Russell Brand Part 1

Tracing the left-to-right political trajectory of the unfunniest man in British comedy.

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Links!

• Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse
• Exposing Russell Brand
• Russell Brand And The Conspiracy Grift
• Russell Brand on revolution
• Celebrity Capital in the Political Field: Russell Brand’s migration from stand-up comedy to Newsnight
• “Arthur” lawsuit against Brand
• BBC says it received five complaints about presenter
• Woman says star exposed himself to her 
• Russell Brand, Seriously
• How the U.S. is sabotaging its best tools to prevent deaths in the opioid epidemic
• Russell Brand And The Conspiracy Grift
• Russell Brand’s fellow travellers should defend their claims in court

Thanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

Transcript

[Maintenance Phase theme]

Aubrey: Michael Hobbs is talking.

Michael: [laughs] Did you hear my little sounds?

Aubrey: Yeah, all of it.

Michael: Because I was just texting my friend. I was probably just making little hmm sounds, I always do that.

Aubrey: [laughs] I like that you know one of your main sounds, which is hmm.

Michael: No, because I hear myself doing it. I'm like, how many times have I done that in the last, like five minutes. 

Aubrey: I think I told you about hanging out with my brother and him sitting down and going [makes grunting noises] I was like, “That's how old we are.” We're the age where we do that. And he went, "It feels better. It actually feels better."

[laughter]

Michael: I'm with your brother on this one.

Aubrey: I don't think he's wrong, but I just think it was funny that I was like, "Oh, yeah, you and me were in the same boat." And he got real defensive.

Michael: What do you have?

Aubrey: Well, I have two. Okay. I think I know which one I'm doing.

Michael: Give me an A. Let's A-B test it. Let's A-B test it.

Aubrey: Option A. Here we go. "Hi, everybody, and welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that has a cadence of jokes." But are there jokes in there? 

Michael: Oh, my God. That's a spoiler for episode two. [Aubrey laughs] You can't spoil the second part.

Aubrey: Okay, you ready for option B?

Michael: All right, B. Okay, do it.

Aubrey: "Hi, everybody, and welcome to Maintenance Phase, our potty wadcast."

Michael: Oh, my God, dude, you're going to make me say the title of this fucking book, aren't you?

Aubrey: He wrote a book called My Bookie Wook.

Michael: I hate it.

Aubrey: I would say I followed about as much of Russell Brand's career as your average bear, right? Like, aware of big starring movie roles, aware of his work on panel shows and doing standup, particularly in the 2000s and early 2010s in the UK. And then aware of his criminal charges and of his baptism.

Michael: There's been quite the pivot the last couple of years. We're going to get into it.

Aubrey: There sure is. And I am aware that he has been showing up at fucking MAHA events as well.

Michael: Oh yeah. Like, he endorsed Trump it's not, like, "Ooh, he's leaning toward the right." He's a full-on, just explicit right-winger at this point.

Aubrey: We took our little divergence away from current events, and now we're, like, half back in.

Michael: But say your name. We haven't done the names yet.

Aubrey: Oh, you want to do a tiny repeating machine?

Michael: I'm ready.

Aubrey: I'm Aubrey Gordon.

Michael: I'm Michael Hobbs.

Aubrey: If you would like to support the show, you can do that at patreon.com/maintenancephase. You can also subscribe through Apple Podcasts. It's the same audio content.

Michael: Same stuff. Aubrey.

Aubrey:  Michael.

Michael: Today.

Aubrey: Today, we are talking about a comedian who is unique in his annoyingness.

Michael: I was watching one of his videos from, like, I don't know, 2007 or something yesterday.  He said something and I sort of laughed and I was like, “Why does this feel so weird?” I was like, “It's the first time I've laughed in three weeks.”

Aubrey: I will say, I first came to know Russell Brand. I'm a person who has followed, as much as you can from the US, like, followed British comedy.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: And the jokes about Russell Brand were like—it was like a bunch of jokes being like, "Mothers, lock up your daughters."

Michael: I know. I know.

Aubrey: Oh, yeah. And he was like married to Katy Perry-

Michael: Yes.

Aubrey: -in one of the most chaotic wellness marriages, we will-- [crosstalk] [laughs]

Michael: I know. I know. Also divorced her by text.

Aubrey: He falls off after a while and then he pops back up with these sexual assault allegations, right?

Michael: Yes. This is the story we are going to be telling today. How this guy who was a stand-up comedian, then an actor, then a fairly credible left-wing figure during the Occupy Wall Street era, becomes a wellness influencer.

Aubrey: Great.

Michael: And then slowly becomes a straightforward right-wing influencer and fundamentalist Christian. The kind of guy who has numerous videos about how DEI is a forced agenda and there's gender ideology in the schools. He's one of the canonical examples of the far-left-to-wellness-to-right-wing pipeline.

Aubrey: Right.

Michael: So that is what we are going to be doing over the course of the next two episodes. And before we do it, we have to issue the most fucking omni trigger warning we've ever had on the show. These episodes are going to include fucking animal cruelty, like child sexual abuse. Everything you can imagine is going to be in these episodes. So fair warning, 

Aubrey: Here we fucking go. 

Michael: So, Russell Brand is born in 1975 in Essex. When he's six months old, his parents separate. So, he's basically raised by a single mom. It sounds like his mom is really nice and a really positive presence in his life. His father is this mercurial presence where he will disappear for months or years on end and then come back and shower Russell with gifts and do the like, "Hey, man, it's great. I'm going to be around a lot more these days," and then disappear again.

Aubrey: Yeah.

Michael: Kind of classic deadbeat dad shit.

Aubrey: Just a disappointment factory.

Michael: Yeah, exactly. So, the book is framed around his treatment for sex addiction. So, the book starts in a record scratch, "I bet you're wondering how I got into this situation," kind of thing where he's in sex addiction inpatient treatment in Philadelphia. And then the book rewinds to be like, “Well, how did I end up in sex addiction treatment.” I've never read a celebrity memoir that has this much fucking sex in it and this much like womanizing. But also, I guess his excuse is like, “Well, that's sort of the theme” is that like, “I've been struggling with sex addiction.” So, we start getting like really worrying sex stuff as early as like the first chapter of the book.

Aubrey: Yeah, give me an example of really worrying sex stuff.

Michael: So, he has a thing where he has an aunt who I don't know, is busty and has big boobs. And he's obsessed with big boobs throughout the book. And he schemes as a four- or five-year-old to be in the bathroom while she's showering so he can like watch her shower.

Aubrey: Oh.

Michael: The way that he remembers this is like, “Ahahaha,” like I managed to be in the bathroom while she was showering.

Aubrey: Like, what a little rascal.

Michael: He also started reading his dad's pornography fairly young. This is the 70s and 80s, so there isn't internet pornography or anything.

Aubrey: Yeah, yeah. So, you find a box of magazines or whatever.

Michael: So, his dad is like, “I don't know, Playboy, Hustler or whatever the UK's equivalents are.” But it appears this is like very young, four, five, six kind of thing. He's reading through his dad's pornography. He also, I think when he's seven or eight-- he's a bit unclear on the timeline at various points but at seven or eight he's abused by his babysitter. I think his babysitter probably brought up masturbation. The babysitter was 16 or 17 years old and little Russell was like, "Oh, well, what's masturbation?" And then his babysitter's like, "I'll show you." So, he is naked, standing in the shower as his babysitter jerks off.

Aubrey: Oh, so he's sexually abused.

Michael: There's no touching or anything, but it's definitely an act of abuse, yes.

Aubrey: Yeah, that is, yes.

Michael: He also starts to exhibit, I think the personality trait that explains his entire political ideology, where he seems to be totally oppositional to any figure of authority. So, he talks about getting in trouble in school from a fairly young age. He says, "My mum did numerous jobs, taking me with her until I began play school, where I was frequently in trouble, having daily tantrums when she left me behind. It's a bit ridiculous to get in trouble at play school. I remember inspecting the spittle-flecked faces of senselessly enraged adults, looming like ogres, thinking, well, this all seemed like a bit of a storm in a teacup. I was awake as a child. I knew it was nonsense.” Over and over again in the book, he gets in trouble for various things, but there's no point at which he ever recognizes the authority of someone who is mad at him. Even in preschool, he's like, “Oh, this is unjust.”

Aubrey: Is there any point where he's like, "I get why they said that?"

Michael: No. This is what's so fascinating to me. It's like, I understand how you would feel that in the moment, right? You're like, "This fucking Nazi won't let me run around during nap time" or something. But later on, you'd be like, "Yeah, I must have been a challenge for my teachers."

Aubrey: Or like, "That was unsafe what I was doing." Or "I can see where they're coming from. That probably made their jobs harder."

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: Even just to sound like a grounded person when you're talking about it in, say, a book.

