Russell Brand Part 1

No, no, no. Michael Hobbs is talking. Oh, yeah. Could you hear that? Like my little sounds. Yeah, all of it. Because I was just texting my friend

I was probably just like making little sounds. I like that you know one of your main sounds, which is

No, because I hear myself doing it like how many times have I done that in the last like five minutes?

I think I told you about being with hanging out with my brother and

Him sitting down and going yeah, I was like, that's how old we are. We're the age where we do that and he went it feels better

It feels it actually feels better. I'm with your brother on this one. I mean, 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

What do you have? Well, I have to okay, I think I know what you want. I'm doing give me an A let's A B test it

Let's A B test it option A here. We go. Hi everybody and welcome to maintenance phase the podcast that has a cadence of jokes

But are there jokes? Oh my god, that's a spoiler for episode two

You can't spoil the second part

This is okay. You're ready for option B. All right B. Okay, do it. Hi everybody and welcome to maintenance phase our potty

Oh my god, dude, you're gonna make me say that title this fucking book aren't you know?

He wrote a book called my book you look. I hate it. I would say I have followed about as much of Russell Brand's career as your average bear

Right like aware of big star

movie roles aware of his work

On like panel shows and doing stand-up

particularly in the 2000s and early 2010s in the UK and then aware of his

Criminal charges and of his baptism. There's been quite the pivot the last couple years

We're gonna get into it. They're sure is and I am aware that he has been showing up at fucking maha events

Oh, yeah, like he and he endorsed Trump like it's not it's not like well

He's leaning toward the right. He's a full-on just explicit right-winger at this point

We took our little divergence away from current events and now we're like half back in but say your name

We haven't like done the name yet. Oh, you want to do a tiny repeating machine. I'm ready

I'm Aubrey Gordon. I'm Michael Hobbs

If you would like to support the show you can do that at patreon.com slash maintenance phase

You can also subscribe through apple podcasts. It's the same audio content same stuff

Aubrey Michael today today

We are talking about a comedian who is unique in his

Annoyingness. I was actually 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 and I was like

It's the first time I've laughed. Yeah, in like three weeks

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 has like followed British comedy

Yeah, and the jokes about Russell brand were like it was like a bunch of jokes being like

Mothers lock up your daughters

I know I know yeah, and he was like married to Katie Perry. Yes

In one of the most chaotic wellness marriages we will come I know I know

Also divorced her by text. He sort of

Falls off after a while

Yeah, and then he pops back up with these sexual assault allegations, right? 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 like the Occupy Wall Street era

Becomes a wellness influencer great, and then slowly becomes a

straightforward right-wing influencer and you know 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 like he's one of the canonical examples of the

Far left to wellness to right-wing pipeline, right? 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

Like everything you can imagine is going to be in these episodes. So like fair warning here

We fucking go 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 like really nice and like a really positive presence in his life

His father is this kind of mercurial presence where he will like to disappear

Four months or years on end and then like come back and like shower Russell with gifts and due to like

Hey, man, it's great. I'm gonna be around a lot more these days, you know

And then disappear again. Yeah kind of classic dead-be-dad shit. Just a disappointment factory. Yeah, exactly

So, you know, the book is

Framed around his treatment for sex addiction. So the book starts kind of in a like

Record scratch. I'll bet you're wondering how I got into the situation kind of thing where he's in sex addiction

inpatient treatment in Philadelphia and then the book kind of rewinds to be like well

How did I end up in sex addiction treatment, right? I've never read a celebrity memoir that has this much fucking sex in it

And it's 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

Yeah, give me an example of really worrying sex stuff

So he has a thing where he has an aunt who like I was like busty and like has big boobs

And he's kind of like obsessed with big boobs out the book and he sort of schemes as like a four or five year old

To be in the bathroom while she's showering so he can like watch her shower

Oh the way that he remembers this is kind of like aha like I managed to be in the bathroom while she was showering like what a little

Rascal, he also started reading his dad's

pornography fairly young. This is the 70s and 80s. So there isn't like inner you know internet pornography or anything

Yeah, yeah, so you find a box of magazine

Yeah, so his dad is like I don't play boy hustler whatever the UK's equivalent are yeah, but it appears this is like very young like

456 kind of thing. He's like reading through his dad's pornography

He also I think when he's seven or eight he's 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 like 16 or 17 years old

And little Russell was like oh well, what's masturbation and then his babysitters like I'll show you

So he is naked standing in the shower as his babysitter jerks off. Oh, so he's

Sexually abused. There's no like touching or anything, but like it's definitely an active abuse. Yes. Yeah, that is yes

He also starts to exhibit

I think like 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 like from a fairly young age

He says my mom 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-flect faces of senselessly enraged adults

looming like ogres thinking well, this all seemed like a bit of a storm in a teak-up. I was awake as a child

I knew it was nonsense um 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. Is there any point where he's like I get why they said that no

This is what's so fascinating to me is like I understand how you would feel that in the moment, right?

