Philip Barden, a partner at City law firm Devonshires, who boasts on the firm's website that he "always takes the time to know his clients' business and their objectives - so he can deliver a value added service" and "gives pragmatic solutions-based advice, designed to favourably resolve issues quickly and efficiently".

It's not the responsibility of women like Katherine Ryan to avoid dangerous men

On Desert Island Discs, Katherine Ryan explained how she wrestled with the decision over whether to work with someone she knew to be a predator. This is the sort of choice women face all too often.