Russell Brand has denied pretending to be gay to gain the trust of a woman who alleges he raped her after they met at the Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth in 1999. The comedian was questioned about a passage in his 2007 autobiography, My Booky Wook, during cross-examination at Southwark Crown Court on Wednesday.
Memoir caption questioned
Prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones KC showed the jury a photograph of Brand as a young boy, accompanied by the caption: “This is the exact moment when I decided to act gay to attract girls. It took 15 years to produce results.” Ms Karmy-Jones asked whether he had pretended to be gay to make women trust him. “No,” Brand replied.
Asked whether it was possible he had portrayed himself as gay, he said: “I don’t think so.” The prosecutor later asked whether the caption meant he had pretended to be gay to attract women. Brand said: “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.”
Account of alleged encounter
The court heard Brand’s account of the alleged encounter with the woman, whom he said he remembered meeting on the fringes of the Labour Party Conference. He told the jury he believed he would have asked her questions during sex, including: “am I doing this right? Do you like this? Is this OK? Are you enjoying this? Is this alright?” He added: “Things like that, really, in order to elicit approval.”
Brand said he thought there was “at least the possibility of sex” when the woman invited him to her hotel room. He said he found her “vivacious” and “interesting”, and had given her his email address because he hoped they could remain in contact. Asked by Ms Karmy-Jones whether he was seeking more than consent, Brand said he was “seeking her approval”. “Are you making this up as you stand here, Mr Brand?” the prosecutor asked. “Seeking her approval, and no,” he replied.
Consent and other allegations
Brand told the court that consent was “fundamental, essential, necessary, and indeed in many ways more important than sex itself”. He later said: “Consent is absolutely non-negotiable.” Ms Karmy-Jones suggested Brand had pushed the woman onto a bed against her will and used her previous experience of rape against her when she said no. Brand denied both suggestions.
Asked whether he cared if the woman wanted to have sex with him, he replied: “Yes, I cared very much.” He said he could not remember “prancing around” her hotel room or jumping on the bed like an “ostrich”, but acknowledged that he used to “mess around, fool around and show off a lot”.
Brand admitted he had been “obsessed” with sex in his younger years but denied being so desperate for it that he sometimes could not function without it. He also denied having a goal of sleeping with 5,000 women, a comment his former friend Mark Pinheiro told the court had been made in 1999. “I don’t agree, I don’t recall the conversation you are referring to,” Brand said. Asked whether he had told Mr Pinheiro he would not leave a situation with a woman without a conquest, he replied: “I don’t remember.”
Brand said an alleged comment about not leaving without a conquest sounded like a joke based on comedian Woody Allen. He told the court: “That sounds specifically like a riff on a Woody Allen joke when he said the only advice my dad ever gave me on his death bed was ‘always try and (f***) the waitress’. It was a joke.”
Earlier in his evidence, Brand denied allegations involving other complainants, including an alleged attempted indecent assault at MTV studios in 2001, an alleged assault involving a radio worker and allegations relating to encounters at a Soho bar in 2004 and his home in 2009. He denied grabbing a woman’s breast shortly after meeting her at a party, describing the alleged behaviour as “obviously criminal but it’s obviously vulgar”. He also denied forcing a woman into a toilet cubicle with him.
Regarding the allegation involving a fan at his home in 2009, Brand said she had not told him to stop during sex. He described her attitude as “coquettishness, coyness” and said he did not know she had been in pain afterwards. Brand told the court that his recollection of some encounters had improved after watching police interviews and visiting locations connected to the allegations.
He said his “entire life has been consumed” by the allegations and described the consequences of their publication in September 2023 as “devastating”. At the conclusion of his evidence on the allegations, Brand denied sexually assaulting the complainant. Asked by defence barrister Ian Winter KC whether he was guilty or innocent, he said: “I’m innocent.” The trial continues.