You're like just fucking Nazi like won't let me run around during nap time or something

But later on you'd be like yeah, it must I must have been a challenge for my teachers or like that was unsafe

What I was doing or I can see where they're coming from that probably made their jobs harder

Yeah, even just to sound like a grounded person when you're talking about it

In say a book the perfect example of this is in his second memoir my bookie-wook to

Oh my god, oh my god, there's a second one. Oh, yeah, I read both of them the second one's much worse Michael

Michael I have been

semi-pro hating the title of my bookie-wook

And I did not know that there was a second one and frankly that's on me

So this is

Describing himself on an airplane. 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 so boffin is like a egghead like expert kind of thing if someone's like

I got kicked off of a plane because I irritated conformists. Yeah, yeah, I immediately have a minimum of 20 questions

So then he tells the rest of the story

I offered the hottie air hostess the perfect chance to tell me off by being a bit drunk and body 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 sense she was enjoying being authoritative and we all know just doing my job is the excuse offered up for enacting genocide

She's basically a nazi for asking me to put my feet down

On an airplane and for like being drunk and body which I assume means like hitting on her while she's at work

It's basically like I was being a huge asshole

And she was a nazi for telling me to stop she became increasingly agitated and elicited the support of the pilot

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

There's like hundreds of people that need to get where they're going

But like I was in a silly mood and I didn't want to put my feet down

The pilot made an announcement that because of quote unquote 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

Dude the investment in persecution here is fascinating sort of stunning

I had a friend in high school who had always just like was constantly getting fired from jobs and every the story was always something totally

benign he's like I get 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 is like why are you late?

And I was like shut up you fucking bitch

I don't think you were

Fire because you were late to a meeting dude

It goes in the same category to me of like oh this is enough red flags for me to disengage as like someone who

Complains about work

But just talks about like everyone they work with isn't any is yeah exactly. Yeah, it doesn't matter what job you're at

It doesn't matter what role you're in

He even after he's like in recovery. He's now sober

He can't look at this situation and go man. I must have really sucked for the stewardess that day

Like she's got a drunk passenger who for no reason refuses to do this like extremely basic thing before takeoff

He's still the hero of the story and she is still literally a Nazi

It's also like feels reminiscent of our like metabolife guy in that

There's like zero reckoning with the effects on other people. Yeah completely

I just like to imagine a serene pastoral landscape

The cool breeze blow it in the air and just the sound of one giant red flag

The other I mean this book is like all fucking red flag and I joke the other one that like released it out to me

Especially as far as his politics go is apparently when he's very young five six

He's walking around the neighborhood and there's an old guy who sort of stops him and it's like hey, I grew some flowers

Look at look at how nice my front yard looks

And then the guys like hey, I got to run inside to like go to the bathroom for a second. I'll leave you out here

Don't stop on the flowers. Oh

No kind of a weird thing to say honestly whatever

I just am gonna flag that my bullshit meter is already fucking go on up here like do we think an adult was like

Hey, don't stop on those flowers. Well thing is I think probably because it's a neighbor

He probably knew that Russell was like kind of a troublemaker

I mean 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. Yeah, so the minute the guy goes inside

He just destroys the entire flower bed like jumping up and down just like pulverizes all of these flowers

The fact that he's telling this in his book means that like he on some level gets that this is kind of like

Disorder behavior like this is this is bad, right?

But I think also what you find when you watch any of his political videos

You read like anything kind of quote-unquote political that he's written. He just hates being told what to do

He doesn't want to stop on the fucking flowers, right? It's like if this hollow

Opposition where if you tell him what to do the opposite even if it makes no sense and he doesn't want to do it

Yeah, and I think there's something about that that he like

Comes to believe that that's like a charming thing. Yes, also this whole anecdote is like

Chekov's anti-cancel culture turn completely fast forward fucking 30 years

And this kid is like you can't see anything anymore. So at seven years old his mom gets cancer

She recovers the cancer comes back when he's 11

He doesn't really understand sort of 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 kind of 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

this guy

grows to be a real shithead

But like for this kid even with like behavior issues even with this oppositional shit like feeling like

You have failed a parent for getting a terminal illness or for being in a bad relationship

Yeah, it's like horrible

It is legitimately like a big thing to figure out how to shake off and then he tells the most fucked up story in the entire book

Oh, no, did I empathize too early?

I like haven't checked this in years but Apple podcast has the thing where they allow you to see

Where people like stop listening to your podcast like how many people make it to the end and stuff

I'm so glad I didn't know about this feature my goal. It bums me out and I never check it

But like I I want to check it for this episode

Because I think we're gonna lose like half of the listeners after the story the story is so fucked up

So his dog the only thing you need to know for this is his dog is named Topsy

So here's this story. Oh god, you're gonna make me tell the fucked up story

You're reading all the slurs you're reading all the terrible stories

It's all you 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 where you kick down the stairs

This is terrible

Holy fuck

It's like all there dude. Yeah on some level it's sympathetic because you're like he's clearly hurting

But also he's lashing out at like this innocent creature

I can understand not wanting to recognize the quote-unquote 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 yeah being like

I'm just gonna respect that this is what this person wants or I'm gonna figure out how to navigate that or whatever

I will also say not for nothing. I am not alleging anything about Russell brand

But like this is on the fucking serial killer checklist. Yeah, I know it is the fucking dark triad fucking shit

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 kind of 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, right?

