Another day, another high-profile male television star faces accusations of abusing women.
Following the conviction of Russell Brand last week, David Walliams has now been accused of grooming and sexually exploiting girls as young as 15. He strongly denies the allegations, including claims that he abused his celebrity status to exploit teenagers and young women.Walliams tried to prevent The Guardian and ITN from publishing their investigation, but the High Court denied his injunction. Yet again, I find myself asking why it so often takes an enormous journalistic investigation, mainly driven by women, to bring allegations about powerful men into public view.
These stories don’t emerge in a vacuum. For decades, British entertainment has treated the sexual exploits of famous men as something to celebrate, exaggerate and laugh about. The more outrageous the behaviour, the bigger the personality. The bigger the personality, the more valuable the talent.
And if you want to understand just how normalised that culture became, consider a joke delivered by Jonathan Ross at an awards ceremony in 2006. “The comedy awards is 15 years old – 15 years old! And like most 15-year-olds, it’s drunk, it’s unpredictable and it’s probably going home with David Walliams.”
Walliams was filmed throwing his head back in laughter. Ross has since said, through his lawyers, that he didn’t write the joke. Fine. But somebody did. Somebody wrote it, approved it, Ross delivered it and the room laughed. How did we reach a point where that was considered acceptable comedy?
It is evidence of a culture in which the sexualisation of teenage girls could be packaged as comedy, and I can’t help wonder why the age was so specific. Was there something about Walliams’ reputation that made a room full of industry insiders laugh because it had a seed of truth in it?Clips have resurfaced this week of Ross on The Big Fat Quiz of the Year in 2007, too. In it, he swaps seats with his teammate, a 22-year-old Lily Allen, to “protect” her from nearby Noel Fielding and Russell Brand, who are making jokes about rapists. “Now Lily might go home with her dress still on,” Ross quips.This isn’t to say that Ross knew what was going on but he worked with Brand – famously on BBC Radio 2, during which they called actor Andrew Sachs and Brand bragged about sleeping with his granddaughter – and also with Walliams, interviewing him on TV multiple times.
Entertainment in the early Noughties was a toxic cocktail of laddish humour, ladette culture and sexual innuendo on steroids
I grew up watching Jonathan Ross. The chat shows, the television appearances, the adverts, his “cheeky” persona, the man who seemed to know everybody famous in the 90s. He was – and still is – one of the most powerful and recognisable figures in British entertainment. So why has he not made a statement and set out specifically what he knew about Brand and Walliams?
Anyone who remembers British entertainment in the late 90s/early Noughties will remember the atmosphere. It was a toxic cocktail of laddish humour, ladette culture and sexual innuendo on steroids. Ross and Brand were part of the fabric of that era, when sexist jokes were just another Tuesday in the office. Which is exactly why we need to hear from Ross now because he was part of that culture.
If he talks openly about this in public it might challenge the silence that’s protected powerful men for so long, and it might give women who have suffered in silence the confidence to speak out, knowing that the burden to prove themselves doesn’t just fall on them.
I can’t stop thinking about the countless young female researchers starting out in television. Women who desperately want to succeed, who don’t have powerful contacts, who are worried about their next contract and who know that upsetting the wrong person could mean never being hired again so they suffer in silence.
Jonathan Ross says he didn’t write the joke about Walliams in that awards ceremony, but he delivered it. Somewhere in that room, somebody thought a 15-year-old going home with a grown man was a punchline. I want to know whether the powerful men who spent decades laughing along are finally prepared to reflect on that.
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