Russell Brand has told a court he had an obsession with sex as a younger man but denied setting himself a “goal” to sleep with 5,000 women. The 51-year-old is giving evidence in his trial at Southwark Crown Court, where he faces three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one charge of attempted indecent assault.
The former comedian insisted he has never forced himself on a woman, telling jurors that consent is “non-negotiable” and “more important than sex itself”. He blamed the media for his downfall after being the focus of 2023 reporting on sexual misconduct claims, and said he has been unable to find any friends or former colleagues willing to give evidence in his defence.
Accusations and Court Evidence
Brand has been accused by six women of sexual assaults between 1999 and 2009, including forced sex in a hotel and sexual assaults in a bar, at a radio station and at Channel 4. The court heard he stored the number of a fan who has accused him of rape with the letter “T” next to her name, meaning “tart”.
Under intense questioning from prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones KC, Brand denied pretending to be gay in his pursuit of women. His former friend, Mark Pinheiro, has told the trial that Brand had boasted on a car journey to the Labour party conference in Bournemouth about his techniques for “pulling” women and allegedly revealed an ambition to sleep with 5,000 women.
Denials Under Cross-Examination
Ms Karmy-Jones asked: “Is it a goal you may have had?” Brand replied: “I don’t agree, I don’t recall the conversation you are referring to.” When pressed again, he replied: “No, not a goal.”
Brand admitted he was “obsessed” with sex in his younger years but denied the extent of the impact on his life. When asked if he accepted that he was “desperate for it and sometimes couldn’t function without it”, Brand said “No”. The prosecutor said Brand had not answered police questions when first challenged over the claims and accused him of “forging” his case around the evidence of his alleged victims, a suggestion he rejected.
At times, Brand went completely silent when Ms Karmy-Jones posed a question, leading her to ask whether he found the questions “difficult to answer”. Turning to Mr Pinheiro’s claims about their car journey conversation, he said: “While I don’t remember, it’s entirely possible it’s the kind of badinage (banter) I would have engaged in when I was 24.”
Allegations and Defence
On the Bournemouth trip, Brand is accused of raping a woman he met on the last night of a week of performances of the Soapbox Cabaret, an event staged on the fringes of the 1999 Labour party conference. Brand told the court he was “pretty excited” to go to the conference, at a time before he was famous, but he also conceded he was “more interested in having sex than the show”.
It was suggested Brand had pretended to be gay in order to convince the woman he is accused of raping to let him join her in her hotel room. Ms Karmy-Jones produced a page from Brand’s book, My Booky Wook, which had a picture of him aged seven with the caption: “This is the exact moment when I decided to act gay to attract girls. It took 15 years to produce results.” Brand denied pretending to be gay, adding: “It’s a joke. ‘Look at me, I’m a little boy in my garden and 15 years later… I was meeting women’. It was a joke.”
Among the allegations is that Brand raped a fan after meeting her at one of his Hammersmith Apollo stand-up performances in 2009. He told the court he stored her name next to the letter T, which he said stood for “tart”. The woman says Brand forced himself on her during an encounter at his north London townhouse, a few days after she had willingly engaged in a threesome with the star backstage at the Apollo.
Asked what he meant by the word “tart”, he replied: “That was what I used to denote casual hook-ups.” He also put two asterisks next to the woman’s name, which he told the jury meant: “Never, ever forget this individual, this is a memorable encounter.”
Brand is accused of forcing the woman into anal sex when she came to his home, but he said in evidence that he was “excited and enthusiastic” ahead of their meeting, and he believed she was consenting because of how she had behaved during the backstage threesome. He suggested the woman had not said “no” or told him to stop during sex, and described her attitude as “coquettishness, coyness” but consensual.
He also said he cannot remember exchanging texts with the woman months later during a chance encounter at the Edinburgh Festival, but accepted it was possible he had messaged to say he wanted to “push you further”. He said he may have been intimating they could “have sex more, maybe have another threesome”, and conceded he may have said “sorry” when she told him he had treated her “like an animal”. But he told the court the apology would have been because she “expressed sadly, unhappiness, regret”.
At the start of his evidence, Brand repeatedly and tersely said the word “no” when the individual claims were put to him and he was asked if he had raped and sexually assaulted the women. The trial continues.
