Who’s to blame for Brand?

Sep 21, 2023 by Jill

by Nicole Lampert, CapX:

‘Lad culture’ enabled Russell Brand – and women like me who didn’t go along with it were labelled ‘frigid’.

Eighteen months since the sculpture of Prospero and Ariel by the artist Eric Gill outside the BBC’s iconic Broadcasting House was attacked, it is still encased in scaffolding.

A protestor pounded the 1930s sculpture with a hammer, angry that outside what is meant to be the bastion of British values was a piece of art by a man who – it was discovered in 1989 via his secret diaries – had sexually abused two of his daughters, his sisters and even the family dog.

The BBC mulled for a year about what to do about the sculpture – fix it or pull it down? It opted for the former and began work on it in May – but it was attacked once again a few weeks later. Work was meant to have finished weeks ago, but the scaffolding remains.

It was easier to erase Russell Brand. Yesterday the corporation announced everything starring the now disgraced comic would be expunged from the iPlayer, as has Channel 4. Both corporations are also undertaking urgent investigations into what happened.

The inquiries into male television presenters alleged to have behaved badly are rather piling up, aren’t they?

Even for journalists who write about entertainment like me, the scale of what The Times and Dispatches teams uncovered about Brand’s alleged behaviour – rape, sexual abuse, coercion – was shocking. It must be said that Brand denies all the allegations of illegal behaviour.

Much debate around Brand has been centred around the early noughties ‘lad culture’ which encouraged men to be as lewd as possible. I was there as a young tabloid journalist and I know how women who didn’t go along with this – the lap dancing clubs, the paparazzi fad of ‘upskirting’, Britney Spears in a school uniform – were labelled prudes or frigid or lesbians for not wanting to join in ‘the fun’.

The discomfort of the young female runners who were forced to approach young women who had appeared in the audience of their television shows on behalf of the insatiable Brand feels sickeningly familiar. As comic Katherine Ryan has said, she and fellow comedians were concerned about being labelled ‘troublemakers’ for calling out what they believed was his predatory behaviour.

Read here

Watch: Jacob Rees-Mogg gives his thoughts on Russell Brand, GB News