Alright, what the hell happened to Russell Brand NOW?

Hell of a way to come back from our hiatus: let's catch up with the co-host of the "On Brand" podcast, hoping they can help us make sense of the latest round of horrible fuckery.

On Brand is a podcast dedicated to debunking Russell Brand: “each episode Al and Lauren dissect the ideas and antics of the man who is fast becoming one of the world's leading propagandists”. I spoke with co-host Al Worth in June, when the show was just getting started; in light of the latest Avalanche of Fuckery involving Brand, we were due for another chat. Enjoy.

Seems like yesterday we were chatting about what “On Brand” could become over time, given that the podcast had just started out (and it was getting traction quite fast) – it's been jarring to see Brand making the news for something far more nefarious (if true) than I could have genuinely anticipated. In your Brand studies, had you come across anything that might have anticipated the rape allegations as we are now coming to understand them?

There had been stories of promiscuity for years, many of which were told by Brand himself. There's of course no problem with that. There are also multiple stories of boundary-pushing behaviour, some of which was abusive; throwing a prostitute's phone at a wall is a good example. And of course there's footage of him doing inappropriate things on live television, like forcefully kissing a female reporter without consent. Ultimately though, there was no real indication within media or any of Brand's content of very credible sexual assault and rape allegations. It's important to stress that no one would have been particularly surprised had he just been outed as a sex pest, a harasser of some kind, and the sanitation of the media's presentation of these allegations make it seem like that's what's occurred.

The reality which neither myself nor my co-host Lauren were prepared for, is that there is evidence to the point of near-certainty that Brand is a serial sexual assaulter and rapist. He groomed and brutally sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl at the age of 30, according to the victim known as Alice, her mother, and other corroborating witnesses, and that was only in 2006. Things only seemed to develop from there.

An argument I've seen already doing the rounds is “what if Brand was building himself an online presence as a staunch 'anti-mainstream-media' personality exactly because he knew sooner or later this part of his past could come to light?”. I personally restrain from adopting even the lightest conspiratorial frame because it feels way too “House of Cards” to be a healthy mindset, but I've seen this non-argument doing the rounds. (What can I say: paranoia can be contagious and addictive.) How are you going to proceed moving forwards?

Conspiratorial is the right word for it. Ultimately, we're not psychic, and without a paper trail of some kind there's no way of knowing Brand's mindset. The investigation against him began in 2019 after the first allegation came to The Times, but the second credible allegation came forward in 2021 which according to James Coney at The Sunday Times was when the investigation began in earnest. By this point Brand was already well down the path of conspiracy grifter. Did he know about the allegation made in 2019? It's certainly possible, but I find it unlikely, and we may never know the truth.

What we do know with absolute certainty is that prior to the pandemic Brand was releasing fairly generic wellness vidoes, including agony-Aunt-advice style content on things like 'how to end a relationship'. The pandemic hit in 2020, a huge portion of the right-wing media sphere began sowing doubt and getting a lot of attention, and Brand tried his hand at the same thing. His videos usually sat somewhere between fifty and a hundred thousand views, but his first video on COVID-19 skyrocketed straight up to over a million. There could have been even more nefarious motives at play, but we are certain it was this moment Brand realised he was able to spin, tell half-truths, and outright lie, for enormous profit.

In episode 20 you've done a great job outlining the difficulty of abuse allegations coming to light because of the way the UK Court System are set up when it comes to libel and slander. (Granted, some individuals like singer Cliff Richards had a very good case when it came to gross invasion of their privacy on the grounds of later debunked, unfounded abuse allegations.) A recent episode of Pod Save the UK had co-host Nish Kumar saying there had been rumors about Brand circulating for quite some time within comedy circles, and those might be the reason Brand got less TV work as the years went on – no one spoke up, but people quietly noped out of working with him.

Firstly, thank you. I'm yet to listen to Pod Save the UK's take on the matter, but comedian Daniel Sloss has long-said it's been an 'open secret' within the comedy industry, that there are WhatsApp groups between female comedians to share information on creeps within the industry, and that Brand was consistently mentioned in these groups. However, I think the concept of people 'noping' out of working with Brand is probably a generous view.

We've seen there was an institutional acceptance of the way Russell Brand acted with women during his times at Channel 4, the BBC, and FX, as late as 2013. Brand, of his own volition, took a hiatus from acting for a spell and purposefully avoided working in media until 2016, by which point his star power had faded somewhat. Though times have changed considerably, I'd be very surprised if - had he maintained the same level of fame - television production companies would have opted out of working with him, given the history of acceptance that's been exposed in this investigation.

