About 20 years ago I was sent to interview a little-known comedian, who my editor at the time had been told was someone to watch.
I was heading to a north London cafe, blissfully unaware of the strange spectacle I was about to witness, when a strange man with hair so matted it had turned into dreadlocks pounced on me and started telling me how beautiful I was. He was not a homeless man on the street, but my interviewee.
With a flourish, he told me that my eyes were charming. Could you kiss me? he asked, before I even had a chance to take a sip of my coffee.
‘No!’ I screamed. But he kept asking, even walking me to the station when our interview ended, begging me to plant his lips on mine the entire way. When I got back to the office, my editor said I looked like I’d seen a ghost. I could only reply that he had sent me to interview a madman.
Half an hour later, my phone rang. The comedian had gotten my number thanks to his public relations. It was the beginning of a bombardment: 20 calls and texts a day until I agreed to go out with him.
Russell Brand has conveniently turned to Christianity just as the police hand over their files containing sexual assault allegations to the Crown Prosecution Service.
I mention this now because that man was Russell Brand, the shamed star who conveniently turned to Christianity just as the police hand over his files containing sexual assault allegations to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), as they did last week.
I have resisted mentioning my encounters with Brand since the accusations were made. My skin crawls thinking about his predatory behavior and how I felt the need to make light of it when it happened. But his constant insistence on social media that only God can judge him has compelled me to write this article.
Brand denies all allegations. But when they were first made, on an episode of Channel 4’s Dispatches just over a year ago, I experienced a wave of nausea.
It’s a feeling that has become familiar to many women who were young in the 2000s, when mainstream culture forced us to dismiss behaviors that we now know were deeply problematic.
Forgiveness and change require responsibility and contrition. Brand has proven neither, writes Bryony Gordon
I briefly mentioned my encounter with Brand in a book I wrote ten years ago, which was about the general horror of my 20s. Maybe I should have rung alarm bells at the phrase ‘every time I said no (to him kissing me), it only made him ask for more.’ But I saw it as little more than a funny anecdote that represented the chaos of my life. Here I was, on a date with a man, because it seemed easier than getting a restraining order.
Brand and I went out to lunch on Sunday and then to see a movie called Proof, which was about math and starred Gwyneth Paltrow. It was all pretty old-fashioned, if you ignored the endless questions about whether I liked him or not, and his strange insistence that I drink alcohol (he was sober at the time; I wasn’t).
After begging me to kiss him, he insisted that I gargle with mouthwash before it actually happened; a strangely offensive detail I later read happened to another woman I had been intimate with.
I saw him a couple of times, but I quickly got the impression that I wasn’t the only girl he was begging to kiss. I was relieved when he lost interest, presumably directing his laser-like attention to someone else. As I wrote in my book back in 2014: “There were hundreds of girls with a Russell Brand story.”
I had no idea that some of those stories were pretty dark.
There was the 16-year-old boy she had a three-month relationship with when she was in her early 30s, whom she apparently referred to as “the boy.” (She alleges that he became increasingly controlling, as well as emotionally and sexually abusive.)
There was the woman who claims Brand raped her in his Los Angeles home in 2012.
Another woman, whom he met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, claims he pinned her to a bed and put his hands down her pants after she told him, “I don’t want to do this.” But the only thing that really surprised me about last year’s Dispatches investigation was that it took so long for a news organization to carry it out.
Still, my story, compared to those I read, seemed insignificant. So I kept it to myself, because I know what happens when women speak publicly about things that happened to them in the past. It is Brand’s reborn religious fervor that has prompted me to write now.
Let me be clear: I believe people can change. I believe in the power of forgiveness. I even believe in God. But I don’t have time for people who think they are God.
Forgiveness and change require responsibility and contrition. Brand has shown neither. There’s not even a shred of apology for how he behaved around women when he was, in his own words, “promiscuous.” Instead, he seems to have set out to present himself as a victim of smears from the “mainstream media.”
He has become a conspiracy theorist and a born-again Christian, cynically appealing to Bible Belt America, which just voted a man convicted of sexual abuse as president.
He leads his 11 million followers on X, formerly Twitter, in prayer sessions and baptizes people in rivers as if he himself were the second coming. None of that would matter much if you got the sense that he was truly open to redemption. Instead, Brand has said that being baptized has allowed him to “let go of the past.”
To do this, he must first confront the British criminal justice system and everything in the files that the Metropolitan Police have just handed over to the CPS.
It would never be okay for Kate to look so disheveled!
It is not my place to comment on Prince William’s continued insistence on sporting a beard and mustache, as seen this week in South Africa.
What I will say is that it distracts me from the impassioned speech he gave about the “worrying reality” facing the planet and the need to address the illegal wildlife trade.
And if his wife, the Princess of Wales, had turned up with just one hair out of place, you know that’s the only thing we’d hear about!
Prince William sports a beard and mustache, as seen this week in South Africa.
Why would anyone have a dinner party?
According to a new survey, one in six people admit to serving food that has fallen on the floor, while almost a third of us have knowingly served food that has already expired.
I find these statistics strangely comforting, because they confirm my belief that a dinner party is the worst way to spend the night. What’s wrong with going to a restaurant? May this survey give us all permission to leave the dreaded “dinner” where it belongs: in the kitchen trash can.
Cornwall is to blame
I love Cornwall and like to visit its glorious countryside several times a year, despite the constant talk of ’emmets’ (which is Cornish slang for ants or tourists) and the graffiti on road signs urging visitors to turn around and go home. But in the last week, two tourist attractions have been forced to suddenly close their doors.
Both Flambards amusement park in Helston and Dairyland near Newquay had been in operation for almost 50 years, but falling visitor numbers meant they had to close permanently.
Now that it’s cheaper to go to the Mediterranean for a week than to stay for a weekend near Padstow, locals may be wondering if they should have been more careful what they wished for.
Boats docked in Padstow harbor in Cornwall.
trusted clinic
It has been 50 years since Britain’s first streak: during half-time of an England rugby match in 1974. That was also the year a naked man ran over David Niven while presenting the Oscar for best film.
The anniversary has reminded me that there is nothing more liberating than running around in just your birthday suit, just like God intended… even if it’s just in the privacy of your own home!