Michael: The perfect example of this is in his second memoir, My Bookie Wook 2.

Aubrey: [laughs] Oh, my God. 

Michael: For the love of God. 

Aubrey: Oh my God, there's a second one.

Michael: Oh, yeah, I read both of them. [Aubrey laughs] The second one's much worse.

Aubrey: Michael. Michael. I have been semi-pro hating the title of My Bookie Wook for so long.

Michael: Now there is two.

Aubrey: And I did not know that there was a second one. And frankly, that's on me.

Michael: So, this is describing himself on an airplane.

Aubrey: "I was thrown off an Iberia Airlines jet at Barcelona airport after I refused to remove my feet from the top of the seat in front of me. Scruffy people are not welcome in any class other than economy. If you find a way of affording overpriced travel without dressing like a boffin, it irritates conformists." Oh, Lord.

Michael: So "boffin" is like an egghead, expert kind of thing.

Aubrey: If someone's like, "I got kicked off of a plane because I irritated conformists," I immediately have a minimum of 20 questions.

Michael: So, then he tells the rest of the story.

Aubrey: "I offered the haughty air hostess the perfect chance to tell me off by being a bit drunk and bawdy and lounging about. She told me off, but I ignored her. I thought, I wonder what'll happen if, no matter what happens, I refuse to cooperate with this woman. I know she was just doing her job, but I sensed she was enjoying being authoritative. And we all know, 'just doing my job' is the excuse offered up for enacting genocide."

Michael: She's basically a Nazi for asking me to put my feet down on an airplane. 

Aubrey: And for being drunk and bawdy, which I assume means hitting on her while she's at work.

Michael: It's basically like, I was being a huge asshole and she was a Nazi for telling me to stop.

Aubrey: "She became increasingly agitated and elicited the support of the pilot, who honestly flung open the cockpit door and had a go at me over his shoulder like a dad chastising naughty daughters on a motoring holiday. I ignored that too. I was in a silly mood."

Michael: There are hundreds of people that need to get where they're going, but “I was in a silly mood, and I didn't want to put my feet down.”

Aubrey: The pilot made an announcement that because of, “passenger disruption,” the flight would not be taking off, thereby falling back on a form of psychological warfare constantly deployed against me in childhood, where the teacher says, “Because Russell's been naughty, the whole class has to stay behind, in the hope of turning everyone else against you." Wow.

Michael:  Dude.

Aubrey: The investment in persecution here is really-- [crosstalk] 

Michael: Is fascinating.

Aubrey: Sort of stunning.

Michael: I had a friend in high school who was constantly getting fired from jobs. And the story was always something totally benign. He's like, "I got fired for being, like, five minutes late to a meeting." And then, like, "Oh, well, what actually happened?" He's like, "I showed up late, and then my boss was like, 'Why are you late?' And I was like, 'Shut up, you fucking bitch.'" I'm like, I don't think you were fired because you were late to a meeting, dude. [laughs]

Aubrey: It goes in the same category to me of, “Oh, this is enough red flags for me to disengage,” as someone who complains about work but just talks about everyone they work with is an idiot.

Michael: Yeah, exactly.

Aubrey: Boy, it doesn't matter what job you're at. It doesn't matter what role you're in.

Michael: Even after he's in recovery, he's now sober. He can't look at this situation and go, "Man, it must have really sucked for the stewardess that day." She's got a drunk passenger who, for no reason, refuses to do this extremely basic thing before take-off. He's still the hero of the story and she is still literally a Nazi.

Aubrey: It also feels reminiscent of our Metabolife guy in that there's zero reckoning with the effects on other people.

Michael: Yeah, completely.

Aubrey: I just like to imagine a serene pastoral landscape, a cool breeze blowing in the air, and just the sound of one giant red flag flapping in the wind.

[laughter]

Michael: This book is all fucking red flag anecdotes. The other one that, really stood out to me, especially as far as his politics go, is apparently he's very young, five, six, he's walking around the neighborhood and there's an old guy who stops him and is like, "Hey, I grew some flowers. Look at how nice my front yard looks." And then the guy's, "Hey, I got to run inside to, go to the bathroom for a second. I'll leave you out here. Don't stomp on the flowers."

Aubrey: Oh, no.

Michael: Kind of a weird thing to say, honestly.

Aubrey: Whatever. I just am going to flag that my bullshit meter is already fucking going off here. Do we think an adult was like, "Hey, don't stomp on those flowers?"

Michael: Well, the thing is, I think probably because it's a neighbor, he probably knew that Russell was a troublemaker. Also, he might have said that to any kid, or maybe he was joking or something. But what's so interesting is Russell hears the phrase, "Don't stamp on those flowers," and he's like, "Well, I have to stamp on the flowers."

Aubrey: Yeah.

Michael: So, the minute the guy goes inside, he just destroys the entire flower bed. Like, jumping up and down, just pulverizes all of these flowers. The fact that he's telling this in his book means that, he on some level gets that this is disordered behavior. This is bad, right. But I think also what you find when you watch any of his political videos or you read anything “Political that he's written,” he just hates being told what to do. He doesn't even want to stomp on the fucking flowers, right. It's this hollow opposition where if you tell him what to do, he'll do the opposite, even if it makes no sense and he doesn't even want to do it.

Aubrey: Yeah. And I think there's something about that that he comes to believe that's a charming thing. Also, this whole anecdote is Chekhov's anti-cancel culture turn.

Michael:  Completely. 

Aubrey: Fast forward fucking 30 years, and this kid is like, "You can't say anything anymore."

Michael: So, at seven years old, his mom gets cancer. She recovers. The cancer comes back when he's 11. He doesn't really understand the nature of conditions like this. And so, he blames himself a little bit, and he feels like I'm not able to protect my mom. And so, the acting out in school gets significantly worse. She also starts dating a man, Colin, who he doesn't like. He says, "I had a growing sense that I was a disappointment to people. Not only that I wasn't the person my dad would have wanted me to be, but also that I wasn't able to look after my mom, either to prevent her from getting ill or to stop Colin from moving in."

Aubrey: This guy grows to be a real shithead, but for this kid, even with like, behavior issues, even with this oppositional shit, feeling like you have failed a parent for getting a terminal illness or for being in a bad relationship is horrible and is legitimately a big thing to figure out how to shake off.

Michael: And then he tells the most fucked-up story in the entire book.

Aubrey: Oh, no. Did I empathize too early?

Michael: I haven't checked this in years, but Apple Podcasts has a thing where they allow you to see where people stop listening to your podcast, how many people make it to the end and stuff.

Aubrey: I'm so glad I didn't know about this feature, Michael.

Michael: It bums me out and I never check it. But I want to check it for this episode because I think we're going to lose half of the listeners after the story. [laughs] This story is so fucked up. So, the only thing you need to know for this is his dog is named Topsy. So here is this story.

Aubrey: Oh, God. You're going to make me tell the fuck-up story.

Michael: You're reading all the slurs. You're reading all the terrible stories. It's all you.

Aubrey: "When we first got Topsy, she would be allowed to sleep in the bed with me. But when Colin came, an absurd edict was introduced whereby she was no longer allowed upstairs. I evidently had a lot of anger and hate in me about this because I would perch at the top of the stairs and lure her to come up. 'Topsy. Topsy. Topsy.' Then, when she would slink nervously upward to the forbidden terrain of the upper floor, I would suddenly become Mr. Hyde. “Oh, dear. Topsy,” I would declaim in a rather arch manner. “You know perfectly well you're not allowed upstairs.” Before cruelly kicking her back down to the bottom again, where I would rejoin her and give her a sympathetic cuddle, regretfully muttering, “Oh Christ, were you kicked down the stairs? This is terrible.'" Holy fuck.

Michael: It's all there, dude. On some level it's sympathetic because you're like, he's clearly hurting, but also, he's lashing out at this innocent creature.

Aubrey: I can understand not wanting to recognize the “authority” of a fucking stepdad you don't like. I'm like, “Sure, fair.” But I think not even recognizing that like a different person has different wants. Being like, “I'm just going to respect that this is what this person wants, or I'm going to figure out how to navigate that or whatever.” I will also say, “Not for nothing,” I am not alleging anything about Russell Brand, but this is on the fucking serial killer checklist.

Michael: Yeah, I know it is.

Aubrey: This is the fucking dark triad. Fucking shit.

Michael: So, his mom decides to put him in boarding school at this time. He doesn't really specify why. I think it's probably because he was acting out in school. And then he immediately starts acting out again. He says, "Whenever I'm in any social group, I always tend to think I won't fit in and gravitate toward an identity that will stand out." So, this sort of makes his stand-up persona make a little bit of sense. He's like, “Maybe you won't like me”, so I'm just going to like act crazy.