What are you seeing in the UK right now when it comes to the perception of Brand as an entertainer? When we first spoke you said, “a lot of people to this day believe that Brand is a lovely verbose chap who says and does witty things, just now with a bit more 'woo' and meditation thrown in”. Do you see any change happening now that a shadier side is being brought to the surface?

It's a mixed bag. The documentary exposing the allegations against Brand is geolocked to the UK, and the articles at The Times and Sunday Times are behind a paywall, so I'm aware there's certainly more of a discussion in the UK than in the USA, for instance. That said, Brand's disinformation campaign has been nothing short of effective. He released his denial video many hours prior to The Times article being released, or the documentary airing, which meant there was a flurry of speculation and focus just on what he was saying in the denial video. This is of course the video where he alleged it's a coordinated attack against him by 'The Media', and that narrative has stuck with a great many people.

Comment sections of articles covering Brand are plagued by comments of "trial by media" and "innocent until proven guilty", there are accusations of evidence being faked, the timing being suspicious, and it being fishy that the victims are choosing to remain anonymous. We've debunked these issues in our podcast, but the most common misconception even among the more rationally-minded people asking questions about this story, is that it's somehow possible the media lied, or have gotten it wrong. We also debunked this point but it bears reiterating in part.

The legal bar for printing and reporting on a story of this scale and depth is incredibly high. The accusations levelled at Brand are not just of criminal behaviour, but also of disgusting, malicious, and purposefully vindictive behaviour. There have been interviews of around 500 people, with checking and cross-checking of information, for which there is a journalistic audit trail. What people don't seem to realise is that if these accusations were false, not only could The Times and Sunday Times be sued into oblivion, they could effectively be shut down by IPSO, the UK press regulator. At this stage there's no legal case pending, there has been no complaint to IPSO, and Brand has not once suggested he intends to fight this in court. I wonder why.

Getting back to something you said when we first spoke; “Where Brand differs in this case is his production is not small. His show has a staff of 20 people other than him, and he records it in a very fancy studio in one of the priciest areas of the UK. Again I find this nothing short of worrying, as his views are not held in isolation, and it calls into question his financial situation.”

Anything to add here?

The fancy studio remains, at his pub in Pishill. Though curiously he didn't use the main studio to record his show which returned Monday, and the end credits have been removed to instead show a message of 'Stay Free', which leads me to believe there may have been something of a staff exodus at Stay Free Media, and they lacked the personnel to man the studio. Time will tell, and perhaps I'm being optimistic.

Through our show we've most certainly confirmed Brand's views are widely-held and endorsed by huge swathes of people, with 6.6 million followers on YouTube and a Rumble following that has grown since the allegations, and now eclipses Steven Crowder's.

Brand's financial situation remains somewhat opaque, but estimates of his YouTube earnings prior to demonetisation were between one and three million pounds per year, while his Rumble videos can earn anywhere between five and eighty thousand pounds per video depending on the viewer count, and there are around ten of those per week. There's of course also his Locals channel where his viewers pay sixty dollars per year to join the livestream of his recordings prior to them being edited and uploaded to Rumble, and Brand has his annual Community festival for which he's still selling tickets, for up to £240 per person.

It's fair to say financially he's doing just fine, and that's without possible questions of money in exchange for preferable propaganda.

Russell Brand's openness about himself as a former sex addict used to be pretty refreshing in the Before Times. How (if) can you reconcile this “I'm a mess but I've been learning” stage of Brand the public person and the frankly sad stuff that's coming out? Is it all part of a shapeshifting, "I go where THE VIEWS" go persona to you?

There is certainly a shape-shifting aspect to Brand's content, as he is very much one to chase any trend or subject that's popular with his overtly alt-right audience, be that UFOs or demonising Bill Gates. There are two things about this I find infuriating, first of which is that it becomes increasingly difficult to nail down exactly what it is the man believes, and secondly is that with almost every subject Brand covers there are legitimate criticisms that could be made. Instead, however, Brand chooses to simply make things up and pivot away from the real-world critiques. You needn't look any further than our Big Pharma episode where instead of taking the pharmaceutical companies or lobbyists to task, he spent an entire editorial complaining and lying about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and the Inflation Reduction Act.

Brand's persona of being a Recovery guru is an important factor of his celebrity and supposed authenticity. To be clear, he attended a 12-step program in 2002 for drug use, and went to rehab for sex addiction in 2005. As evidenced by Alice's allegations against him from 2006, it didn't stick. My position is that whether it be sex addiction, an exercise in learning boundaries, or even if he were still on drugs of any kind, none of that serves as an excuse for his behaviour. It might explain it, but by no means is it an excuse.

The bleak reality is that while Russell Brand was claiming to be a reformed man, peddling courses and books on the subject of recovery, he was apparently committing horrific acts of sexual violence, and grooming his victims to that end. Now he applies those same techniques to his audience.

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