By Michael Holden
LONDON, Nov 5 (Reuters) – Russell Brand was once considered so culturally important that the opposition leader hoping to be Britain’s next prime minister went on his online show, while former US Vice President Al Gore was happy to be interviewed by him.
A comedian and presenter turned Hollywood actor and then unlikely political activist, Brand was one of the most recognisable and sought-after figures in the British entertainment world from the late 2000s until the mid-2010s.
A self-declared sex addict, he was also desired by hordes of women, with hundreds queuing up to meet him after his stand-up shows. He says many were eager to have sex with him, be it in his dressing room or in toilets at parties.
British police and prosecutors say he abused that celebrity, and simply expected women to be ready to satisfy his cravings, whether they were willing or not.
On Thursday he was found guilty at London’s Southwark Crown Court of one count of rape and three sexual assaults. He was acquitted of two other rapes and an attempted indecent assault.
RISE TO FAME
Brand, 51, grew up in Grays, a small town in Essex about 20 miles to the east of London. A later memoir detailed his desire to leave for fame and excitement, moving to London at the age of 16 to attend the Italia Conti stage school from which he was expelled a year later.
The following years were filled, by his own account, with various sex- and drug-filled adventures in the underbelly of London, performing stand-up comedy in small venues before he landed a presenting job at MTV in 2000.
Known for his loquacious style, flamboyant appearance and shaggy hairstyle, his big break came hosting a spin-off show to “Big Brother” on Channel 4.
He became a regular on television and radio, including working for the BBC, while his stand-up comedy tours began to attract ever larger audiences, often featuring explicit content, often sexual, based on his own experiences.
He was sacked by the BBC in 2008 after he and Jonathan Ross – then one of the broadcaster’s highest-paid stars – left a lewd voicemail message during a radio show for actor Andrew Sachs, who had been in the much-loved “Fawlty Towers” programme, saying that Brand had slept with his granddaughter.
It caused a massive crisis at the BBC, but only brought him greater fame and notoriety.
Recounting that episode during his later “Scandalous” tour, he said: “Imagine, if you will, how my ego responded when this happened”, before singing “I am the news, I am the news tonight” to the opening theme from a British evening news programme.
Hollywood roles followed and at one stage in 2011, two films in which he was involved, “Hop” and “Arthur”, topped the US box office.
In 2010, he married US pop star Katy Perry in a traditional Hindu ceremony in India’s Rajasthan, which he told the court had brought “staggering fame”, but the marriage was over after just 14 months.
Perry has said little about their time together, but in an interview in 2013 she suggested he had been “very controlling, which was upsetting”.
“I felt a lot of responsibility for it ending, but then I found out the real truth, which I can’t necessarily disclose because I keep it locked in my safe for a rainy day,” she told Vogue magazine.
In subsequent years, Brand moved away from regular TV and film work, later saying he found elements of the world of fame vacuous, and instead began to focus on social media projects, becoming an anti-establishment political activist.
In 2014, he wrote a bestselling book titled “Revolution”, in which he criticised political and economic systems and consumer capitalism.
Such was his importance and resonance with a younger audience that ahead of the 2015 national election, Ed Miliband, then leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party and currently foreign minister, agreed to be interviewed by him for his YouTube channel.
“I will engage with anyone, anyhow, to persuade more people to turn out and vote,” Miliband said at the time, though he later expressed regret after allegations were first made against Brand in 2023.
Former US Vice President Al Gore was among guests who appeared on his “Under the Skin” podcast in 2017 to talk about environmental issues.
His last on-screen credit, according to IMDb, came in the 2022 film adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel “Death on The Nile”, before he focused on building up a significant online presence.
He still has more than 10 million followers on X, and 2.2 million people follow his “Stay Free” Rumble channel, where he mainly discusses US politics and conspiracy theories involving the media, governments and large corporations.
He also regularly posts about religion, having been baptised as a Christian in 2024 after the allegations first emerged, often alongside his second wife Laura, 39, daughter of European Ryder Cup golf captain Bernard Gallacher.
SEX AND POLITICS
While politics has dominated him latterly, sex was much of the driving force in his youth.
He was named “Shagger of the Year” numerous times by the Sun newspaper, as his trial was repeatedly reminded, while his 2007 memoir “My Booky Wook” opens with him in a sexual addiction treatment centre in Philadelphia in 2005.
“I was pursuing hanky-panky like it was a job, like there was a league table that I had to be at the summit,” he wrote.
His promiscuity was something he now renounced, telling his trial he had much of his life to “reckless philandering and idiocy”.
His wife Laura, with whom he has three children, said he was now a new man. She was 19 when she first dated Brand in 2006, some 12 years his junior, before they rekindled their relationship in 2015.
“Russell … is caring, he’s kind, he’s a wonderful father to our children, he’s an amazing attentive husband,” she told his trial. “I love him very much.”
(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Alex Richardson)
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