Russell Brand’s enablers: the powerful people who egged him on

Russell Brand is “rightfully a pariah” after his conviction for rape and three counts of sexual assault, said Jawad Iqbal in The Spectator. But his “army of enablers” must not be allowed any “hiding place”.

The comedian wouldn’t have secured his celebrity status without a “helping hand from some of the most influential and powerful people in public life” – the same people who are now busy “airbrushing their past history of gushing over Brand” and claiming not to have known the truth about his behaviour. It is a “roll call of shame”.

‘Famous mates’

When a powerful man is found guilty of “crimes against women”, said Marisa Bate in The i Paper, the “frustrating and uncomfortable question” emerges: “who else knew?” For Brand, the answer appears to be “if not everyone, then a hell of a lot of people”.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

There has been much focus on the TV executives who put “ratings above women’s safety” and turned a blind eye to Brand’s behaviour. “But what about his famous mates?”

A “chilling” clip from “The Big Fat Quiz of the Year” in 2007 shows Jonathan Ross swapping seats with a then 22-year-old Lily Allen to “protect” her from Brand and Noel Fielding, who are “making jokes about rapists and Jack the Ripper” while the audience “erupts in laughter and applause”. It is a “textbook example of what rape culture looks like”, normalising sexual violence until it becomes “fodder for a comedy show”.

Ross went on to “share the limelight” with Brand. The following year the pair left voicemails for “Fawlty Towers” actor Andrew Sachs during Brand’s Radio 2 show, with Ross saying at one point: “He fucked your granddaughter!” Ross has this week said he was once on “friendly terms” with Brand, but that at the time he was “genuinely unaware” of his conduct and now “horrified”.

“Nobody in Labour circles appeared too bothered” by this behaviour, said Iqbal in The Spectator. Ed Miliband’s “moral compass” seemed to have “failed him” when he “went out of his way to ingratiate himself” with Brand during the 2015 general election campaign, even visiting the star at his penthouse flat for an interview.

That same year, Guardian columnist Owen Jones wrote an article headlined “Stop the sneering – Ed Miliband’s best route to young voters is Russell Brand”. Jones has since released a statement saying he overlooked Brand’s “problematic behaviour” as he saw him as a “crude means to reach disillusioned younger people with left-wing politics”, and calling this an “obvious misjudgement”.

‘Spineless’ self-protection

Brand was “egged on” by some of the most powerful people in the media industry, said Liz Kershaw in The Telegraph. “He was their performing monkey.” I’ve always loathed his behaviour, “but even more, I detested the bosses who stood by him”. Perhaps his “enablers” – the media executives, comedy club promoters and agents who encouraged his vile behaviour – should finally have been brought to the dock.

The “scrambling” statements and “distancing” from these men in the wake of his conviction are “at best, tepid”, said Bate in The i Paper. “It reeks of a spineless attempt at self-protection.” Only now, when there is “nothing to gain by association, but potentially something to lose”, are Brand’s former friends giving his victims any thought.

“Why did no one stop him?” said Lucy Morgan in Esquire. We must ask this question of each of his enablers, “and perhaps even ourselves, sitting in the audience, laughing along the entire time”.