Aubrey: And it's all like a schtick. So, if you don't like me, it's that you don't like the act.

Michael: He then, based on this, gets a reputation as a weirdo and an outcast. And so, he says, "Another dubious attention-seeking device that I invented at the school was the game genital grabbing." 

Aubrey: What a cool, fun--

Michael: A fun game for all of us.

Aubrey: Russell Brand walked so Donald Trump could run.

Michael: So, he walks up to people at school and just grabs their junk, I mean, outside of their pants, it's the only saving grace of this. But he starts doing this, obviously gets in trouble.

Aubrey: This is a boys' school or a co-ed?

Michael: Co-ed, it appears.

Aubrey: Okay. Jesus fuck.

Michael: Great. Good stuff. And then he eventually gets kicked out of boarding school. Not for this. This is also a very telling thing where he says he really wants to have sex. He's getting into his teenage years where he's post-puberty. And he says he really wants to get with girls. But at one point he says, "I didn't want to get with girls as much as I wanted to tell other boys that I was getting with girls." 

Aubrey: Boy. 

Michael: But he becomes desperate to get laid at this time. And so, the way that he gets kicked out of boarding school is a whole scenario that he doesn't describe very well. But he's like, he sneaks into a girl's room to try to hook up, but then her roommate is there. And then he sneaks girls into his own room, and then his prefect finds out that there are girls in his room, and you can't have girls in your room, and so he gets kicked out. But also tellingly, talking about this prefect, like basically the guy that figured out that he was doing this and busted him, he says, "Children shouldn't be given SS-style powers."

Aubrey: What in the fuck is going on with this dude? And comparing a flight attendant and a school prefect to Nazis. There's that whole part of the Metabolife book where he's talking about how lawyers have one of the best grifts around or whatever, and you're like, "Oh, you think everyone is grifted?" And I think similarly, Russell Brand thinks any boundary that gets set for him is someone who's like drunk with power.

Michael: Totally. Yes.

Aubrey: It's really telling. And I think the other thing is, earlier when you said like he wasn't really doing this to impress women, but to impress men. You and I were talking the other day about sort of looks-maxxers as a women-optional space. Where actually the point is to create a space that rejects women. And you actually just get to relate to other men and one-up other men. And women, if present at all, are tools for that. I think that's really an undercurrent of a lot of misogyny. Women are props to display your value to other men. And that's about it.

Michael: The other interesting thing about his identity is also the sense of himself as having this threatened masculinity. So, after he's kicked out of boarding school, he then goes back to his comprehensive school. He talks a lot about being really insecure about his appearance. He's fat at this point. He's getting bullied a lot for being fat. And there's something really interesting about the struggles that Russell is having at this time where he is feminine. People are calling him gay all the time. People are calling him fat all the time. And his sexuality feels really threatened. And I think a lot of what he does for the next 30 years of his life is to try to prove to himself and to the rest of the world, like, "I'm a man. I can be a masculine guy. I can still have sex with girls."

Aubrey: It can be easy to underestimate how much a constant drumbeat of other people's messages about your sexuality shape your own understanding of your own gender and sexuality. To be constantly made fun of for being gay is actually going to fuck you up whether you're gay or you're straight. 

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aubrey: Just in different ways, right?

Michael: He also says that he starts cutting himself at this time. He gets a really rough eating disorder. He just starts engaging in pretty hardcore bulimia to lose all of the weight. He also, throughout the book, he mentions various psychiatric assessments that he's had. I mean, he gets arrested later on, and as part of that, he'll go to a psychiatrist or their school psychologist. But it seems like every single mental health professional who has ever seen him in any capacity has said, you have serious mental illness. He's been diagnosed with depression, bipolar, ADHD. Everyone seems to give him a different diagnosis. But every page of this book, you're like, “This is an unwell person.”

Aubrey: Did any of this come up in the media around the book?

Michael: Dude.

Aubrey: Like, when he's doing interviews around this shit, are people like, "Hey, bud, you okay?"

Michael: When the book came out, I read a bunch of reviews. This was well-reviewed. It's like, "Ooh, a wild romp through working-class Essex and trying to become an actor in London." But yeah, nobody really pointed out how, super fucked up the stuff in this book is. We're not even to the fucked-up shit yet, Aubrey.

Aubrey: Yeah. Holy fuck.

Michael: So, his big epiphany comes when he gets a role in the school play. He is cast as Fat Sam in Bugsy Malone.

Aubrey: Great. Good.

Michael: The minute he starts acting, he's just like, "This is it. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life."

Aubrey: Yeah. I get to pretend to be somebody else. Great.

Michael: Yeah. I don't want to sound mean, but he does describe this as, like, "I get to be the center of attention."

Aubrey: I don't think it's mean to say what's in his book. [laughs]

Michael: He also starts a pattern that he does throughout the book numerous times. He says, “Now that I'm acting, people had seen me in the school play. I started to get a lot of attention from girls.” So, he's like, "Ooh, girls were really into me." But then when he actually describes the nature of girls who are really into me, it seems to be mostly him pestering women. He says, "I became a schoolboy Tony Montana, rampaging around the playground indiscriminately spraying girls with chat-up lines. “Say hello to my little friend,” I hollered in canteens and corridors. No one was safe from me. Charged by a white mound of my own newly discovered potency, every female was a potential target."

Aubrey: "No one was safe from me" is a dark as fuck line.

Michael: I like stop copy-pasting them eventually, there's so much foreshadowing in the book of like the kind of creep that he turns out to be. So, he says, "By my 20s, I would relish the challenge of chaste maids and the search for the correct combination of words required to decode their moral resistance. Jumping through hoops, ducking questions, feigning indifference to sex, the knobstacle course, I call it."

Aubrey: Jesus Christ.

Michael: And he had lots of like bits in his stand-up comedy about the knobstacle course thing of basically like, “Ha, ha, [unintelligible 00:23:57] trick women into saying yes to having sex with you.”

Aubrey: Yeah. This is the guy who thinks that cutting a hole in the bottom of the popcorn bucket is actually a good gag.

Michael: He then describes losing his virginity. He is 15. It sounds like it's like a fairly awkward situation. He doesn't even take his clothes off. It's with a fellow actor from the play who seems like she's older and more experienced than him. It's almost kind of like classic losing-your-virginity-as-a-teen story where it takes like five minutes. And he's like, "Oh, I guess that happened." But then afterwards, I think because he's not super popular, the girl is like, "Hey, let's not talk about this. Let's just act this never happened." And then Russell says, "I blabbed to anyone who'd listen. Instead of telling no one, as requested, I told anyone I encountered." So, he starts blabbing about this. This girl, Marianne, denies it. She's like, "No, I never had sex with Russell. What are you talking about?"

Aubrey: Right? Which is because the stakes for him are he is like, people will see me as more masculine. And she's like, “Yeah, the stakes for me is that I will be fucking slut-shamed-

Michael: Yeah, exactly.

Aubrey: -off the face of the fucking earth.”

Michael: He devises a scheme where he sets up a tape recorder and calls her and is like, "Hey, you know how we had sex the other night?"

Aubrey: Oh, fuck off.

Michael: And then he gets her on tape admitting to this. But then what's weird, he does this throughout the book too. He describes this scheme of getting her on tape where she's admitting to them having sex. But then he never mentions it again. It's not clear what he did with the tape. Did he play it for his friends? Did he show it to people at school? You would think, especially from someone who went to the sex addiction treatment, to be like, “At the time I had these ideas about women that like, I was in control and they didn't have any autonomy, and it was up to me” like some description of like, “I later learned that this was wrong.” But he just tells it as like a funny story. Like, “Hahaha, this is my losing my virginity story.” Keep making that sound for the next two to three hours Aubrey. This is part one.

Aubrey: Michael, we're still in his teenage years, Michael.

Michael: He is now age 16. He gets into an acting school in London. So, he moves to London. He then describes again. He says, “Oh, I was getting all this attention from girls because I was at a good school and I was acting.” But then when he actually describes the specific girls that he has like flings with, it appears to be him showing worrying levels of infatuation. So, he says, "I became obsessed with Louise. I spoke to her recently and she reminded me that I'd sent her up to six letters a day." He also says, "Penny, I was so helplessly infatuated with her that I followed her to her home in Wigan at the end of term."

Aubrey: So, earlier on you mentioned that he seems to be invested in this in a way that is like, in order to sort of prove something or illustrate something to other men. When he talks about being hopelessly infatuated, does he talk about anything about these women that he particularly likes about them or particularly wants about them or whatever?

Michael: You know what I'm about to say, Aubrey? He talks about their looks. He talks about like, "Ooh, she was a radiant creature and like her blonde curls--" It's like physical appearance stuff.

Aubrey: Yeah, yeah.

