Politicians should avoid comedians - especially edgy ones

Brand has a right to a fair trial but reporting rape allegations isn’t trial by media

I’d hoped to avoid discussing l’affaire Russell Brand. But needs must and everyone else is. I find his views often objectionable when they aren’t simply incoherent. He’s not even funny after all. No one should have been in any doubt about what he was like in his relationships with women.

He boasted about his sexual conquests in his magnum opus ‘My Booky-Wook’, which is as juvenile as it sounds, and its sequel ‘Booky-Wook2’. His oeuvre contains many passages which should raise serious questions about his attitude to the countless women he bedded.

He talks about “spitting” in a girl’s face, and using “emotional blackmail” to secure sex.  He has made jokes about making the “mascara run” during fellatio.  “What kind of man was I” he concludes in ‘Booky-Wook2’, “treating women this way? And if this is what I’m telling you, can you imagine what’a being left out?” Well now we know.

I’m not saying that he has done anything illegal, however, and the most serious allegations made in the recent Sunday Times investigation must be tested in a court of law. Brand is a bit like one of those “gonzo” journalists of the last century, like Hunter S Thomson: his exploits are fascinating to read about but he’s not someone you would ask for advice on how to live a good life. Nor would you expect him to be a fount of philosophical wisdom.

It seems incredible that this priapic, if not borderline psychotic, personality was once 4th in Prospect magazines top fifty most influential thinkers. For what?  Spouting nonsense about a “revolution”? Russell Brand is not exactly Leon Trotsky.  What had he ever said that was original?

Brand was feted by the left after his sycophantic interview with Ed Miliband in 2015 after which he called on his millions of followers to vote Labour. This was at the height of his fame when his libertine behaviour was the talk of the steamie. Yet Owen Jones and Billy Bragg went on tour with this man. What were they thinking?

Brand is now being feted by the political right, by Jordan Peterson and the likes of Lawrence Fox. This is apparently because he talks about conspiracies involving vaccines and evil corporations. But he’s just as likely to rediscover Mao tomorrow and start singing the praises of Pol Pot. Like the Maharishi in the Beatles song “Sexy Sadie” - Brand makes a fool of everyone. Politicians especially.

Politics is famously show business for ugly people and politicians are always suckers for a bit of star dust. They are fatally attracted to celebrity. That’s why they often unthinkingly welcome the embrace of people in real show business. Margaret Thatcher with Jimmy Savile, comes to mind.  Nicola Sturgeon called the comedian Janet Godley her “alter ego” before she was dropped from a Scottish Government Covid campaign over “unacceptable tweets” about the disabled. Politicians should always ca’ canny with comedians as they say up north.

To to clear, I’m not saying Brand is guilty of rape and criminal wrong-doing, any more than Janey Godley is. It is a character thing. I am sure he’s right that the vast majority of his conquests were consensual. But to boast that you can, through sheer “charm”, inveigle 8 out of every 10 women you meet into having sex with you kind of tells you something.

He has a right to privacy of course, but he has blown that by being so outspoken about his carnal exploits. So I don’t accept the media was wrong to investigate and reveal the allegations against Russell Brand as some appear to believe.  Neither was it wrong, or “trial by media”,  to print the allegations about Huw Edwards or Phillip Schofield, or Prince Philip for that matter.  The public has a right to know, just as they had a right to know about the allegations against Alex Salmond - which were of course found be baseless by a female-dominated jury 2020.

This is an important point. While reporting the allegations about Brand everyone should remember that, under the law, he is innocent until proven guilty.  Indeed, some lawyers believe that the publicity about Brand’s alleged rapes will make it more difficult for him to be prosecuted. I’m not sure they’re right about that as it happens. But like anyone, Brand deserves a fair trial. 

But surely this is what journalism is there for: to cover all the news that’s fit to print. To investigate public figures and report on their activities to the extent that there is a legitimate public interest and provided that these investigations are conducted within the rule of law.  It is not always easy to do this. The laws of defamation and the right to privacy are quite strict.

Repeating baseless allegations about individuals, even on social media, can lead to onerous financial penalties.  When Lord McAlpine was falsely accused of being a paedophile after a Newsnight investigation in 2012 he sued 500 people who’d recycled his name on Twitter. These included the then Speaker’s wife Sally Bercow, and the Guardian commentator, George Monbiot.  I suspect Mssrs Sue Grabbitt and Runne will be knocking on the doors of some of the many people who last week “outed” other well-known comedians who they thought Channel4 Dispatches was about to name alongside Brand. They weren’t.  I hope the people who tweeted these names have deep pockets.

That is, if those wrongly-accused celebrities decide in fact to sue. They clearly have defamation law on their side. However, some of them might fear that it could still damage their careers even to admit to being wrongly accused. We live in a world of cancel culture where people are assumed to be guilty until proven innocent. That really is trial by media.

If I were them I’d definitely sue. Now that their names are in widespread currency on social media they could well find that they are dropped by agents and publishers and that commissions and invitations suddenly dry up.  They may well find they have become toxic by default.

But Russell Brand was toxic by design. It was his shtick. I don’t think he should be censored or cancelled any more than Jerry Sadowitz who also relied on gross-out sexual humour. But nor should Brand be celebrated. And those who thought to align themselves with his politics should rightly be ashamed.  He’s a political chameleon attacking corporations and capitalism one day and vaccine mandates the next. But his political convictions are skin deep, subject to infinite variation and, like the chameleon, he’s a gifted predator.