He's like yeah, maybe you won't like me

So I'm just gonna like act crazy right and it's all like a stick right

So if you don't like me, it's that you don't like the act he then

Based on this gets like a reputation is like kind of 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

What a cool fun a fun game for all of us

Russell brand walked so Donald Trump could run so he like walks up to people at school and just like grabs their junk

I mean outside of their pants

It's like the only saving grace of this but like he starts doing this obviously gets in fucking trouble

This is a boy's school or a co-ed

co-ed it appears

Jesus fuck 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 like really wants to like have sex like he's he's getting into his teenage years

Where he's like post puberty and he like he says he really wants to like 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

Boy, 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 like her roommate is there and then he sneaked girls into his own room

And then his like prefect

Finds out that their girls in his room and you can't have girls in your room

And so he gets kicked out

But also what telling lay

Talking about this prefect like basically the guy that like figured out that he was doing this and busted him

He says children shouldn't be given SS style powers

What in the fuck is going on with this dude in comparing

Like a flight attendant and a school prefect

To Nazis. Yeah, there's like that whole part of the metabolism book where he's talking about how like lawyers have one of the best

Grifts around or whatever and you're like oh you think everyone is grift

Yeah, and I think similarly Russell brand thinks

Any boundary that gets set for him is someone who's like drunk with power. Yes, 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 maxors as like a women optional space

Like actually the point is to create a space that rejects women

And you actually just get to relate to other men and like one up other men and women if

President all are like tools for that like I think that's really an undercurrent of like a lot of

Misogyny. Yeah, yeah women are props to display your value to other men and that's about it

The other interesting thing about his identity is also this sense of himself as having his kind of 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 like really insecure about his appearance

He's fat at this point getting bullied a lot for being fat

And like there's something really interesting about the struggles that Russell is having at this time where he is kind of feminine

Yeah, people are calling gay all the time people are calling you know fat all the time and his sexuality feels really threatened

And I think a lot of what he does for the next like 30 years of his life is like to try to prove to himself and to the rest of the world

They're like I'm I'm a man like I can be a masculine guy

I can I can still have sex with girls

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 right to be

Constantly made fun of for being gay is like actually gonna sort of fuck you up whether you're gay or your straight

Yeah, just in different ways, right? He also says that he starts cutting himself at this time

He gets a really rough eating disorder. He just starts engaging in like pretty hardcore bulimia to lose all of the weight

He also throughout the book. He sort of mentions various

psychiatric

Assessments that he's had I mean, you know he gets arrested later on and as part of that he'll go to a psychiatrist or their school

Psychologists, but it seems like every single mental health professional who has ever seen him in any capacity

He said like 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

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

Good like when he's doing interviews around this shit are people like hey, bud you okay?

When the book came out I read a bunch of reviews. This is like well-reviewed

It's like a wild romp through like working-class Essex and like trying to become an actor in London

But like yeah, nobody really pointed out how like

Super fucked up the stuff in this book is we're not even to the fucked up shit yet operating out whole fuck

So his big epiphany comes when he gets a role in the school play

He is cast as fat Sam in Bugsie Malone great good 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. Yeah, I get to pretend to be somebody else great

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

I don't think it's mean to say what's in his book

He also starts a pattern that he does throughout the book numerous times

He says you know now that I'm acting people had like seen me in the school play

I started to get a lot of attention from girls. So he's like oh girls were like really into me

But then when he actually describes the nature of like girls were 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 at lines say hello to my little friend

I hollered in canteens and corridors. No one was safe for me

Charge by a white mound of my own newly discovered potency every female was a potential target

No one was safe from me is a dark as fuck line. I like stop copy-pacing 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 chased 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 obstacle course. I call it

Jesus Christ. And he had lots of like bits in his stand-up comedy about this like the obstacle course thing of basically like

How to like kind of trick women and a saying yes to having sex with you

Yeah, this is the guy who thinks that like cutting a hole in the bottom of the popcorn bucket

He's like actually a good gag. He then describes losing his virginity. He is

15 it sounds like it's like a fairly awkward situation

He doesn't even like 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 like not super popular the girl is like hey, let's not talk about this

Like let's let's just act like 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 Mary Ann denies it. She's like no, I never had sex with Russell

What are you talking about right which is because the stakes for him are

He's like people will see me as more masculine

And she's like yeah, the stakes for me is that I will be fucking sludging

Yeah, exactly off the face of the fucking earth. He devises a scheme where he sets up a tape recorder and calls her

And it's like hey, you know how he had sex the other night. Oh fuck off

And then he like gets her on tape admitting to this but then what's weird that he does this with the book too

He describes a scheme like getting her on tape where she's admitting to them having sex

But then he just 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 sex addiction treatment to be like, you know 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. Yeah, but he just tells it is like a funny story

Like ha ha ha. This is my losing my virginity story

Keep making that sound Michael

This is part one

We're still in his teenage years Michael. He is now age 16

He gets into an acting school in London. So he moves to London. Yeah, he then describes again