Michael: It's clear that these are like trophies to him or conquests, like based on their attractiveness. So, this girl Penny, he meets her at school. She's like, "Oh, I'm going home for the holidays." He goes, "Oh, let me walk you to Euston Station. But like, then I'll leave you alone, don't worry about it." She's like, "Okay, you can walk me to the station." And then he sort of like worms his way onto the train.

Aubrey: So, here's this: "Penny didn't want me to come to her house. But I used charm and relentless pigheaded persistence to persuade her. I'd pursued her with poetry and promises, neither of which were original or true for months. I tackled the knobstacle course with such dogged aplomb that when night fell, I was allowed to sleep in her bed, top to toe. I spun gags and yarns till she let me turn round. I painted verbal pictures and begged until she kissed me. I lied and danced and evoked the spirit of Pan till reluctantly she removed her bra."

Michael: Charming stuff.

Aubrey: "Evoke the spirit of Pan." That's the kind of stuff that I'm like, yeah, that sounds like his stand-up act where you're like, “Oh, you're just sort of throwing in weird references and thinking that's like a joke or thinking that like makes this okay. 

Michael: But we're not going to read them all. But this thing happens many times in the book where he's super infatuated with a girl. Like, "I can't stop thinking about you." He's writing six letters a day, whatever. He talks her into sex, wears her down, and then he never mentions her again.

Aubrey: Yeah.

Michael: So, this girl Penny is not mentioned for the rest of the book.

Aubrey: Yeah. I am sure.

Michael: can't stop himself from going to the next infatuation. Like, once he's kind of won, the conquest is over. He's had sex with them. He has no more attention for them.

Aubrey: "Infatuation" may be his language. I'm not sure that's how I would describe it as an outside observer.

Michael: Wait, what would you say? Love? You think it's pure love? You think it's really pure love. 

Aubrey: I think it's true love. [Michael laughs] Honestly, like the thing that comes to mind is almost like Marx.

Michael: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Aubrey: That he's sort of like in it to win. And the winning happens when you have sex, and then the game is over and we're done. It's not really infatuation because that implies some level of attraction to something innate about that person. To me, it seems much more like he's just sort of constantly setting personal bests.

Michael: But so, the next bit of lighter fluid that is poured on this dynamic is that he starts doing drugs.

Aubrey: Oh, great.

Michael: He discovered alcohol when he was nine or 10. Him and a friend were going through a supply closet at the school and they found some alcohol, and then he drank it and he was like, "I fucking love this." Like he took to it immediately. It's not clear how much he's drinking because I think it's hard to get a hold of. But he talks about how he started smoking weed. He says, "The first time I went round to Jimmy and Justin's flat, I got so stoned that I went to bed and I was there for three days. I didn't eat or anything, just lay there, bewildered. People came to look at me. Someone took a photograph. I refused all food. I just stared and wondered and became a drug addict. From then on, I smoked weed every day without fail or exception, until the narcotic baton was passed on to heroin. Whenever I went to school or indeed anywhere, I would have a joint first. Many years later, when I eventually got clean, I was astonished to learn that I don't actually enjoy my own company. I always thought I loved being on my own, but actually I don't. It was being on drugs that I liked."

Aubrey: Jesus. God.

Michael: So, this then creates a pattern where he gets kicked out of acting school for showing up drunk and high all the time. He then has this weird period of floating about. He's only 17 years old at this point. Him and a friend decide that they're going to put on a play based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which neither of them has read.

Aubrey: Very good move.

Michael: But they find a performance space and they start holding auditions. And it appears the only reason they're holding auditions is to get contact with attractive women.

Aubrey: Oh, no.

Michael: So, he's talking about them. Here, let me just send you this because it's gross.

Aubrey: Thank you so much.

Michael: You do the gross ones.

Aubrey: "There were two women that were particularly sexy, Clawdeen and Maria. Maria was an Asian girl with all this tumbling black hair who turned up in this red dress and looked impressive. And we were just a couple of jerks sat there high." Okay, right. "This play. Do you want to improvise a scene? Will you do kissing? There's lots of kissing and bras." The Tibetan Book of the Dead is full of women kissing in their bras. That's what makes it such a fucking good read.

Michael: Cool story.

Aubrey: It's nuts that, this is almost exactly what gets him on TV, is this kind of material, right? It's not like, oh, this was the dark side that none of us knew about. It's like, no, no he was talking about this shit.

Michael: This is also the beginning of a pattern where the minute he starts using his power to get laid, right? This isn't even that much power. It's like, "I'm putting on a play. I'm like a random guy who's writing a play and I have a performance space." Immediately, he's using that power to get women in their bras.

Aubrey: How old is he at this point?

Michael: 17.

Aubrey: Great. So, he's 17 and he's already doing the fucking Weinstein thing.

Michael: It's really shocking. And also telling us about it years later without any like, "Man, this was really, look how fucked up this was." It's like “Hahaha, funny story. A thing that I did when I was a kid.” 

Aubrey: Right. This is sex criminal, supervillain fucking shit.

Michael: So, the other big thing that happens when Russell is 17 is his dad gets divorced from his third wife and wants to go on a sex trip to East Asia.

Aubrey: Oh, fuck. His dad is a passport bro.

Michael: He's a passport bro, dude.

Aubrey: I've watched enough 90-Day Fiancé to know all the fuck about this guy.

Michael: Apparently, the friend that he was going to go with dropped out. So, he thinks, "What if my 17-year-old son would to come with me to Asia and go to a bunch of brothels?"

Aubrey: Holy fucking shit.

Michael: They go, it appears, first to Thailand and then to Hong Kong. Russell only tells the story of the first experience. They go to some brothel where there's a runway, catwalk kind of thing where women are walking back and forth and you can pick one. And so, his dad picks two and he picks one named Mary Lou.

Aubrey: Like, part of the issue with passport bros.

Michael: [laughs] A long digression about why passport bros are bad.

Aubrey: No, no, no why I have this gnawing pit in my stomach about whatever is about to happen. When people are flying halfway around the world to do that, there is often a justification that is like, "Western women are too mouthy," and there's a cultural expectation of subservience. They've written a series of myths in their head about what amounts to-- if I go to this other country, there's a woman who won't say no.

Michael: Yeah, yeah.

Aubrey: And there's something extremely dark about a kind of man who wants to engage in what they believe on some level to be boundaryless sex.

Michael: So, he chooses one sex worker named Mary Lou. His dad chooses two sex workers. They go back to their hotel. They're staying at some fancy hotel. Once they get to the room, they're fooling around with these women. He says this--

Aubrey:  "Naked.” I was shy about my body then, I had trouble getting hard, the blowjob seemed daft. The way it feels when a customs official pulls your trousers down or a doctor puts his finger up your arse. Not sexual, just giggly and intrusive."

Michael: So, he's clearly uncomfortable.

Aubrey: "Not sexual, just giggly and intrusive" is how I would describe a lot of Russell Brand's vibe.

Michael: Yeah. Jesus Christ.

Aubrey: "She was a good prostitute, Mary Lou. She played her part very well. She didn't make me feel embarrassed and was incredibly romantic, really, given the context. I stroked Mary Lou's hair and kissed her cheek and traced my finger down her perfect nose, scored by the cacophony from the adjacent bedlam. “Yeah, come on and-- fwah, you're juicy.'"

Michael: So, he's listening to his dad have sex with sex workers next door as he's having sex.

Aubrey: Jesus God. Jesus God.

Michael: And he clearly is impressed by his dad. He describes this as in this, like, aspirational way of just like, “Oh, someday I'll be as cool as my dad.” But this is unbelievable fucking loser behavior.

Aubrey: Before there was Andrew Tate, there were fuck-off dads like this.

Michael: Here's the next morning. He comes out the next morning, his dad is reading the newspaper at the breakfast table.

Aubrey: "My dad concealed behind a newspaper, folded down the top right-hand corner. 'Did you wear a condom with that bird last night?' 'Oh, no, I didn't, Dad.' He sniffed, 'You should have.' Then the corner of the page flicked up once again and he was gone. In the course of the rest of that holiday, I fucked loads more prostitutes, always got a hard-on, never wore a condom and never fell in love."

Michael: Cool.

Aubrey: "In Bangkok, when bar girls in Patpong left their posts to follow me down the street, cooing and touching my hair, I felt that I had my dad's unequivocal approval." Fucking Jesus. God.

Michael: There are many memoirs that include disturbing stories, and then a person's like, "I went into recovery and I learned, and I don't do this anymore," whatever. But there's no moment of reflection on this.

Aubrey: Yeah.

Michael: Also, the fact that he's like, "I never wore a condom" is like, wow, cool, man. Why? [laughs]

Aubrey: Yeah, cool story, bro. What a good thing to put in your memoir about sex addiction. I mean, I guess.

Michael: So, then he gets back to London, he gets into another acting school. He then gets kicked out of that too.

