Russell Brand admitted in his memoir to grabbing fellow students' genitals while at school, writing that "no one was safe from me." The former comedian and actor, now 51, is set to be sentenced on Monday after being found guilty of rape and sexual assaults.
Memoir details 'genital grabbing' game
In his first memoir, My Booky Wook, Brand wrote about playing a "genital grabbing" game while still a schoolboy, admitting that he groped fellow pupils. The book covers his life up to the point where he became famous.
He wrote: "Another dubious attention-seeking device that I invented at this school was the game 'genital grabbing', which is very simple and easy to play but fraught with dreadful connotations for its participants and severe vilification for its unwitting inventor."
"At that time, I didn't think of this activity as sexual, but it does seem a little odd that this would be the kind of social tool that I would manufacture – going up to people and grabbing their winkies or vaginas."
He later wrote of his classmates: "No one was safe from me… every female was a potential target."
Conviction and sentencing
Brand was found guilty at Southwark Crown Court of raping a woman in 2009, as well as sexually assaulting female TV and radio workers between 2004 and 2009. Mr Justice Bennathan ordered Brand to start his prison sentence immediately after the guilty verdict last Thursday afternoon.
A four-week trial heard how Brand preyed on women he encountered on his way to becoming one of Britain's best-known comedians, a lauded TV and radio host, and a Hollywood actor briefly married to singer Katy Perry. He claimed to have only ever had consensual sex during a "promiscuous" life, which he insisted had been packed with "idiocy" but never illegal.
Brand was convicted by the jury of raping a 21-year-old fan in 2009, after meeting her following one of his stand-up shows at the Hammersmith Apollo. He was also convicted of putting his head into the groin of a female Channel 4 worker after she had been forced to give him a massage in 2009.
Brand, who claimed to be the victim of a media conspiracy, was convicted of rape and three sexual assaults, and cleared of two further charges of rape and one allegation of attempted indecent assault.