He says like oh, I was getting all his attention from girls because like 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 like 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 wagon at the end of term

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 like hopelessly infatuated does he talk about anything about these

women that he particularly

Likes about them or particularly wants about them or whatever like you know what I'm about to say

I'll read he talks about their looks like he talks about like oh this like she she was a radiant creature and like her blonde curls

You know, it's like physical appearance stuff. Yeah, it's clear that these are like sort of trophies to him or like conquest like based on their

Attractiveness so the 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 Houston 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. Hmm. 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 obstacle course with such dogged a plum that when night fell

I was allowed to sleep in her bed top to toe

I spun gags and yarns until 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

Charming stuff evoked the spirit of pan like 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 that's like a joke or I know that like makes this okay

We're not gonna read them all but this thing happens many times in the book where he's super infatuated with a girl like

I can't I can't stop thinking about you. He's writing you know six letters a day

Whatever he talks her into sex wears her down and then he never mentions her again. Yeah, so this girl penny

Is not mentioned for the rest of the book? Yeah, I'm sure he can't stop himself from going to the next infatuation like once

He's kind of won like the conquest is over he said sex with them like he has no more attention for them infatuation

Maybe his language. I'm not sure that that's how I would describe it as an outside observer. Wait. What would you say love?

You think it's pure love. You think it's really I think it's

too low

Honestly like the thing that comes to mind is like almost like marks. Oh, yeah, yeah, right then he's sort of like in it to

To win and the winning happens when you have sex and then yeah, then the game is over and we're done

It's not really infatuation because that implies

Some level of like attraction to something innate about that person

Yeah, to me it seems much more like like he's just sort of constantly setting personal best

But so the next

Bit of lighter fluid that is poured on this dynamic is that he starts doing drugs. Oh great. He discovered

Alcohol when he's like nine or ten him and a friend we're going through a sort of 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 around 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 Jesus God

So this then creates a pattern where he gets kicked out of acting school for showing a drunk and high all the time

He then has like this weird period of sort of like 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 have read very good move

But they find like a performance space and they start holding auditions

And it appears the only reason they're holding auditions is to like get contact with attractive women

No, so he's talking about them

Here, let me just send you this because it's gross

Thank you so much you do the gross ones

There were two women that were particularly sexy Claudine 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 cool story

It's not that like this is almost exactly what like gets him on TV. Yeah, is this kind of material right?

It's not like this was the dark side that none of us knew about it's like no no

He was talking about this shit. This is also the beginning of a pattern where the minute he can

He starts using his power to get late, right?

This isn't even that much power. It's like I'm putting on a play. I'm like a random guy

He's like writing a play and I have a performance space

Immediately he's using that power to get women in their bras. He's how old is he at this point? 17th great

So he's 17 and he's already doing the fucking Weinstein thing it's really shocking and also telling us about it years later

Yeah without any like man, this was really like how fucked up this was it's like ha ha funny story

I think that I did when I was a kid right

This is like sex criminal super villain fucking shit

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. Oh

Fuck his dad is a passport bro. He's a passport bro dude. I've watched enough 90 day fiancee to know all the fuck about this guy

Apparently the friend that he was going to go with dropped out

So he thinks what if my 17 year old son would like to come with me to Asia and go to a bunch of brothels

Holy fucking shit. They go it appears first to Thailand and then to Hong Kong

Russell only tells the story like the first experience they go to some sort of brothel

Where there's like a runway catwalk kind of thing where women are like walking back and forth and you can like pick one

You know, and so his dad picks two and he picks one named Mary Lou

Like part of the issue with passport bro

A long digression about why

No, why I have this like

Nying 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 like there's like a cultural expectation of subservience right they've sort of written a series of myths in their head

About like what amounts to if I go to this other country

There's a kind of woman who won't say no yeah

And there's something extremely dark about a kind of man who wants to engage in what they believe on some level to be like a boundary

Less sex so he chooses one sex worker named Mary Lou his dad chooses two sex workers

They go back to their hotel. They're saying it's some fancy hotel

Once they get to the room. They're like fooling around with these women

He says this

Naked I was shy about my body then I had trouble getting hard the blow job 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. So it's clearly kind of uncomfortable

Not sexual just giggly and intrusive is how I would describe a lot of Russell brands

Yeah, Jesus Christ. 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

Your juicy. So he's listening to his dad have sex with sex workers next door as he's having sex

Jesus god and he he clearly is like impressed by his dad

He describes this as in in this like aspirational way of just like oh someday. I'll be as cool as my dad

But like this is unbelievable fucking loser behavior before there was Andrew Tate

There were fuck off dads like this and here's the next morning

He comes up the next morning his dad is like reading the newspaper the breakfast table

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

Cool

In Bangkok when bar girls in Pat Pong 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. There are many memoirs that include like kind of disturbing stories

And then a person's like I went into recovery and I learned and I don't do this anymore whatever

But like there's no moment of reflection on this. Yeah, so the fact he's like I never wear a condom is like wow cool, man

Why yeah cool story, bro

What a good thing to put in your memoir about sex addiction. I mean like I guess so then he gets back to London