Aubrey: I don't really know what it takes to get kicked out of acting school. Like, not to say that it's not a serious endeavor or whatever, but just I genuinely don't know what conduct.

Michael: He says he shows up drunk every day. He drinks before school and then he's hammered.

Aubrey: That would do it.

Michael: This is like too much because we already dislike this guy. But like, God, this either is fake or it's real and fuck off. So, he's talking about when he's in this period, post-drama school, post getting kicked out of drama school number two.

Aubrey: "One of my brilliant gimmicks was to have a mouse living in my hair." He's doing a Ratatouille.

Michael: I know. Maybe this explains the rest of his career. Maybe it's actually just the mouse is in charge.

Aubrey: "I kept this going for quite a long time. At least a month or so. I'd gone out and got a mouse from a pet shop and let it live on my shoulders and in my hair. Mice are incontinent. They poo and wee whenever they feel like it. So, my hair was all full of mouse excrement and urine. I'd put it in a little Tupperware box when I went to sleep."

Michael: So, I hope this is fake. If this is real, this is one of those pathetic attention-getting things I've ever heard in my life.

Aubrey: Jesus fucking hell.

Michael: Surely, you could just get attention for people by being nice to them.

Aubrey: This is absolutely the behavior that would make me avoid being around a person.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: Not necessarily because of the mouse, not necessarily because of mouse smell, not necessarily because of any of that kind of stuff.

Michael: Well, because for me it would because of the mouse and the mouse smell, but okay. 

Aubrey: No, but just because of the level of red flag that is like, [crosstalk] “Oh, this person thinks this is how you engage with other people.”

Michael: Dude, I know. It is so weird.

Aubrey:  And like, I don't want to be engaged in these kinds of ways by a person. So, I'm just going to give them a real wide berth.

Michael: I think this is the only way that he knows how to relate to people, is people gawking at him or being like, "Wow, you're so wild and crazy, Russell."

Aubrey: Yeah. And in that way, the very Hollywood experience of having an entourage, but maybe not necessarily having friends, I would think might suit him.

Michael: We then have a period where he's dropped out of acting school. He's getting odd jobs. He starts doing like stand-up open mic nights. He joins a comedy duo. He does a couple performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He's at like the very early stages of making it as an actor/comedian. He also starts doing heroin at this time. We also have in 1999, toward the end of this period, we have the first alleged rape by Russell Brand.

Aubrey: What a cool fucking guy.

Michael: There's, I believe, seven rape allegations at this point that he's on trial for. And so, as we're going, I'm going to put them in the chronology. I should say that he denies all of these allegations categorically. He says, “Yes, I was a sex addict, but everything 100% was consensual.” So, we need to get that on the record. In the UK, they don't seem to release indictment documents with details of any of the charges. So, literally all we have is one sentence. "Brand, of Oxfordshire, is accused of raping a woman in a hotel room while she attended a Labour Party conference in Bournemouth in 1999." That's the entirety of the charge. 

Aubrey: Jesus.

Michael: I guess from these stand-up comedy gigs, he then gets noticed by MTV. And in 2001, he gets a segment on MTV called Dance Floor Chart where he goes around to nightclubs and interviews people. He then gets fired from MTV in late 2001. The way that he tells this story, he goes to work and he's fiending for drugs. So, he invites his drug dealer to the set of MTV. And then the drug dealer brings his eight-year-old son because he's like, “Oh, I'm going to MTV,” my kid likes MTV, I'll bring my kid with me. And then Russell Brand and this guy apparently smoke crack in the bathroom in front of the kid according to him. He's high walking around. This drug dealer is also high. It's the same day as Kylie Minogue is filming an interview or a segment or something. So, Kylie Minogue is around, and he walks up to Kylie Minogue with his drug dealer and he's like, "Meet Grant," or whatever the guy's name is. And he introduces Kylie Minogue to his drug dealer. And he’s like “And the next day they fired me.” But he does mention this, but he doesn't really get into it the actual reason that he got fired. 

Aubrey: I was going to say, what are the chances that there was zero sex-pesting from Russell Brand.

Michael: Well, no, it actually isn't a sex-pesting, Aubrey.

Aubrey: What?

Michael: If you go to his like Wikipedia entry? And he does mention this in his book, but in this weird, cursory way. This story is taking place on September 12, 2001, and he is dressed as Osama bin Laden.

Aubrey: What in the fuck?

Michael: So, he does say this. Here, I'm going to send it to you.

Aubrey: "I was dressed in a white Muslim tunic with matching white bottoms, a camouflage flak jacket, a false beard, and a tea towel on my head held in place by a shoelace. I'd been aware of Osama bin Laden for about a year. He wasn't someone who people of my age group generally knew about, but he'd been involved with some other bombings and he was top of the FBI's most wanted list. And I was fascinated by that stuff. That day I was going to present this program called Select, where kids phoned in and chose videos for us to play and pop stars would come on to flog their records. That afternoon, our guest was to be Kylie Minogue."

Michael: And then he tells the Kylie Minogue story. I'm stealing this from the On Brand podcast, which is an entire podcast about how much Russell Brand sucks, which is very enjoyable. But Kylie Minogue has met drug dealers before. Kylie Minogue has met weird people backstage at things. The Kylie Minogue thing has nothing to do with you getting fired.

Aubrey: Right?

Michael: Kylie Minogue probably had a two-minute conversation with this guy and was like, "Well, got to go." I don't think Kylie Minogue fucking reported Russell Brand. I think you got fired because you dressed as fucking Osama bin Laden the day after September 11th.

Aubrey: Well, and also you dressed in such a way as to make manifest a fucking slur.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aubrey: You put a towel on your head. You fucking asshole.

Michael: He doesn't give any explanation for why he did this. It's the day after 9/11 you're dressing as the killer. Why? Like, "Oh, I've been aware of him for a year and he did some crimes and I knew about him." And also, he was presenting a children's show. There's no description of why he did this or what he was even trying to do. I think it was again, just this, "I put a mouse in my hair," like I wanted to get attention kind of thing.

Aubrey: I don't know, man. The day after they capture the fucking Golden State Killer, are you going on TV dressing up like that guy?

Michael: So, the only other thing we know of that takes place in 2001 is another alleged attempted rape. This is also from the charging document. He is charged with indecently assaulting a woman by grabbing her arm and dragging her toward a male toilet in 2001. That is the entirety of the information that we have. He then gets fired from MTV, and then he almost immediately gets another job. He gets another kind of man-on-the-street interview show on anow-defunct cable channel.

Aubrey: My God, stop giving him this specific job where they're like, "How do we expose him to the most people possible."

Michael: He says, "Together we contrive to take on taboos. Have a fight with your dad to examine the idea of an Oedipus complex. Have a bath with a homeless person. Get to know a member of the British National Party to see what they're like and seduce an old woman."

Aubrey: What?

Michael: And these are little stunts that he does. He ends up jerking off a man.

Aubrey: They're all just props-

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Aubrey: -for him to do an outrageous thing.

Michael: I do think that's core to the ideology. It's just like these are taboos. But he doesn't seem to have any kind of basic moral compass because one of the episodes is about hanging out with this guy who is part of the British National Party, which is basically the UK Nazis. But in his brain, it's like, “Well, it's taboo to be nice to a homeless person, and it's taboo to be in a super racist political party.”

Aubrey: It feels like a house with no foundation.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: He's not meaningfully on the left or meaningfully on the right, no matter how he shows up, because there's not a foundational thing that he's tied to. There's not a core driving morality underneath it. It's just, "Oh, you don't want me to do this."

Michael: So, then at the end of 2002, he finally gets sober. He's like drinking every day, using drugs every day. Eventually, he goes into rehab. He doesn't say that much about it. He just goes into inpatient rehab. It seems to work. And he's sober for the rest of his life, according to him.

Aubrey: Does he mention anything about staying in recovery spaces? Does he go to meetings?

Michael: He's really into 12 steps.

Aubrey: Oh, okay.

Michael: He wrote a book called Recovery that is part of his wellness pivot. It has 12 chapters and each chapter is one of the steps. So, he's very much a 12-step guy.

Aubrey: The reason that I ask is there's this concept in AA of the "dry drunk," which is someone who's not drinking, but also not dealing with the shit that made them drink in the first place. Based on what we know comes next, it just seems like that might be part of the picture.

Michael: It's actually really interesting because he's fairly open in the book about the fact that getting sober makes him worse with women. He says, "Once I started to feel a bit more confident and realized there was now a great gaping hole in my life that wasn't filled by drugs and booze anymore, my tendency to pursue women, which had always been quite rapacious, somehow became enhanced further. I started seeing different women, quickly acquiring a harem of about 10, whom I would rotate, in addition to one-night stands and random casual encounters."

