A woman has told a court that Russell Brand sexually assaulted her in a crowded Soho bar in 2004, groping her breasts before dragging her into a toilet cubicle and forcing her to perform oral sex.
In a recorded police interview played at Southwark Crown Court on Monday, the woman said she was excited to meet Brand at a birthday party at the Nordic Bar in Soho, but within a minute of starting a conversation he had assaulted her.
She described Brand as having a "weird maniacal grin" as he grabbed her breasts, and said he later looked "like a clown" with "that sort of weird look in the eye".
The alleged assault
The woman, who was in her 20s and working for MTV at the time, said: "He literally just grabbed my boobs, out of nowhere, just in the middle of a conversation and I just remember this weird maniacal grin, looming in front of me as he just grabbed my boobs.
"I was completely in shock and was like 'what the hell are you doing? I've literally just met you'.
"Then literally he grabbed my arm and dragged me into the toilets."
She said the floor of the toilet was flooded and Brand jumped on to the closed toilet lid. "It just happened so fast", she said.
She alleged that Brand unzipped his trousers and tried to force her into oral sex. She said she pushed him off and said: "What are you doing, I don't want to do this?"
She told police: "He was like 'come on, come on, don't be a spoilsport' or something along those lines. He just kept pushing my head down and wouldn't let me go."
The woman said she "froze" and "didn't know what to do" as she was forced to perform the sex act. Afterwards, she remembered a man knocking on the toilet door saying: "Are you OK?"
She said: "Russell just sort of casually walked out and unlocked it and I just walked out in a daze. I remember this really, really clearly – he turned to me and went 'Oh, I guess we should swap numbers now', like it was just all normal, like he hadn't just forced me to do that."
After the alleged assault
The woman said she felt "numb" afterwards and walked around the bar trying to find a friend, but was then ushered into the back of a car – which she believes was hired by Big Brother producers Endemol – with Brand.
She recalled: "I just felt this nudge… and I looked round and he had his penis out again in the car, with these two guys sitting in the front, and he's going 'Come on, come on, suck it', and I was just like 'no'. He took 'no' for an answer then."
The woman, who is the third of Brand's accusers to give evidence, said she told a friend about part of the encounter but "didn't want to admit that I'd done it to anybody, because I feel like I probably could have stopped it, I don't know".
She added: "I just felt this shame that I allowed him to do that to me. I just didn't want to admit it to myself, not to anyone, but it had happened."
She said 2023 media reports about Brand's alleged sexual misconduct led her to come forward to police, telling the officer: "Seeing it all in the press has made me relive it all."
The charges
Brand, 51, is on trial accused of three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault, and one allegation of indecent assault. He denies all the charges and says all the sexual encounters were consensual.
The former comedian and TV host, who was one of Channel 4's top stars in the 2000s and also had a BBC Radio 2 show, is also accused of raping a woman in a hotel room at the Labour Party conference and trying to drag another woman into a toilet at the MTV studios.
He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges. The trial continues.
