Russell Brand admits he was ‘wrong’ to use fame in pursuit of sex

Russell Brand told jurors at his rape trial he has dedicated much of his life to “beyond reckless philandering and idiocy”, and admitted he had been wrong to use his fame to get sex.

The 51-year-old gave evidence for more than four hours at Southwark Crown Court, insisting that “consent is more important than sex itself” and issuing a string of denials to the charges he faces.

He is accused of raping women in a hotel room, at his home, and in a bar toilet, and other women have accused Brand of sexually assaulting them in a recording studio and a radio station corridor.

Brand told jurors he now believes it was “wrong” that he used his fame in the 2000s to “facilitate sexual access”.

He said: “As I became more successful and famous I was very comfortable allowing that to facilitate sexual access which I agree with you was wrong.”

As his evidence concluded on Wednesday afternoon, he said: “I do recognise I have been a very determined and focused man.

“With women, of course, which is the subject of my trial, I’ve been persuasive, seductive, begging and flirting, and dedicated a lot of my life to what seems now beyond reckless philandering, and idiocy.”

During the course of his evidence, Brand told the court he does not remember some of the incidents in the charges and in others he remembers only a consensual sexual encounter.

Brand opened his evidence with a string of one word “no” answers when his barrister, Ian Winter KC, asked if he had committed the offences in the charges.

He told the court he blames the media for his downfall in recent years, following 2023 reporting of sexual misconduct allegations in a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary and Times and Sunday Times stories.

Brand said he has failed to find any friends and former colleagues who would give evidence in his defence, while he recounted being blocked from visiting his baby son when he was having open heart surgery at Great Ormond Street Hospital in the wake of the 2023 allegations.

On Wednesday afternoon, Brand described the last few years as “deeply traumatic”, and told the court focusing on the allegations and trying to remember incidents from his past had damaged his personal life.

“Since these events occurred there’s been escalating recollection,” he said, to counter the accusations from prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones KC that his statements to police and in the court process were different.

He said: “It’s been a deeply traumatic episode of my life I’ve focused on at the expense of my marriage, my children and my health.

“I ask your forgiveness, well, not your forgiveness. I recognise that this recollection includes small details that are inconsistent and I acknowledge that.”

Brand said in evidence that he had an “obsession” in his younger life with sex, but denied setting himself a “goal” to sleep with 5,000 women.

He suggested a reported conversation in 1999 about never leaving an interaction with a woman without a “conquest” was actually a riff on an old Woody Allen joke.

One of the allegations is that Brand sexually assaulted a Channel 4 worker in 2009 during a recording session, after she had been forced by members of his entourage to give him a massage.

Brand agreed that, while he says he cannot remember that day, it would have been “petulant and childish” to refuse to continue the recording without first receiving a massage.

Asked by Ms Karmy-Jones if he had found thrusting his head into her lap funny, Brand replied: “I don’t remember. I don’t think it’s funny now.”

The prosecutor told him: “We are dealing with the man you were, not the man you are now,” and Brand replied: “Quite probably he thought it was funny, it’s not very nice.”

During the course of his time in the witness box, Brand was also confronted with extracts from his own 2007 book, My Booky Wook.

The first alleged rape victim has told the court she believed Brand was gay when they first met at a Labour Party conference fringe event, leading to her agreeing for him to come to her hotel room.

In his book, Brand used a picture of himself as a seven-year-old and wrote the caption: “This is the exact moment when I decided to act gay to attract girls. It took 15 years to produce results.”

The prosecutor said: “That’s something you would do, wasn’t it? That was something you would do to make girls trust you?”

“No,” Brand replied.

Ms Karmy-Jones read out other extracts from the book, in which Brand had said he “would never have relented until I received my birthright orgasm”.

In another he wrote: “My egotism and the single-mindedness with which I pursued potentially sexual conquests could often make me uneasy company”, and in another he set out: “Now if I want something – whether it’s a job or a woman – I will determinedly, resolutely, remove anything that’s in the way, until I possess the object of my desire.”

In the book, Brand referred to himself as a “fervid, febrile mass of sexual energy” towards the end of sex, adding: “I’ll do anything. I’m demonically sexy.”

And he said it ends up with him as a “guilty little berk in a sweaty tank top”.

Ms Karmy-Jones put to Brand that he is “guilty”, and he responded: “Actually not guilty is my plea in every single case.”

Brand denies three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault, and one charge of attempted indecent assault.

The judge, Mr Justice Bennathan, told jurors at the end of Wednesday that they are likely to start considering their verdicts on Tuesday next week.

The trial continues.