Aubrey: Boy, there's nothing quite so chilling as a white man referring to a "harem."

Michael: And also, how are you doing this, too? I mean, 10 people and also one-night stands.

Aubrey: Do you think that's real?

Michael: Oh, yeah.

Aubrey: Okay.

Michael: And if you read the accounts of his accusers, he has this urgency about sex. And oftentimes he'll have a couple women in one night. It's not like you come over and you have sex with Russell Brand and you cuddle and you watch a movie. It's like he kicks you out or sometimes he will invite over another woman while you're there.

Aubrey: This is gay men territory. What are you doing?

Michael: It's really even as a gay man, I'm like, this is you're fucking unwell.

Aubrey: No, totally.

Michael: So that is 2002, when he gets sober. One of the rapes he's accused of is in 2004. The Met Police say in 2004, a woman was orally raped and sexually assaulted in the Westminster area of London. That's basically all of the information that we have.

Aubrey: There's something about this lack of detail in one sentence that it's so fucking chilling to me.

Michael: There's another one, I believe, also in 2004 that says he is also alleged to have grabbed a radio station worker's face, pushed her against a wall, and kissed her before groping her breasts and buttocks. In the exposé about him that was published in 2023, they talked to a female comedian who knew him on the comedy scene. A female comedian said that in the early 2000s, when they gigged together, Brand chased her around backstage and bit her on the face. "Whenever he saw me, he would grab me and bite my face. And it was coupled with this weird, horrible energy," she recalls. "I said to him, I don't like this. And he still did it so much before he stopped. It was him crossing boundaries."

Aubrey: It's so dark because I think his way of relating to himself is to interpret all of his actions as sort of playful.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aubrey: Biting someone's face is an unhinged thing to do.

Michael: Also, imagine someone doing that to you with a mouse in their fucking hair.

Aubrey: Jesus fucking hell.

Michael:  It makes it worse somehow. [laughs] You're like, "Aw.”

Aubrey: Drunk, mouse in hair, hair smells like mouse piss and shit.

Michael: So, in 2005, that's when he goes to sex addiction treatment. This is where his first book ends. The book is really strange in that he goes to sex addiction treatment and then he just publishes verbatim excerpts from his diary that he kept when he was there. And they're kind of all over the place. There's a section where he says, like, “The worst thing about being in rehab is that I really miss Sarah.” But he hasn't mentioned Sarah. That's the first mention of Sarah.

Aubrey: Who is Sarah?

Michael: I guess that's the woman he's dating. But it's like, “Does anyone edit these fucking books?” They're just this person that he misses. And then he mentions that she's 19, they were fighting. He says that he smashed a glass and then was using the shards to pretend that he was going to cut his wrists.

Aubrey: Pretend is doing some heavy lifting there.

Michael: But again, this is just in his diary entry. So, you're like, “Is this in the book or something else?” What? And of course, she's never mentioned again. The book ends with him like, “Oh, I went through sex addiction rehab.” But then all he says is, "After Keystone, I did continue to have sex with adult human females, but I made sure it didn't interfere with my work."

Aubrey: That was the point of concern.

Michael: So, he ends with this like, “Oh, I learned all my lessons. None of which I'm going to actually explain at the end of this book.” He then starts book two, fucking Booky Wook Two. He starts book two by bragging about the time he fucked Kate Moss.

Aubrey: Well, again, if the point is to prove your worth to other men, the thing that matters is that you had sex with a woman who is famous for being beautiful.

Michael: We're now entering the point where he starts to become much more famous. He gets a gig as a Big Brother commentator in 2005.

Aubrey: Sure. Very Talking Dead territory.

Michael: One of the only things I laughed at in his book. He's talking about this Big Brother. It's called Big Brother's Big Mouth. He says, "I worked on the show for three years, which encompassed seven seasons." 

Aubrey: Great. I fucking love reality TV.

Michael: Fucking reality show. It's so weird. Just churn through a man who cares. A thing that really rockets him to fame, and a thing that he's been very good at doing throughout his career, is riding controversies into more fame and more notoriety. So, in 2006, he hosts the NME awards, which is a music magazine, music awards.

Aubrey: New Musical Express, I believe.

Michael: First of all, he goes through some of his jokes for the awards show. He says that the band the ‘Strokes’ is attending. For context, the lead singer of the Strokes is named Julian Casablancas. I guess he's in the midst of saying the Strokes are here. He says, "Oh, my nan had a stroke. I think that's what killed her. What was Julian Casablancas thinking? She was 90 years old and she was a lesbian."

Aubrey: What?

Michael: That's the joke. The Strokes. That's the whole-- That's the joke again. [laughs] 

Aubrey: Again, the cadence of humor-

Michael: I know.

Aubrey: -delivered with a thick accent from a guy doing a Ratatouille.

Michael: He then introduces Bob Geldof, who's like a legendary music actor guy. I know him from being the lead of Pink Floyd's The Wall, which I saw like 400 times when I was in eighth grade. This is his introduction to Bob Geldof. This is Russell Brand. He says, "The winner of Best DVD is Bob Geldof. My best DVD is Big Natural Tits 10. In a welcome return to form after the lazy and derivative Big Natural Tits 8 and 9. Of course, we ain't really captured the glory days of Big Natural Tits 1 and 2. Don't be ridiculous. But all this is academic because the Big Natural Tits series has been overlooked. Again, here's Sir Bobby Geldof." And then he introduces him. And then Bob Geldof comes up and he just he leans-- he starts out, he just leans at the microphone. He says, "Russell Brand. What a cunt." [laughs] 

Aubrey: Yeah. Good job. Good job. It's also the shortcoming of this edgelord era of humor, which is just like, you don't actually have to have a joke.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: Sort of like his earlier stuff. The point is just like, "Oh, it's taboo, so I'm going to say it." Yeah, that's not a joke. A joke takes craftsmanship. A joke takes subversion of expectation.

Michael: Are you talking about how sophisticated you were for using the soundboard on this podcast?

[laughter]

Aubrey: Where is my soundboard.

Soundboard: We're gaining traction.

Michael: What did it say?

Soundboard: "We're gaining traction."

Michael: What fucking soundboard is this?

Soundboard: Let's really drill down on this.

Michael: What is this?

Aubrey: A friend gave me a corporate jargon one. 

Soundboard: "We have to be disruptive."

Michael: That's good. Let's put a pin in that.

Soundboard: "Let's circle back to that."

Michael: That is sophisticated. You're right, Aubrey. It takes dedication.

Soundboard:  "That's a no-brainer." [Michael laughs] 

Aubrey: What's standing out to me about this that I find really fascinating is it's a referendum on Russell Brand, of course, and it should be. But it's also sort of like a, a pretty good reflection of an era that enabled a generation of assholes like this.

Michael: Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah.

Aubrey: Right. This is also the era of Adam Carolla, Don Imus.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: All of these, like, fucking dickweed edgelord assholes who were just like, "I'm going to say the most shocking thing possible." And it would often be about shit that was, like, taboo for a fucking reason.

Michael: "Oh, are you mad? I guess you're mad about this." And then you get to do the whole fucking shtick where you're like, "They're all mad at me again."

Aubrey: Oh, my God.

Michael: And he also gets a chat show on MTV around this time and becomes the person who just shows up at things. He's presenting this thing. He's presenting that thing. This also dovetails with the abuse allegations. In 2023, we get the article reporting on all these specific women who allege abuse. But then we also get allegations that he was using his contacts at the BBC and at Channel 4 to recruit audience members from these shows and send them backstage. It says, "TV researchers and runners who worked on Channel 4 shows during this period alleged that Brand would get staff to approach young female audience members so he could meet them after filming."

Aubrey: Oh, boy.

Michael: Another later in the article, it says, "Brand would regularly have sex with women he met at events. Two who went back to his home on separate occasions claim he became threatening and shouted at them when they refused to have intercourse with him. One left his home in tears." So, we yet again see this pattern where he's using his power to systematically recruit women to have sex with, allegedly.

Aubrey: Yeah. So, this is also the mid-2000s, which means that the response to this media would have been like, "Wow, it looks like those women made some bad choices."

Michael: There's also in December of 2007, somebody makes a complaint about "An alarming display of aggression and disrespect," which included Brand hurling objects across the studio in fits of rage and, "Urinating in a bottle in full view of everyone."

Aubrey: Sorry, this is after he gets sober.

Michael: Yeah. That's actually super fascinating to me. A lot of these anecdotes are basically what other people would describe as their rock bottom. I'm sure the time I pissed in a cup- [crosstalk] 

Aubrey: I am sure. 

Michael: -in front of staff at work.

Aubrey: 100% rock bottom.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: Yep, yep, yep.