He gets into another acting school. He then gets kicked out of that too

I don't really know what it takes to get kicked out of acting school

Like not to say that it's not like a serious endeavor or whatever

But just like I genuinely don't know what conduct he says he shows up drunk every day. Oh

He drinks before or school and then he's like hammer that would do it

This is like too much because we already just like this guy but like god

This either is fake or it's real and fuck off

So here's this for he's talking about when he's uh in this period like post

drama school post getting kicked out of drama school number two

One of my brilliant gimmicks was to have a mouse living in my hair

He's doing around it too. I know this maybe this explains the rest of his career

Maybe it's actually just the mouse is in charge. 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 we 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. So I hope this is fake if this is real

This is like when was pathetic like attention getting things. I've ever heard in my life. Jesus fucking hell

Surely you could just get attention for people by being like nice to them

This is absolutely the kind of behavior that would uh make me avoid

Being around a person. Yeah, not necessarily because of the mouse not necessarily because of mouse smell

Not necessarily because of any of that kind of stuff

Well because of the for me it would be because of the mouse and the mouse smell, but okay

No, but just because of like the level of red flag that is like I know this person thinks this is how you engage with other people

And like I don't want to be engaged in these kinds of ways by a person

So I'm just gonna give them a real wide bird

I think this is like the only way that he knows how to relate to people is like people kind of gawking at him

Or be like wow you're so you're so wild and crazy Russell

Yeah, and in that way the sort of like very like

Hollywood experience of like sort of having an entourage, but maybe not necessarily having friends

I would think might suit him

We then have a period where he's dropped out of acting school

He's getting kind of 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 kind of like making it as an actor slash 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. What a cool fucking guy

There's I believe seven rape allegations at this point that he's on trial for and so as we're going

I'm gonna sort of put them in the chronology. I mean, 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 like 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 labor party conference in Bournemouth in

1999 that's the entirety of the charge

I guess from these stand-up comedy gigs. He then gets noticed by MTV and in 2001

He gets like a segment on MTV called dance floor chart where like he goes around to nightclubs and interviews people

He then gets fired from MTV in

late 2001 the way that he tells the 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 like eight-year-old son because he's like oh, I'm going to MTV

Like 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

He you know, he's high walking around this drug dealer is also high

It's the same day as Kylie Minogue is like 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 like 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

I was gonna say what are the chances that there was zero sex besting from Russell Brand?

Well, no, it actually isn't a sex best thing, Aubrey

What if you go to his like wake up idiot entry and he does mention this in his book but in this weird cursory way

This story is taking place on September 12th

2001 and he is dressed as Osama bin Laden

What in the fuck

So like he does say this here. I'm gonna send it to you

I was dressed in a white Muslim tunic with matching white bottoms a camouflage flack jacket a false beard and a tea towel on my head

Held in place by a shoelace cool. 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 sort of 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 and then he like tells the Kylie Minogue story

I just dealing this from the on brand podcast, which is an entire podcast about

I'm like Russell Brand sucks, which is very enjoyable

But like Kylie Minogue has met drug dealers before Kylie Minogue has met weird people backstage at things like

The Kylie Minogue thing has nothing to do with you getting fired

Right

Kylie Minogue probably had like a two-minute conversation with this guy. I was like well got to go

Like I don't think Kylie Minogue fucking like reported Russell brand

I think you got fired because you dressed as fucking Osama bin Laden the day after September 11th

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

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

You put a towel on your head you fucking asshole

He doesn't give any explanation for why you 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 like you 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 like I put a mouse in my hair like I wanted to get attention kind of thing

I don't know man like the day after they capture the fucking Golden State killer or you go on TV dressing up like that guy

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 uh another kind of like man on the street interview show on a like now defunct cable channel

My god stop giving him this specific job

Where they're like how do we expose him to the most people possible

He says together we can try to take on taboos have a fight with your dad to examine the idea of an edifice 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 what and like these are like little stunts that he does he ends up like jerking off a man

They're all just props. Yeah, yeah, right for him to do an outrageous thing

That is I mean, I do think that's core to the ideology

It's just like these are taboos. Yeah, but he's not seem to have any kind of like basic moral compass

Because one of the episodes is about hanging out with this guy who's as part of the British National Party

Which is like basically 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 like a super racist political party

It feels like a house with no foundation. Yeah, he's not meaningfully on the left or meaningfully on the right

No matter how he shows up because there's not like a foundational thing that he's tied to right right

There's not like a core driving morality underneath it. It's just oh, you don't want me to do this

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 like goes into inpatient rehab

It seems to work and he's sober for the rest of his life

According to him does he mention anything about staying in

Recovery spaces like does he go to meetings? He's really into 12 steps. Oh, okay

He brought a book called recovery that is kind of like part of his wellness pivot

It has 12 chapters in each chapter is like one of the steps

So he's like very much a 12 step guy the reason that I ask is there's this concept in

AA of like the dry drunk which is someone who's like not drinking but also not dealing with the shit that made them drink in the first place

Yeah, based on what we know comes next. It just seems like that might be part of the picture

It's actually really interesting because he 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 repacious 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 in random casual encounters

Boy, there's nothing quite so chilling as a white man referring to a harem and also how are you how are you doing this to I mean 10 people and also

One night stands. Do you think that's real? Oh, yeah, okay, and if you read the accounts of his accusers

He has this like urgency about sex and oftentimes he'll have a couple women in one night

It's not like you come over and you have to the 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

This is gay men territory. What are you doing?

