About 20 years ago I was sent to interview a little known comedian my editor at the time had been told was one to watch.
Off I went to a north London cafe, blissfully unaware of the bizarre spectacle I was about to witness, as a strange man with hair so matted it had turned into dreadlocks bowled in and began to tell me how beautiful I was. He wasn’t a vagrant off the street, but my interviewee.
With a flourish, he told me that my eyes were lovely. Could he kiss me, he asked, before I’d even had a chance to sip on my coffee.
‘No!’ I shrieked. But he kept asking, even walking me to the station when our interview ended, begging to plant his lips on mine the whole way there. When I got back to the office, my editor said I looked as if I’d seen a ghost. I could only reply that she’d sent me to interview a madman.
Half an hour later, my phone rang. The comedian had got hold of my number from his PR. It was the start of a bombardment – 20 calls and texts a day until I agreed to go out with him.
I mention this now because that man was Russell Brand, the shamed star who has conveniently turned to Christianity just as the police hand their files containing allegations of sexual assault to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), as they did last week.
I’ve resisted bringing up my encounters with Brand since the allegations were made. My skin crawls thinking about his predatory behaviour – and how I felt the need to make light of it when it happened. But his constant insistence on social media that only God can judge him has compelled me to write this piece.
Brand denies all the allegations. But when they were first made, in an episode of Channel 4’s Dispatches just over a year ago, I experienced a wave of nausea.
It’s a feeling that’s become familiar to so many women who were young in the Noughties – when the prevailing culture forced us to dismiss behaviour we now know was deeply problematic.
I briefly mentioned my encounter with Brand in a book I wrote ten years ago, which was about the general awfulness of my 20s. Perhaps alarm bells should have rung at the sentence ‘every time I said no [to him asking to kiss me], it only caused him to ask me more’. But I saw it as little more than an amusing anecdote that signified the chaos of my life. Here I was, on a date with a man as it seemed easier than getting a restraining order.
Brand and I went out for Sunday lunch, then to see a film called Proof, which was about maths and starred Gwyneth Paltrow. It was all pretty old-fashioned, if you ignored the endless questions about whether or not I fancied him, and his strange insistence I drink alcohol (he was already sober by this point; I wasn’t).
Having begged me to kiss him, he insisted I gargle with mouthwash before it actually happened – an oddly offensive detail I later read happened to another woman he’d been intimate with.
I saw him a couple of times, but quickly got the impression I wasn’t the only girl he was begging to kiss. I was relieved when he lost interest, presumably turning his laser-like attention on someone else. As I wrote in my book back in 2014: ‘There were hundreds of girls with a Russell Brand story.’
I had no idea some of those stories were pretty damn dark.
There was the 16-year-old he had a three-month relationship with when he was in his early 30s, whom he apparently referred to as ‘the child’. (She alleges he became increasingly controlling, as well as emotionally and sexually abusive.)
There was the woman who claims Brand raped her at his Los Angeles home in 2012.
Another woman, whom he had met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, claims he pinned her on a bed and put his hands in her trousers, after she told him: ‘I don’t want to do this.’ But the only thing that really surprised me about last year’s Dispatches investigation was that it had taken so long for a news organisation to carry it out.
Even so, my story, in comparison to the ones I read about, seemed trifling. So I kept it to myself, as I know what happens when women speak publicly about things that happened to them in the past. It’s Brand’s born-again religious fervour that has prompted me to write now.
Let me be clear: I believe people can change. I believe in the power of forgiveness. I believe, even, in God. But I don’t have time for people who believe they are God.
Forgiveness and change require accountability and contrition. Brand has shown neither. There isn’t a hint of apology for how he behaved towards women when he was, in his own words, ‘promiscuous’. Instead, he seems to have set out to paint himself as a victim of ‘mainstream media’ smears.
He has turned conspiracy theorist, and born-again Christian, appealing cynically to the Bible Belt in America who have just voted as President a man found guilty of sexual abuse.
He leads his 11 million followers on X, formerly Twitter, in prayer sessions, and baptises people in rivers as if he himself was the second coming. None of which would matter much if you got the sense he was truly open to redemption. Instead, Brand has said being baptised has allowed him to ‘leave the past behind‘.
To do that, he first needs to face the British criminal justice system – and whatever is in the files the Met police have just handed to the CPS.
It would never be OK for Kate to look so scruffy!
It’s not for me to pass comment on Prince William’s continued insistence on sporting a beard and moustache, as seen this week in South Africa.
What I will say is it rather distracted from the passionate speech he made about the ‘troubling reality’ the planet faces, and the need to tackle the illegal wildlife trade.
And had his wife, the Princess of Wales, shown up with so much as a hair out of place, you just know it’s the only thing we’d be hearing about!
Why would anyone have a dinner party?
According to a new poll, one in six people admit to serving food that’s been dropped on the floor, while almost a third of us have knowingly served up a meal that is past its sell-by date.
I find these statistics oddly comforting, because they confirm my belief that a dinner party is the very worst way to spend an evening. What’s wrong with going to a restaurant? Let this survey give us all permission to leave the dreaded ‘supper party’ where it belongs: in the kitchen bin.
Cornwall’s got itself to blame
I love Cornwall, and like to visit its glorious scenery several times a year, despite constant talk of ’emmets’ (that’s Cornish slang for ants, or tourists), and the graffiti on road signs that urges visitors to turn round and go home. But in the last week, two tourist attractions have been forced to close their doors suddenly.
Both Flambards amusement park in Helston and Dairyland, near Newquay, had been in business for almost 50 years, but falling visitor numbers mean they’ve had to shut up shop permanently.
Now that it’s cheaper to go to the Med for a week than it is to stay for a weekend near Padstow, perhaps the locals are wondering if they should’ve been more careful about what they wished for.
Confidence clinic
It’s 50 years since Britain’s first streaker: during half time at an England rugby match in 1974. That was also the year a naked man ran past David Niven as he presented the Oscar for best film.
The anniversary has reminded me there’s nothing more liberating than running around in only your birthday suit, as God intended… even if it is just in the privacy of your own home!