Michael: So, there is after these abuse allegations, the article detailing the abuse allegations come out. BBC and Channel 4 both launch retrospective investigations to be like did we get complaints? Like, was there a systematic failure here? The BBC says they only received three complaints during his time at the BBC and they weren't followed up on however, the person who led the investigation also said the BBC did not maintain a centralized record of staff complaints regarding bullying and harassment, including sexual harassment, at the time. So, basically, they haven't found anything, but also, they weren't keeping records of anything.

Aubrey: God, imagine living in a media environment where the media goes, "Wait a minute, did we have a hand in this?"

Michael: Or like, "Did we write this down?"

Aubrey: "Is there something we should have done differently here?"

Michael: I'm going to send this to you and I might cut it. This is from the period when he's doing his MTV show where he's interviewing fairly big celebrities. He interviews Tom Cruise and stuff. And so here is him talking about a celebrity encounter.

Aubrey: "Neil brought Courtney Love with him, who is a mad enchantress, a rasping white witch, barmy and opinionated and lion-hearted. More interesting than her lion heart, though, is her vagina, which has been referred to as magic in that it has a mythical power to bestow stardom and heavenly gifts upon those who enter a Blarney fanny. Lord alone knows, many a famous man has emerged from its confines, some of whom surely must have been famous on the way in." Jesus fucking Christ.

Michael: He later says, "Oh, we had a nice time. She's a nice person. We became friends." So, this is him talking about like a woman he holds in high esteem.

Aubrey: Yeah. Mike, what do you expect? He's saying her vagina is good. [Michael laughs] What higher praise is there than that?

Michael: Am I not supposed to say this when I talk about you? [Aubrey laughs] Like, tell me about your co-host. I'm like, "Well, let's start with her vagina and work our way outward."

Aubrey: Blarney vagina. How do you describe my vagina?

[laughter] 

Michael: Let's workshop it.

Aubrey: Fellas. [Michael laughs] Is it gay to describe your co-host's vagina?

Michael: It's actually not problematic because I am gay. I'm allowed to describe your vagina. 

Aubrey: It's gay not to. [Michael laughs] God. What a fucking twerp.

Michael: Okay, so this is the hardest transition of the whole show. We're giggly and stuff. We now have to talk about the 16-year-old that he dated and allegedly orally raped.

Aubrey: If it's a 16-year-old, what's the age of consent in the UK?

Michael: Unfortunately, 16. So it was not illegal.

Aubrey: Fuck. Shit.

Michael: Well, I'm saying "unfortunate" also because I don't like knowing what the ages of consent are in places. Because anyone who can rattle off like, "Oh, I am-- that's 17," you're like, “No.”

Aubrey: I don't want to be the guy who can answer your question.

Michael: Yeah, exactly. Like, but overhearing a conversation at a restaurant, like, "Oh, actually it's 16 in the UK, [Aubrey laughs] no."

Aubrey: It's actually ephebophilia.

Michael: That's the energy. I keep mentioning this, but there's a very good investigation by The Sunday Times, The Times of London, and Channel 4, which produces a long investigative article and also a documentary. This is a four-year investigation where they interview-- it appears to be like dozens to hundreds of people about various allegations throughout Russell Brand's career. This is a woman who they are calling Alice in the article, who is 16 when she meets Russell Brand in 2006. She has just recovered from an eating disorder and she has never had a boyfriend. And here is her description of how it started.

Aubrey: "He approached her in Leicester Square after she had been shopping at Topshop at Oxford Circus and he had been working at a nearby studio. Alice recognized him from TV and had previously seen him do stand-up. He took my shopping bags from me, which was quite disarming, and proceeded to go through my purchases and critique them. And then he took one dress out and said to me, 'You're going to wear this on our date this week.'" She recalls. Fucking hell.

Michael: So, again, you see this extremely aggressive way of hitting on women, right?

Aubrey: But also, when you're 16.

Michael: Dude, I know. I know. 

Aubrey: You don't know that this dude is actively dangerous to you necessarily yet in your life.

Michael: There's then this period where he's acutely aware of her age and how inappropriate this is. So, he asks her to read Lolita, which is a really fucking weird detail. He asks her to put himself in her phone as "Carly" so that in case her parents check her phone or something, they don't find like a man's name.

Aubrey: Holy fucking shit.

Michael: He coaches her on what to say to her parents. He also sends a car to her high school to pick her up and take her to his house. And there's this heartbreaking scene where the driver of the car-- this is like Russell Brand's professional driver pulls up to his house and like begs her not to get out of the car. He's like, "I have a daughter your age. You don't want to go into that house."

Aubrey: This is to borrow a fucking very Law & Order-y phrase, this is like evidence of premeditation, right?

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: This is someone who knows that what he's doing will not be viewed in a kind light. This is someone who is actively engaged in regardless of the age of consent in a given place, this is fucking grooming behavior. Read Lolita.

Michael: She alleges that he orally raped her as part of the relationship. And she basically was like, "Stop, stop, stop." She had to hit him to get him off of her. There's then this paragraph which is absolutely fucking insane. 

Aubrey: Oh, my God.

Michael: This is how it ended.

Aubrey: "The relationship ended when Brand invited her over one day and she arrived to find another woman in his bed.” I was so angry and I said to him, "Why would you do this to me? This is so humiliating."

Michael: It's either totally just reckless and you're in some sort of mania and you don't really realize what you're doing, or it's deliberately like, "I'm too chicken shit to break up with this person, and so I'm going to create this horrible scene so that she has to break up with me."

Aubrey: It's also not for nothing. It is nuts that he does dress like a cartoon villain.

Michael: To be fair, he has been telling us very loudly who he fucking is for his entire career.

Aubrey: For a real long time. Yup, totally.

Michael: This is like now the fucking sexual assault montage.

Aubrey: It wasn't before? No.

Michael: This is where it gets really bad. So, in 2007, he was allegedly in a relationship with somebody named Jordan Martin, who wrote a book in 2014 about being in an abusive relationship. It's called kNot: Entanglement with a Celebrity. And in the book, she calls him Randall Grand. She's elsewhere said that this was based on Russell Brand.

Aubrey: Schmushel Shmand. [laughs] 

Michael: Yeah, basically. Yeah. And she alleges him sexually assaulting her and cheating on her and a bunch of really awful shit in this book.

Aubrey: Sounds like our guy.

Michael: Yeah. And then when the allegations come out in 2023, she's like, "I don't want to be interviewed, but I stand by the book." We then in 2008 have this incident.

Aubrey: "The woman who we are calling Olivia worked for a media company in the same building as the BBC's Los Angeles office. On 16th of June 2008, she says she answered the door to Brand and his team who were there to pre-record an episode of The Russell Brand Show for Radio 2. She then went to the bathroom to get some sinus medication while squatting to look through the medicine cabinet. She says she felt someone behind her." Fucking hell.

Michael: I know.

Aubrey: "She turned around to face a man's crotch. 'I was startled and got up and I realized it was Russell.' She says he told her he was going to call her Betty.

Michael: What, that's weird.

Aubrey: "When she said that wasn't her name, she says he replied, 'Well, I'm going to fuck you.' And I said, 'No, you're not.' She says he then pulled out his penis on his hand and, “Pretty much served it to me as you would be serving someone some food.” She says the door to the bathroom was closed and she felt trapped. Olivia says he then put his penis back in his trousers and she heard someone banging on the door. She says someone from his team called for him, at which point Brand left." Jesus fucking Christ. It's having a dog that needs to be on a fucking leash.

Michael: This woman, Olivia, texts a friend and she's like, "Fucking Russell Brand just whipped his dick out in the bathroom."

Aubrey: Good for Olivia.

Michael: And he goes, "I know." They're talking about it live on the air.”

Aubrey: Ah, what? 

Michael: They're like joking on air. One of his co-hosts says, "It's been 25 minutes since he showed his willy to anyone." And Brand is like laughing and he's like, "Easy for you to judge, boy."

Aubrey: Oh, fucking boy.

Michael: So, this is a bit within 15 fucking minutes. It's a fucking bit on the air.

Aubrey: I don't even know how to fucking process this shit.

Michael: And also, it's so extreme. I think everyone assumes it has to be a joke, I guess. "What a lothario." That's the persona that he was able to cultivate, but it was not a fucking persona.

Aubrey: There are lots of real dipshit dumb guy parts of American media and political landscapes. One of them really is, “Boy, oh boy, the degree to which we get charmed by a British accent and allow- [crosstalk] 

Michael: Dude, I know, huge.

Aubrey: -terrible fucking behavior.

Michael: So, the final episode that we are going to talk about before we close. Are you familiar with Sachsgate?

Aubrey: Is this one Winona Ryder did her shoplifting?

Michael: No, it's Andrew Sachs.

Aubrey: I know this name. Why do I know this name?