It's really even as a gay man. I like this is you're fucking unwell. No totally so that isn't to 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

There's something about this like lack of detail and like one sentence that is so fucking chilling to me

There's another one. I believe also in season four that says he is also alleged to have grabbed a radio station workers face pushed her against a wall and kissed her before

Groping her breasts and buttocks in the expose 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

It's so dark because I think

His way of relating to himself is to interpret all of his actions as sort of playful

Yeah, yeah biting someone's face

Is an unhinged thing to do also imagine someone doing that to you with a mouse in their fucking hair

Makes it worse from hell

You're like all drunk mouse in hair hair smells like mouse piss and shit

So in 2005 that's when he goes to sex addiction treatment

Yeah, 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 oh the most the worst thing about being in rehab is that I really miss Sarah

But he hasn't mentioned Sarah. That's the first mentioned Sarah. I guess that's a woman. He's dating

But it's like does anyone edit these fucking books like they're just as person that he misses and then he mentions that she's 19

They were fighting he says that he like smashed a glass and then was like sort of using the shards to pretend

That he was gonna cut his wrists pretend is doing some heavy lifting there

But again, this is just in his diary entry

So you're like is this in the book or something else what what and of course, he'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. That was the point of concern

So he ends with this like oh, I learned all my lessons none of which I'm gonna actually explain at the end of this book

He then starts book two fucking bookie book two

He starts book two by bragging about the time he fucked Kate Moss

Well again, like 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

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 sure very talking dead territory one of the only things I laughed at in his book

He's talking about this big brother. It's called big brothers big mouth

He says I worked on the show for three years which encompassed seven seasons

Great. I fucking love reality

Fucking reality show

Just like cheer just churn through a man who cares

He also a thing that really rockets him to fame and I think 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. There's like a music

Music magazine music awards the new music express I believe 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 the lead singer of the strokes is named Julian Casablanca's yes

I guess he's in the midst of saying like the strokes are here. He says oh my man had a stroke

I think that's what killed her what was Julian Casablanca's thinking she was 90 years old

And she was a lesbian

What that's the joke the strokes

That's the whole that's the joke

Again the cadence of he

I know

Delivered with a thick accent from a guy doing a ratatouille he then introduces Bob Geldoff

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 four hundred times and I was in eighth grade

This is his introduction to Bob Geldoff. This is Russell brand

He says the winner of Best DVD is Bob Geldoff my best DVD is big natural tits 10

In a welcome return to form after the lazy and derivative big natural tits eight and nine

Of course we ain't really captured the glory days of big national tits one and two don't be ridiculous

But all this is academic because the big natural tits series has been overlooked again

Here's sir Bobby Gandalf

Introduces him

But then Bob Geldoff comes up and he just like leans he starts out. He just leans of the microphone. He says Russell brand what a cunt

Yeah, good job good job

It's also sort of the shortcoming of this kind of like edge lord era of humor

Which is just like you don't actually have to have a joke yeah sort of like his earlier stuff

The point is just like oh, it's taboo. So I'm gonna say yeah

That's not a joke. Yeah, a joke takes craftsmanship. A joke takes subversion of expectation

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

What did it say

What fucking sound what is this let's really drill down on this what is this a friend gave me a

Corporate jargon one

That's good. Let's put a pin in that. Let's circle back to that. That is the case. You're right. Aubrey. It takes dedication

What's standing out to me about this that I find really fascinating is

It's sort of a referendum on Russell brand of course and it should be

But it's also sort of like a pretty good reflection of like an era that enabled a generation of assholes

Yeah, right like this is also the era of

Adam Corolla Don I miss yeah, all of these like fucking dickweed edge lord assholes

Who were just like I'm gonna say the most shocking thing possible

And it would often be about shit that was like taboo for a fucking reason

Oh, you man get you mad about this and then you get to do the whole fucking stick

We're like they're all mad at me again

And he also gets a chat show on MTV around this time and becomes the kind of person who just like 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 kind of like specific women who allege abuse

But then we also get allegations that he was using his contact at the BBC and at channel four

To recruit audience members from these shows and like send them backstage

It says tv researchers and runners who worked on channel four shows during this period

A legend that brand would get staff to approach young female audience members

So he could meet them after filming

Oh boy

Another kind of 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 like using his power to like systematically

Recruit women to have sex with allegedly

Yeah, so this is also like the mid-2000s

Which means that the response to this kind of media would have been like wow it looks like those women made some bad choices

There's also in December of 2007

Somebody made a complaint about quote an alarming display of aggression and disrespect

Which included brand hurling objects across the studio in fits of rage and quote

Euronating in a bottle in full view of everyone sorry. This is after he gets sober

Yeah, that's actually super fascinating to me a lot of these anecdotes are basically like what other people would describe is their rock bottom

I'm sure the time I pissed in a cup

I'm sure in front of staff at one hundred percent rock bottom. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. So

There is after these abuse allegations the article detailing the abuse allegations come out

BBC and channel four both launch like 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

God imagine living in a media environment where the media goes

Wait a minute. Did we have a hand in this or like or like when did we write this down? Is there said?

