The trial of convicted rapist Russell Brand has brought renewed attention to his complicated relationship with his father, Ron Brand, who regularly attended the proceedings at Southwark Crown Court in support of his son.
Brand, 51, is due to be sentenced after being found guilty last week of raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others. Ron arrived at court on Monday wearing a hat and carrying a brown bag over his shoulder.
Father's Support and Reaction
Ron attended court throughout the four-week trial and told the BBC he was "bemused and shocked" by the guilty verdicts. "I just didn't expect this - it's wrong... it's devastating," he said after Brand was convicted of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault on Thursday.
During a lift ride one morning, Ron insisted to reporters that his son was the victim because women "threw themselves" at him, The Telegraph reported.
A Tumultuous Father-Son Relationship
Brand published two autobiographies, My Booky Wook (2007) and Booky Wook 2: This Time It's Personal (2010), in which he detailed his struggles with alcohol, drugs and sex addiction, as well as his "tumultuous" relationship with his dad.
Brand was the only child of a single mum, who suffered three bouts of cancer before he was 17, leading him to live with various relatives. While Brand was very close to his mum, he had a "strange" relationship with his dad, who he said left when he was just six months old and maintained a "sporadic" presence in his life.
Early Memories and Influences
He recounted how his father paid for his first visit to a prostitute in Thailand when he was 17, adding: "Of course, that's not a particularly healthy endeavor for a father and son to pursue together."
Brand also described one of his first memories as watching porn at his dad's bachelor pad in Brentwood, Essex, while Ron entertained women in his bedroom.
In My Booky Wook, Brand wrote: "An additional source of dangerous nourishment was my dad's reservoir of porn. I think I always had a premature awareness of sexuality, but Ron Brand's penchant for leaving me to occupy my infant mind with his cache of girlie magazines certainly did nothing to stem the erotic tide."
He said he believed he wasn't "kind of person my dad would have wanted me to be" and always wished his dad "liked him a little more".
He wrote: "I thought Ron Brand was great and in lots of ways. He taught me that you can get what you want if you refuse to let circumstances defeat you, and perhaps there is no more valuable lesson.
"I only wish I'd felt he liked me more... how I viewed my dad at that point was as this magnificent bloke who was either reading newspapers, picking his nose, farting or making an incredible fuss of women.
"Sometimes he would turn the light of his attention on me and it would be brilliant. He'd tease me and wind me up and be very funny, but he'd get bored really quickly, and then I'd just be there again - all tubby and useless."
Brand said the pair did not have much in common, describing the only two interests they shared as "football and women".
In a 2009 interview with The Observer, Brand said he was not speaking to his father at the time, saying "there's something I'm not at ease with in my relationship with him".
