LONDON (AP) — For three consecutive years, while working for BBC radio stations, Russell brand received a notable accolade from the Sun, Britain’s biggest tabloid: “Shagger of the Year”.
This was, of course, in keeping with the villainous image that Brand cultivated, which vacillated between the scandalous and the offensive, as he became one of Britain’s most famous comedians.
Brand sentenced Thursday for rape and sexual assault have shone a spotlight on the BBC and other media employers, renewing the question of whether bosses enabled his behavior or chose to look the other way. They also highlighted how his excesses were overlooked by the culture at large.
“When Brand was at his peak, his wrongdoing was tolerated or ignored by his employers and, to be fair, by the public as well,” Ann Olivarius, a sexual misconduct attorney, said in an email message.
The BBC apologized last year for a culture of silence this, he said, prevented staff from complaining about Brand’s behavior at his radio stations between 2006 and 2008, because they felt he was too powerful.
She reiterated this apology after her conviction.
“It was very concerning to us that some people felt unable to raise concerns about Brand’s behavior,” the BBC said in a statement on Thursday. “We have apologized to those affected, both for the culture and for the failures of the time.”
The media’s own investigation shed light on the accusations
The British public broadcaster launched an internal investigation after The Times and Channel 4, as part of a joint investigation, broadcast accusations in 2023 from women claiming to have been sexually assaulted and degraded by Brand.
The resulting articles and documentaries highlighted women who provided the evidence that led to his conviction. But it was no secret that Brand had behaved badly when he was a BBC sportsman or a TV presenter on Channel 4. For example, he wrote in his memoirs about how he had sex in a radio station’s disabled toilet with the winning contestants on BBC 6 Music.
“No one ever confused Russell Brand with a Boy Scout,” said Allen Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce. “His brand was R-rated from day one.”
The 51-year-old was found guilty Thursday of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault involving multiple women. He was acquitted of two counts of rape and one count of attempted indecent assault. He faces sentencing on Monday.
Detective Superintendent Andy Furphy of London’s Metropolitan Police called the conviction “a testament to the extraordinary courage, resilience and determination of the women who came forward and reported what happened to them.”
“Brand used his influence, status and fame to sexually exploit and offend women,” Furphy said. “As his profile grew, so did his sense of entitlement.”
Of the eight complaints the BBC investigated, only one – that Brand urinated in a cup in front of staff – had been made officially during his time at the stations. The review found the issue had “not been addressed effectively”.
Brand wrote in his memoir about a tolerant BBC boss
In his second memoir, “My Booky Wook 2”, Brand explained how Lesley Douglas, the controller of Radio 2 at the time, was “incredibly tolerant” of his behavior and that he benefited from “a lot of space” she gave him.
However, he admitted to having gone “too far” when he claimed, on air, that he would be under the desk performing an intimate act with a newsreader while she read the headlines.
The presenter “was a little upset,” he said.
Liz Kershaw, a longtime BBC radio DJ, wrote in the Telegraph on Thursday that she had been complaining to BBC management since 2006 about how Brand’s behavior was tolerated.
“The brand is a creation of some of the most powerful players in media,” Kershaw wrote. “They were under his influence. And he was encouraged. He was their performance monkey. He made ‘great TV’. His colleagues were collateral damage.”
In 2008, Brand finally went too far during an on-air prank and had to resign. Brand telephoned actor Andrew Sachs, best known for the 1970s program “Fawlty Towers,” and left a message claiming to have had sex (he used an expletive) with his granddaughter.
Brand resigned from Radio 2 and British broadcasting regulator imposes record fine on BBC of 150,000 pounds, the equivalent of $219,000 at the time.
Although a Channel 4 documentary helped bring down Brand, the broadcaster was also linked to one of the criminal charges at trial from his time as a TV presenter there. Channel 4 apologized in 2024 to a former employee after an internal review found it failed to investigate a serious complaint made by a member of staff against him in 2009.
Brand was convicted Thursday of sexually assaulting a former employee while she was working on a project for the network in 2009. The employee testified that two members of Brand’s entourage asked her to give him a massage, then watched and laughed as the comedian put his head in her crotch.
One of Brand’s associates, Jack Bayles, did not testify but said in a statement that he did not remember the incident but was sorry he missed something at the time or failed to recognize the distress it caused.
“I was early in my career and it was a frenetic, high-pressure, toxic work environment,” Bayles said. “Brand was chaotic, dismissive and manipulative of the people around him.”
He said he stopped working with Brand in 2010 and has not had contact with him since.
Experts say Brand’s raunchy personality may have been a ‘pre-emptive defense’
Some analysts noted that it was precisely Brand’s scandalous image that could have protected him from suspicion of criminal activities.
Adamson, the marketing consultant, noted the “sex, the drugs, the open shirt, the look” that defined Brand. “This is exactly why this behavior was never seen as a warning sign; it was him marketing his brand,” he said.
The fault also lies with the media of the time, Adamson noted. “The media not only covered the character, they co-wrote it. When a national newspaper gives you a trophy three years in a row for sleeping, you’re not hiding anything. You’re building your brand.”
Cheyenne Hunt, a lawyer and anti-misogyny activist, noted that Brand’s raunchy behavior served almost as a preemptive defense.
Someone like Brand “is trying to create a persona such that if someone comes forward, they have this… defense at their disposal, which is, ‘Well, what did you think was going to happen?’ “, Hunt said.
The role comedy plays is also key, said Hunt, who runs the group Reckoning Action, which she founded after revealing allegations of sexual misconduct against US politicians Eric Swalwell and Graham Platner.
“I tell people to beware of the clown and the jester,” Hunt said. “Because their behavior makes it seem like they’re joking or it’s some kind of absurdist comedy, and people don’t take it literally. But what they’re doing is building a permission structure to do exactly what they tell you they’re going to do.”
“And that’s very much Russell Brand’s modus operandi, and I think he’s learned from a lot of other people who have the same playbook.”
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Noveck reported from New York.
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