A resurfaced 2006 clip shows Russell Brand and David Walliams joking that they pretended to be gay as a way of attracting women. The interaction took place decades before Brand, 51, was sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison for rape and sexual assault, and while Walliams, 55, faces allegations of sexual misconduct from a joint investigation by ITV News and The Guardian.
The 2006 Exchange
On November 24, 2006, Walliams and his comedy partner Matt Lucas appeared on the first episode of Brand's new show, The Russell Brand Show. During the episode, the pair shared a kiss before Walliams presented Brand with an antique top hat.
Lucas joked: "You are like the two gayest straight blokes there are." Walliams responded: "Isn't it a wonderful smokescreen?" Brand then remarked: "Isn't it glorious? It works wonderfully well."
There is no suggestion that Walliams was aware of Brand's offending or was involved in any wrongdoing.
Walliams Faces Allegations
On Tuesday, November 10, Walliams was named as the male celebrity who lost his bid for an injunction to prevent the publication of allegations against him. The former Britain's Got Talent judge had brought legal action against Independent Television News (ITN) and Guardian News and Media (GNM), publisher of The Guardian.
The Little Britain star is accused of "abusing his status" to engage in "inappropriate and exploitative sexual activities" with women and girls. A woman named 'Jade' in the investigation claims Walliams sexually assaulted her when she was 15, kissing her in an alleyway in Soho before driving to his house where he kissed her again and sucked her breast. Another woman, known as Alex, said she met Walliams at a fan event when she was 15, and they began a sexual relationship when she was 17 in 2006.
Walliams is also accused of inappropriate conduct at Britain's Got Talent and at his former publisher, HarperCollins. The investigation alleged that he had a sexual relationship with at least one junior employee at HarperCollins and pursued another.
Walliams Denies Allegations
Walliams denies the allegations of wrongdoing against him, including criminal activity. He says claims that he targeted teenage women and used his celebrity status to manipulate them to have sex with him are false, and that he has never engaged in the grooming of young women. He rejects allegations that he behaved inappropriately or sexually harassed anyone in the workplace.
In a statement to The Guardian and ITV News, Walliams said: "Looking back, I realise that at times I behaved thoughtlessly towards other people I had casual sexual relationships with… I realise I did not always take people's feelings properly into account. That is something I regret. And whilst a power imbalance is inevitable when one party is famous, abusing that power is something else entirely and it is something that I never did… I am not a sexual predator… I have not broken the law… I am devastated that some of the women I met ten to twenty years ago have now expressed hurt or anger towards me."
Brand's Sentencing
The resurfaced clip came one day after Brand was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for rape and sexual assault. During the trial, Brand was questioned about a passage in his 2007 autobiography, My Booky Wook, where he shared a childhood photo of himself leaning against a wall, wearing a hat and wig, with one hand on his hip. "This is the exact moment when I decided to act gay to attract girls. It took 15 years to produce results," he captioned the post.
Brand was sentenced to nine years' imprisonment for raping a 21-year-old fan he met after one of his Hammersmith Apollo shows in 2009. He will serve this consecutively with three other sentences: nine months for sexually assaulting a woman at a bar in London in 2004, where he grabbed her breasts; 18 months for sexually assaulting a woman at the Choice FM studios in London in 2005; and eight months for sexually assaulting a Channel 4 worker in 2009, where he laid his head into her groin area without her consent. These sentences will be served concurrently. The comedian is likely to serve two-thirds of his sentence in custody, according to the Sentencing Council.