Michael: You're a UK comedy nerd. You watched Fawlty Towers growing up, right?

Aubrey: Oh, sure.

Michael: I was obsessed with Fawlty Towers when I was a kid. So, the guy who plays Manuel on Fawlty Towers is named Andrew Sachs.

Aubrey: Oh, okay.

Michael: He is in 2008, kind of like an elder statesman kind of guy. He's an old guy, shows up on TV in various times. And so, there is an incident where he is supposed to show up on the radio show of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross.

Aubrey: Oh, boy.

Michael: So, at the time, Russell Brand is hosting a morning zoo kind of situation. I don't think it's on in the mornings, but it's like that kind of vibe, like a bunch of dudes and it's like zany and there's like sound effects and shit.

Aubrey: Oh, I'm sorry, do you mean soundboard energy?

Michael: [laughs] I know. I was trying not to say the word because I knew you'd get inspired.

Soundboard: I'm at capacity. Let's take that offline.

Michael: [laughs] This is the worst soundboard, Aubrey.

Aubrey: It's really not good, and I love it. That's what I love the most about it.

Soundboard: "That's a no-brainer."

[laughter] 

Michael: So, this Andrew Sachs guy is supposed to be on Russell Brand's radio show. For whatever reason, he cancels. And so, they do a bit where they call his answering machine and they talk to his answering machine.

Aubrey: I have a vague recollection about this, where they are fucking sex pests about his daughter or something.

Michael: Granddaughter. Yes.

Aubrey: Creep. Fucking city.

Michael: The thing is, I was going to skip this because it's just a very weird controversy for reasons we will get into. But people in the UK say, “You cannot underestimate how fucking big of a deal this was.” This was literally front-page news for like months. This was a massive scandal at the time. Yeah. So, we are going to read a transcript of the answering machine message. So, I am going to send you this transcript. You are going to be Russell Brand, and I'm going to be Jonathan Ross. Because I know if I made you Jonathan Ross, you'd try to do the voice.

Aubrey: No, I would not try to do the voice. [Michael laughs] "Hello, Andrew Sachs, this is Russell Brand. You are meant to be on my show now, mate. I'm here with Jonathan Ross. I could still do the interview to your answerphone. 

Michael: Let's do it.

Aubrey:  Man. Or Andrew Sachs.

Michael: "Don't call him Manuel. That's really bad manners. I apologize for Russell. He's an idiot."

Aubrey: "I said Andrew Sachs. Look, Andrew Sachs, I have got respect for you and your lineage and your progeny. Never let that be questioned."

Michael: "Don't hint."

Aubrey: "I weren't hinting. Why did that come across as a hint?"

Michael: "Because you know what you did."

Aubrey: "That wasn't a hint."

Michael: "He fucked your granddaughter."

Aubrey: Jesus fucking Christ.

Michael: Cute stuff. So cute.

Aubrey: What? What a couple of little rogues.

Michael: So, we find out it was not at the time, but we do find out later that Russell Brand did briefly date his granddaughter.

Aubrey: Russell Brand at this point would have been in his 30s.

Michael: Yeah, early 30s. Yeah. And the granddaughter's in her early 20s.

Aubrey: Jonathan Ross is fucking 50.

Michael: He's just always been 50. It's unclear to me.

Aubrey: Sure, he's middle-aged forever.

Michael: It's like a Gene Hackman situation.

Aubrey: That's fucking nuts. Like a middle-aged man being like, "He fucked your granddaughter." Like, what in the fuck are we doing?

Michael: It is the two boys on the telephone being like Marianne, "So when I had sex with you, I had sex with you right? you're confirming that I had sex with you while I'm taping." 

Aubrey: "Shut up. Hang up, hang up." Yeah, absolutely.

Michael: Also, I was thinking about this from Georgina's perspective that like, “Okay, you date this guy, whatever. It appears like a week, a couple dates, whatever. It's not super serious.” And then a couple weeks later, you find out that he's bragging about having sex with you on the fucking BBC to your grandpa.

Aubrey: Is she a public figure in her own right at this point?

Michael: Not a major public figure, but she was a dancer and was on the scene in some sense. But yeah, she was not a public figure in a Helen Mirren sense, right.

Aubrey: I love that Helen Mirren was the name that you ditched for. 

Michael: That's my only British women.

Aubrey: Famous sex scandal, Helen Mirren.

Michael: They then hang up and then they talk amongst themselves. So, this is them doing a little recap.

Aubrey: "Andrew Sachs. I did not do nothing with Georgina. Oh, no. I revealed I know her name. Oh, no. It's a disaster. Abort. Abort."

Michael: "If he's like most people of a certain age, he's probably got a picture of his grandchildren when they were young and innocent right by the phone. So, while he's listening to the message, he's looking at a picture of her when she was nine on a swing."

Aubrey: "She was on a swing when I met her. Let's ring back. Andrew Sachs."

Michael: Cute.

Aubrey: Fucking gross, dude.

Michael: Then they call again.

Aubrey: "Andrew, this is Russell Brand. I am so sorry about the last message. It was part of the radio show. It was a mistake. The truth is, I'm phoning you to ask if I can marry, that's right, marry Georgina, the granddaughter."

Michael: "And I would like to be the page boy."

Aubrey: "He wants to be a page boy. We're going to have a Fawlty Towers-themed wedding."

Michael: "Now you've spoiled it."

Aubrey: "No, I made it better. I'm sorry. I'll do anything. I wore a condom. Put the phone down."

Michael: And then there's one they hang up. And then there's a third message. This is Russell Brand singing, but I'm not going to make you come up with a tune.

Aubrey: Thank you. "I'd like to apologize for the terrible attacks, Andrew Sachs. I would like to show contrition to the max, Andrew Sachs. I would like to create world peace between the yellow, white and blacks, Andrew Sachs."

Michael: Great.

Aubrey: "I said something I didn't have ought to, like I had sex with your granddaughter. But it was consensual and she wasn't menstrual. It was consensual, lovely sex. It was full of respect. I sent her a text. I've asked her to marry me. Andrew Sachs."

Michael: "She wasn't menstrual."

Aubrey: What a fucking creep.

Michael: Unbelievable.

Aubrey: If I as a human being am encountering someone who's willing to go to these kinds of lengths, I'm like, "Get away from me forever." Because if you're willing to be this level of boundary-crossing, then I think there maybe is no rock bottom for you.

Michael: At the time, it isn't really noticed. Apparently, the BBC only got two complaints about this at the time. But then the Daily Mail seizes on this as a way to attack the BBC, right? Because the right wing hates public media. And so, they're like, the BBC allows this smut to go on the air. And then the BBC starts getting flooded with complaints, and then it becomes a big scandal. I feel complicated about it because this is fucking scandalous and absolutely disgusting. But the only reason it was noticed is because it was like a right-wing smear campaign basically against the BBC.

Aubrey: It's weird to be like, am I siding with what would then become Mumsnet?

Michael: I know.

Aubrey: You don't want to sort of be in the same camp. But I do think you got to stand in your repulsed reaction to this and be like, this is like not actually fucking okay.

Michael: So, he is fired from the BBC over this. Jonathan Ross is given, I believe it's six weeks, or maybe six months, of unpaid leave. The controller of the BBC is forced to resign, and the BBC is fined 140,000 pounds. This is actually a really big deal, and there was like accountability for this at the time. But then what's amazing is that then Russell Brand kind of just moves over to Hollywood. He's fired from MTV for dressing up as Osama bin Laden. He's disgraced on the radio and on TV. His award show, the NME Award show thing was considered a debacle at the time. He just keeps fucking up, and then people keep giving him second, third, and fourth chances. And this happens again after this. And by the time he comes back to the UK, it's memory-holed because all of a sudden, he's a movie star.

Aubrey: Yeah. I mean, part of it is that is a little bit part of his persona, right? Is that he's like, "I'm a lovable fuck-up."

Michael: Yeah, exactly.

Aubrey: "Don't expect better."

Michael: That would have been a better fucking title for his book than Booky Wook.

Aubrey: "Don't Expect Better."

Michael: So that is where we're going to leave Russell Brand. And next episode, we are going to pick it up with his journey to America and his travails in Hollywood.

Aubrey: Can I give a preview of what my reaction is going to be?

Michael: You have your little soundboard in front of you. I know what you're going to do. [laughs] [Soundboard sighs] Is that the sign soundboard?

Aubrey: "Disappointed Sigh" is the name of this one.

Michael: [laughs] Is that all it does?

Aubrey: Yeah. Do you want to hear "Male Sigh"?

Michael: Yeah. [Soundboard sighs] [laughs]. Dude, you, as a millennial podcaster, should not have told me about that because I can now replace you with one of those.

Aubrey: I've always been replaceable by a soundboard. Thank you. [Michael laughs]

[music]

[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]