Is there something we should have done differently here? I mean 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 like fairly big celebrities

Like he interviews like Tom Cruise and stuff and so here is him talking about a celebrity encounter

Neil brought Courtney love with him who is a mad and chantress a rasping white witch

Barney 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

Pond those who enter a kind of Blarney family

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. He later says like 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. Yeah. I mean, Mike. What do you expect? He's saying her vagina is good

What higher praises there than that am I not supposed to say this when I talk about you

We're like tell me about your co-host. Well, let's start with her vagina and work our way outward

Blarney vagina

Describe my vagina

Workshop it

fellas

Is it gay to describe your co-host vagina? It's actually not problematic because I am gay

I'm allowed to describe your vagina. It's gay not to

God what a fucking twerp

Okay, so this is like the hardest transition of the whole show. We're like giggly and stuff

We now have to talk about the

16-year-old that he dated uh, and allegedly

Orally raped if it's a 16-year-old. What's the age of consent in the UK?

Unfortunately 16 so it was not illegal

Shit, I'm saying well, I'm saying unfortunate also because I don't like knowing what the ages of consent are in places

Because anyone who can like rattle off like oh, I know that's 17. You're like no

I don't want to be the guy who can answer your question exactly like get it like over hearing a conversation to rest

I'm like oh actually at 16 and you pay

It's actually a fee buffelia that's the energy so this is from I keep mentioning this

But there's a very good investigation by the Sunday Times the Times of London and Channel 4 which bruises 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

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 you 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 again. You see this extremely

Aggressive way of hitting on women, right? But also like when you're 16

Dude, I know I know you don't know that this dude is like actively dangerous to you

necessarily yet in your life. There's then this period where

It's like he's acutely aware of her age and how inappropriate this is so he asked her to read Lolita

Which is a really fucking weird detail

He asked 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 holy fucking shit

He coaches her on what to say to her parents. He also sends

A car to her high school to like pick her up and take her to his house

And there's this heartbreaking scene where like 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

This is you know to borrow a fucking very law and orderly phrase

This is like evidence of premeditation, right? Yeah, 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 like

Regardless of the age of consent in a given place. This is fucking grooming behavior read Lolita

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. So oh my call

This is how it ended 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

It's either totally just reckless and like 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 like horrible scene so that she has to break up with me

It's also like not for nothing

It is kind of nuts that he does dress like a cartoon villain to be fair

He has been telling us very loudly who he fucking is for his entire career real long time yep totally

We also this is like now the fucking sexual assault montage it wasn't before no if 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 not entanglement with a celebrity

And in the book she calls him Randall grand. She she's elsewhere said that this was based on Russell brand

Smudge will shman

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

Sounds like our guy. 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

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 prerecord an episode of the Russell brand show for radio too

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. Yeah, 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 when she

What that is weird when she said that wasn't her name

She says he replied well, I'm gonna fuck you and I said no, you're not

She says he then pulled out his penis on his hand and quote 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 like having a dog that needs to be on a fucking leash

This woman Olivia texts a friend and she's like a fucking Russell brand just like whipped his dick out in the bathroom good for Olivia

And he goes I know they're talking about it live on the air

What they're like joking on air one of his days co-host says it's been 25 minutes since he showed his willy to anyone

And brand is like laughing. He's like easy for you to judge boy

Oh fucking so this is like a bit within like 15 fucking minutes

It's a fucking bit on the air. I don't even know how to fucking process this shit

And also everyone every it's so extreme. I think everyone assumes it has to be a joke

I guess what a lethario that's like that's the persona that he was able to cultivate but it like was not a fucking persona

There are lots of like real dip shit dumb guy parts of

American media and political landscapes

One of them really is like boy oh boy the degree to which we get charmed by a british accent and a lot I know

Terrible fucking behavior. So the final episode that we are going to talk about before we close

Are you familiar with sacks gate? Is this one one owner writer did her shoplifting? No, it's uh Andrew sacks

I know this name. Why do I know this name? You're like a UK comedy nerd. You watch faulty towers growing up, right? Oh, sure

I was like obsessed with faulty towers when I was a kid

So the guy who plays man well on faulty towers is named Andrew sacks

Okay, he is into this eight kind of like an elder statesman kind of guy

He's like an old guy kind of 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. Oh boy. 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

You know like a bunch of dudes and it's kind of like zany and there's like sound effects and shit. Oh

I'm so sorry. Do you mean sound board energy?

