I was living in the UK in 2005-07 period and he was hosting a Big Brother talk show (after the main show) during this time.
I had no knowledge of who he was prior to this (he was still very much climbing the ‘fame’ ladder) and even on national TV, he was revolting towards his guests and very provocative towards many women on the show. It is something I still remember to this day as hadn’t been exposed to this sort of behaviour on TV before.
If this was the attitude/behaviour on national TV, it does make you wonder what was going on when the cameras were off…
I think this is just the start of a pretty ugly investigation.
Not sure if this is pay-walled but they’ve been looking into him for best part of a year or more before publishing.
Since he’s become an ‘Anti-vaxx, call out-the-woke, do-your-own-research’ type of guy, I’m sure he will frame this as a conspiracy to take him down because he ‘called out the mainstream.’
I mean, if your idea of comedy is ringing someone up to leave voice messages gloating about having sex with their granddaughter, I guess you could find Russell Brand funny (note: Jonathan Ross was also an enormous ■■■■ in that, too).
I’m just a little bit suspicious that he got wind that the investigation was happening, and became an ‘anti-vaxx, call-out-the-woke, do-your-own-research’ type of guy simply because he knows that’s a community that disbelieves any or all claims of sexual assault by reflex, unless they involve Jeffrey Epstein or take place in the basement of a pizza shop.
It’s almost like he made a hard political turn to the right recently so that when this all came out he could blame it on the left and get the right wing nut jobs to defend him.