When a powerful man is convicted of crimes against women, as in the case of Russell Brand, who has been found guilty of one charge of rape and three counts of sexual assault, the same frustrating and uncomfortable question remains: who else knew?
For Brand, it seems the answer was: if not everyone, then a hell of a lot of people. Female comedians have since gone on the record claiming they all knew to avoid him. Brand wrote in his memoir that BBC bosses were “incredibly tolerant” of his sexual behaviour. A TV psychologist who worked on Big Brother told Channel 4 News that young female crew members had confided in her that they did not feel safe around him. His live performances were littered with sexually violent and derogatory “jokes”. It’s hard to see Brand’s predatory behaviour as anything but an open secret.
There has been a particular focus on the TV executives who kept giving Brand work. The BBC, Channel 4 and Banijay UK, the production company behind Big Brother, have offered apologies, reminding us of a culture that placed “talent” and TV ratings above women’s safety, and of a time – the 2010s – that was dripping in rampant sexism and the lad-mag-led objectification of women.
But what about his famous mates? What about the equally powerful men who surrounded him? The ones who weren’t relying on him for fame or money, who couldn’t be manipulated or held hostage by his supersonic stardom?
In the days following his conviction, a clip from The Big Fat Quiz of the Year from 2007 has resurfaced on social media. In it, Jonathan Ross swaps seats with his teammate, a 22-year-old Lily Allen (the only woman on the show, visibly wincing at the sleaziness of it all) to “protect” her from nearby Noel Fielding and Brand, who are making jokes about rapists and Jack the Ripper. Watching the clip is chilling. “Now Lily might go home with her dress still on,” Ross quips as he settles into his new seat.
Noel Fielding and Brand in 2012 (Photo: Gary Gershoff/WireImage)These few minutes of television are a textbook example of what rape culture looks like. We can see how many powerful men are “in” on the “joke”, how many men prop up a culture that minimises and normalises sexual violence, until it becomes fodder for a comedy show. “If I raped someone,” Fielding says, “I’d run off with my cape like this.” He delivers the line like a pantomime villain. The audience erupts in laughter and applause.
Ross would continue to share the limelight with Brand, most famously with their phone calls on BBC Radio 2 to the actor Andrew Sachs, in which Brand bragged about how he’d slept with his granddaughter. Other high-profile, long-term friends include Fielding and Noel Gallagher, who named Brand as his best man at his 2011 wedding. None of these men have commented on Brand’s behaviour or conviction. There are some reports that Gallagher, at the encouragement of his daughter, distanced himself from Brand after the Dispatches and Sunday Times allegations surfaced in 2023. A source quoted in The Sun said Gallagher “had no idea”.
A few men have said something. Bear Grylls, who helped baptise Brand in his recent conversion to evangelical Christianity, released a statement claiming he believed Brand’s faith was “genuine” and that “it’s part of our calling as men and women of faith to love and serve anyone”. Owen Jones, the left-wing commentator, has also released a statement, apologising for maintaining a relationship with Brand, including allowing blurbs from him to appear on his book jackets. He said he did so to push left-wing ideas to a wider audience and overlooked his “problematic behaviours/statements, including sexism”.
The scrambling statements, the silences and the distancing after the formal allegations or conviction – but crucially not before – are, at best, tepid. It all reeks of a spineless attempt at self-protection now that the winds of Brand’s notoriety are blowing in the wrong direction, and seemingly have very little to do with the dignity of the victims. Only now, when there is nothing to be gained by association, but potentially something to lose, are the women in Brand’s orbit given thought. “I can’t imagine how hard this time has been for the victims, the heroes of the day,” Grylls wrote on X. Was he thinking about these women when he hugged Brand, bare-chested, in the River Thames in 2024?
Bear Grylls with Brand and another person in 2024 (Photo: Instagram)Oftentimes, after high-profile cases of sexual violence against women committed by non-celebrity men, the conversation focuses on how men can intervene among their peers, how they can attempt to dismantle rape culture and misogyny from within. We’ve seen campaigns from bodies like the mayor of London and Police Scotland encouraging men to speak up and challenge their mates. This is because we’ve been reminded, time and again, how apparently easily it is for groups of men to minimise their friends’ behaviour and play along with the notion that the objectified bodies at the centre of it all aren’t human beings.
One of the many shocking details of the recent “Cornell 7” gang-rape case was that the victim was advertised as “free pussy” on a Snapchat group with more than 50 young men in it, and not one pointed out how dangerous and problematic it was. Donald Trump himself dismissed confessions of groping women as “locker room talk”.
Is that what Ross, Fielding and Gallagher did with Brand – write it off as a joke, roll their eyes, make it a punchline? Or, perhaps, should we consider something far more sinister: do men keep silent for fear of retaliation?
Of the men I’ve mentioned here, we don’t know who knew what or when, what they made of the conviction, or any private conversations they may have had with Brand. Yet are we really meant to believe that the friends of predatory men are simply blinded by their charisma and naive to their actions, when others were so aware?
Despite the power structures, these friendships may also speak to a broader dynamic found amongst many men, famous or otherwise: a loyalty at the cost of women’s dignity and safety, and a fear of somehow breaking the chief unwritten rule of the patriarchy. Namely, to stand unfailingly by the “banter”, to write it off as just “locker room talk” or “a joke” – a joke the most dangerous men can hide behind and allows perpetrators to carry on their crimes.
What I do know is that Brand’s conviction is not just a reckoning with an individual who, despite his behaviour, gained access to the most influential corners of society, from Hollywood to the Houses of Parliament, but with an explicitly sexist culture that promoted and protected a man regardless of the harm he would cause women. Brand’s behaviour was enabled by those who continued to offer him access to power and influence. That included his powerful and influential male friends.
We might never know who knew what and when, but we know that men like Brand can exist in a culture that at best turns a blind eye, and at worst aids and abets. Now that the game is up, Brand is in prison, and the world is paying attention, I can’t imagine any of his “friends” are laughing now.
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