Russell Brand has been jailed for ten years and six months at Southwark Crown Court after being convicted of raping a fan in 2009 and sexually assaulting three other women over a five-year period during the peak of his career.
The disgraced former comedian made numerous admissions about his treatment of women in his 2007 autobiography, My Booky Wook, including an account of smashing a sex worker's mobile phone against a wall in a fit of rage.
Phone smashed in fit of rage
In the memoir, Brand described an encounter with an escort for whose services he had paid "a lot of money". He wrote: "Eventually she agreed to have sex, but a kind of weary, half-hearted, semi-erect, bored, disappointing bit of sex, for which I'd paid a lot of money. During this act of tawdry friction her phone rang again."
The extract continues: "'Could you turn that phone off,' I asked. 'I can't relax'. She took the call. I began to wish I hadn't left the boat. 'Brydon's probably doing 'Delilah' by now,' I mused, to which actually helped my erection."
He then described the moment he lost his temper: "Another twenty seconds of boring rubbish goes past, then the phone rings again, and I, and this is the worst act of misogyny I've committed since the spitting debacle, took the phone out her hand and threw it at a wall. Slow motion."
"It hits the wall and smashes, and she looks at me, the sex stops, and we separate. Silence. Then I say, realizing my position is compromised, 'For f***k's sake, you kept answering the phone'. And she looks at me."
Reaction to the revelations
Social media users reacted with disbelief to the passages, with one saying they "shuddered" while re-reading the section from Brand's book. Another replied: "There's lots of examples of awful behaviour in that book." A third said: "This is horrific."
In the same book, Brand also claimed his father, Ron, paid for him to lose his virginity at a brothel in Hong Kong when he was 17 years old. He wrote: "The episode that defined my relationship with women occurred in Hong Kong with my dad. I was 17. On day one we went to some sleazy dive."
"Before long I was sat on a bar stool with a Filipino called Mary-Lou. Then we were leaving in a cab with three Asian prostitutes my dad was drunkenly herding. Back in the hotel, my dad set about unwrapping his two prostitutes. I sat on the edge of the other twin bed. She must have known I was a virgin as soon as the bungling encounter commenced."
Brand arrived at court this morning ahead of the sentencing hearing, which concluded with the ten-year-and-six-month prison term.