I was trying not to say the word because I knew you'd get you'd get inspired

I'm at capacity

This is the worst sound board, Aubrey. It's really not good and I love it. That's kind of what I love the most about it

That's a new planter

So this Andrew sacks 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. Oh

And they talk to his answering machine. I have a vague recollection about this

Where they are like

Fucking sex pests about his daughter or something

Grand daughter. Yes

Creep fucking city the thing is I was going to skip this because that's so it's just a very weird

Controversy for reasons we will get into but people in the UK say like you cannot underestimate how fucking big of a deal

This was like literally front page news for like months. This is a massive scandal at time. Yeah

So we are going to read a transcript of the answering machine message

So I want to send you this transcript you are going to be Russell brand. Oh

I'm gonna be Jonathan Ross because I know if I made you Jonathan Ross you tried it in voice. No

I would not try to do the voice

Hello, Andrew sacks. 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 answer phone. Let's do it man

Er Andrew sacks. Don't call him Manuel. That's really bad manners. I apologize for Russell. He's an idiot

I said Andrew sacks look Andrew sacks

I have got respect for you and your lineage and your progeny

Never let that be questioned. Don't hint. I weren't hinting

Why did that come across as a hint because you know what you did that wasn't a hint. He fucked your granddaughter

Jesus fucking Christ you stuff so cute. What what a couple of little rugs

So we find out it was not clear at the time

But we do find out later that Russell brand did briefly date his granddaughter

Russell brand at this point would have been in his 30s. Yeah early 30s

Yeah, and the granddaughters in her early 20s Jonathan Ross is like fucking 50

I mean, he's just always been 50. It's unclear. He's middle-aged for forever. It's like a gene hackman situation

That's fucking nuts like a middle-aged man being like he fucked your granddaughter like what in the fuck are we doing?

It is the two boys on the telephone being like Mary and so when I head sex with you I head sex with you right

You're confirming that I had sex with you while I'm taping it. Shut up. Hang up. Hang up. Hang up. Yeah

Also, I was thinking about this from Georgina's

Perspective that like okay, you date this guy

Whatever it appeared 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 is she a public figure in her own right at this point? Yeah, I mean not like a major public figure

But she was a dancer and like was on the scene in some sense

But like yeah, this she was not a public figure in like you know a Helen Mirren sense, right?

Or like I love that Helen Mirren was the name that my only one British women famous sex scandal

Helen Mirren they then hang up and then they talk amongst themselves

So this is them sort of doing like a little recap Andrew Sacks. I did not do nothing with Georgina. Oh, no. I revealed

I know her name. Oh, no, it's a disaster a board a board 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

She was on a swing when I met her let's ring back Andrew Sacks cute fucking gross then they call again

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 and I would like to be the page boy

He wants to be a page boy. We're going to have a faulty towers themed wedding now you've spoiled it

No, I mean it better. I'm sorry. I'll do anything. I wore a condom put the phone down and then there's one of the hang up

I'm gonna and then there's a third message

This is also brand singing, but I'm not gonna make you come up with a tune. Thank you

Hmm, I'd like to apologize for the terrible attacks Andrew Sacks

I would like to show contrition to the max Andrew Sacks

I would like to create world peace between the yellow white and blacks Andrew Sacks great

I said something. I didn't have auto 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 Sacks

She wasn't menstrual

What a fucking creep unbelievable if I as a human being and

encountering someone who's willing to go to these kinds of lengths

I'm like get away from me for forever

Because if you're willing to be this level of boundary crossing

Then I think there maybe is no

Rock bottom for you at the time. It isn't really noticed apparently the BBC only got two complaints about this at the time

Yeah, but then the daily mail

Seizes on this as a way to attack the BBC right because the right wing hates public media

Yeah, and so they're like the BBC allowed this smut to go in the air

And then the BBC starts getting flooded with complaints and then it becomes a big scandal

I feel kind of complicated about it because like 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

It's it's weird to be like am I siding with what would then become mum's net?

I know right like you don't want to sort of be in the same camp

But I do think you got to sort of stand in your repulsed reaction to this and be like

This is like not actually fucking okay

So he is fired from the BBC over this Jonathan Ross is given I believe it six weeks or maybe six months of unpaid leave

The controller of the BBC is forced to resign and the BBC is fine 140,000 pounds

This is like 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

Yeah, he's fired from MTV for dressing up as Osama bin Laden

He's like disgraced on the radio and on TV

His award show the enemy award show thing was like considered a debacle at the time

He just keeps like fucking up and then people keep giving him second third and fourth chances

And this sort of happens again after this and by the time he comes back to the UK

It's kind of memory hold because all of a sudden he's a movie star

Yeah, I mean part of it is that that is like a little bit part of his persona, right?

Is that he's like I'm a lovable fuck up. Yeah exactly don't expect better

That would have been a better fucking title for his book than bookie book don't expect better

So that is where we're gonna leave Russell brand and next episode

We are going to pick it up with his journey to America and his travails in Hollywood

Can I give a preview of what my reaction is?

I know you have your little soundboard in front of you. I know what you're gonna do

Is it the size soundboard?

Disappointed side is the name of this one

Is that all it does? Yeah, do you want to hear male sigh? Yeah

Oh

Dude you as a millennial podcaster should not have told me about that because I can now replace you with one of those

I've always been replaceable by a soundboard

You