Russell Brand was a loudly ticking time bomb. How the hell wasn’t he detonated earlier?

“She’s erotic that newsreader. Blimey what a sex bomb ... I’m going to go in that newsroom one of these days and while she’s reading ... we’re going to get under that desk and we’re gonna unleash hell on your thighs woman.”

Pity the poor newsreader employed to work on Russell Brand’s BBC radio show while also possessing ... thighs. She complained to her seniors about Brand’s repeated harassment, which seemed to have resulted merely in further embarrassment.

Russell Brand.

He said on another show: “The producer just told me that we’ve upset her … They go, ‘she ain’t got the right to reply’. We say all these things about her like, ‘Oh yeah it’s – she’s doing the news. Imagine her just in her knickers’.”

Yeah, wow, imagine.

A lot of people have been rushing to the defence of the comedian turned wellness warrior Russell Brand in the past few days, saying he is innocent until proven guilty, after a host of women claimed he abused, controlled, manipulated, raped, or assaulted them between 2006 and 2013. (He denies all charges, and says all of his interactions have been consensual.)

Which is fair, of course. Criminal charges are to be treated extremely seriously, due process must be respected and an assumption of innocence is crucial. Avoiding calling someone a criminal before experts weigh evidence should be obvious.

Illustration: Simon Letch.Credit:

But do we have to tiptoe quite as gently when calling someone a colossal wanker? A creep with ever-flailing, ever groping tentacles? A liability in any workplace? A loudly ticking #metoo timebomb? A relic from a time when misogyny was overt and profitable? When questioning it made you a wowser and a bore? The evidence is all there, even among Australian women – he treated our Dannii Minogue in a way that made her call him a “vile predator”, smashed his lips on Liz Hayes’ mid-interview and threatened to undo her bra strap, straddled Fifi Box and kissed her – again mid – interview, as he chortled about her name.

This week I read a book about George Orwell – whom Brand adores – which revealed the brilliant social critic and author to be pretty … rapey. He would “pounce” on women and manipulate them to kiss or sleep with him, serially cheating on the long-suffering Eileen. The book, Wifedom by Anna Funder, is a superb analysis of how his clever wife was rendered invisible by domesticity then history, despite her significant contribution to his thinking and writing.

A reputable biographer provides all the evidence possible, then asks the reader to judge – did the fact he effectively called his wife a slovenly nymphomaniac, and his casual misogyny and significant mistreatment of her cancel his work? Of course not. But the story of Eileen’s remarkable life shows how patriarchy cancels many millions of women before we even begin to speak. Most especially our accounts of what men have done to us, do to us, when no one else is around, let alone when millions are watching or listening.

Here is the rub: Brand claims credibility because, he says, he can’t – we can’t - trust the mainstream media. The same mainstream media – hello Channel 4, the BBC and others – which protected and enabled him for years.

The BBC has removed some of his work from its archives and is investigating its role in this serial abuse of women. But serious questions remain for it. How many complaints did it get and how were they resolved? What did it do about the “sex bomb” newsreader? Why did it let him flash his genitals at guests? What about the claims he made about having sex with radio competition winners in the toilet?

How did he manage to use a BBC car service to pick up a 16-year-old girl from school and take her to his place? Why did he continue to appear on BBC programs after being sacked for a prank where his co-host told Andrew Sachs – Manuel from Fawlty Towers – that Brand had “f---ed his granddaughter”?

Why did it air a segment where he told Jimmy Savile, that man of fine repute, that he’d send over an assistant, naked, to perform services? They also aired a segment where Brand’s co-host revealed Brand had just shown a “receptionist” his “willy”. That woman was in the bathroom, squatting to look at the medicine cabinet, when she turned around to see Brand’s crotch before he said: “I’m going to f--- you”. He then pulled out his penis and “pretty much served it to me as you would be serving someone some food”. She was disgusted.

Could we have done more, asks the BBC? Ummmm, yes.

Hiding in plain sight, goes the saying, although there wasn’t much hiding.

If we are talking about the mainstream media, let’s think of the magazines, television networks and newspapers that long shielded sexual predators, shelving stories on Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein, for example, due to reasons like cowardice and compromise. It’s women here who should be sceptical, not men with millions of YouTube followers who consider themselves one of the targeted, victimised, powerful and rich Right, such as Andrew Tate, Elon Musk and Joe Rogan.

Because he has raised valid if unoriginal questions about big pharma and the military industrial complex, Brand believes there is another “agenda” at play. Like accountability? Or just an exposure of his shaming and mocking and pawing of women he considered long quietened by a culture that saw such behaviour as “laddish” and rollicking fun. He publicly joked about raping women, about enjoying seeing their mascara run, or his penis hit the backs of their throats, when they were pleasuring him.

He was, after all, The Sun’s “Shagger of the Year”.

But if we are to restore the voices of women as credible witnesses to their own experiences, to their own trauma, then we must accept that many of the “shaggees” of this bloke have had a serious problem with this bloke. Have been begged by taxi drivers to not go inside his house, when dressed in school uniforms. Have been to rape crisis centres, seeking medication for STDs, have been publicly slut-shamed. And there seem to be a growing number of them.

This is not about promiscuity, it’s about power and consent, about what we consider acceptable. It’s about how often we fail to ask women what they experienced. It’s what feminists have long said: these “jokes”, this sick “banter” are no abstractions. These attitudes too often land on our bodies, bruise our skin, bloody our thighs.

That very often an “eye for the ladies” means a blindness to the law.

A serious problem, of course, is that women don’t, generally trust the criminal justice system – it retraumatises victims and fails to prosecute perpetrators. So what we do is speak to each other, quietly, wondering what would happen if people knew, if anyone would care, if letting women be abused, controlled, toyed with, like rag dolls, really matters.

If you or anyone you know needs support, you can contact the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service on 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).

Julia Baird is a journalist and author. She hosts The Drum on ABC TV. Her latest book is Phosphorescence: on awe, wonder and things that sustain you when the world goes dark.

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