Russell Brand, the fallen icon of the British left

Before falling into disgrace, Russell Brand (Essex, 1975) was the wayward comedian of the Tory era, promoted to the altars of comedy after his time in Hollywood and his famous and fleeting marriage to the singer Katy Perry. Upon his return to the United Kingdom, the foul-mouthed comedian carried his quirky air as a messiah of the British left, as the conservative tabloids viciously remember these days.

He wrote columns in The Guardian, directed a special issue of The New Statesman (in which the singer Noel Gallagher and the author Naomi Klein participated, among others), rose to the stratosphere on social networks, signed million-dollar contracts for his books with HarperCollins and Random House (from his memoirs “Booky Wookd 2” to the manifesto “Revolution” to “Recovery: How to Break Free from Addictions”).

Ed Miliband, then leader of the Labor Party, consciously chose him in 2015 for the final stretch of his campaign, in a barely ten-minute interview in the kitchen of his house, with the mission of reaching young voters thanks to the irresistible popular pull of Russell Brand (who nevertheless recognized his internal resistance to voting).

Even then, suspicions arose about the erratic and abusive behavior of Brand, who was arrested in 2001 for “indecent exposure” for appearing semi-naked in front of the cameras of MTV, the network that made him famous, at the Labor Day demonstrations.. The following year he was fired from the radio station XFM for reading “pornographic material” on the air, as Guy Adams recalled in The Daily Mail.

Despite the warnings of his number two, Ed Balls, Miliband finally decided to go to Russell Brand's kitchen to explain, among the inevitable jokes, his desire to overthrow David Cameron and “change the country” (all this one year before the vote in favor of Brexit).

That bet is now costing Miliband dearly, who pretended to be a “feminist” politician and is now forced to renounce, like so many others, his friendship with the controversial comedian.. Russell Brand is seeing them in all colors after the accusations of rape and sexual assault that have sunk his reputation in five days on both sides of the Atlantic, with comedies like “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” or ” Bedtime stories” (retitled “Beyond dreams”).

The worst of nightmares looms over Brand at 48 years old, married as he is for the second time to the Scottish blogger Laura Gallacher, with whom he has two children and another on the way.. The world is literally sinking underfoot following the shocking revelations by The Sunday Times and Channel 4.

A woman, known as “Alice,” claims to have had “an emotionally abusive relationship” with Brand in 2016, when she was 16, including at least one violent episode of oral sex against her will.. The same woman claims that the comedian even sent a car with a BBC driver to the school gate and hid it in public by claiming that she was his niece.

The second victim claimed to have been raped by the actor in his own home in Los Angeles, during his period of maximum fame in Hollywood (the tabloids remember how one of Brand's most controversial gags was one in which he sardonically confessed: “I raped to a woman once…. I killed her later.

A third woman claimed to have been a victim of sexual assault at the hands of Russell also in Los Angeles, when she was working with him and he tried to kiss her and take off her clothes, while she resisted by hitting him.. The fourth incident allegedly occurred at a Manchseter hotel in 2014, where another woman claims she was the victim of “emotional and physical abuse” by the actor.

Scotland Yard added a previous episode to the account this week: an alleged sexual assault that occurred in 2003 in London's Soho.. London police have spoken to and assisted the victim, although they have not yet announced the opening of an official investigation.

The lynching of Russell Brand has meanwhile become a national sport. Newspapers – from the right and the left – crucify him every day on the front page. YouTube announces the suspension of income from its account on the channel (more than six million followers) for “violating the content creators' responsibility policy”. The BBC and Channel 4 have meanwhile opened internal investigations and have purged the comedian's appearances on their platforms.

Russell Brand himself has had to suspend his national tour after his last performance on Saturday at Wembley, where he hung up the “no tickets” sign despite the scandal. The comedian tried to defend himself beforehand with a video alleging that the abusive relationships accused of him were “consensual” and fueling the theory, shared by thousands of followers, that we are facing a conspiracy against him.

Brand actually joined the ranks of conspiracies during Covid, accusing Bill Gates of being the black hand behind the pandemic and orchestrating the “great reset” with the implementation of a world government. YouTube actually suspended his videos last year for “promoting misinformation about vaccines”, which forced his exile on the Rumble channel, the same one used by the misogynist “influencer” Andrew Tate (who, by the way, has sent him his solidarity). .

In recent months, Brand has openly questioned the official version of the Ukrainian war, siding with Putin and accusing the American government of provoking the conflict “to protect local neo-Nazis.”

For five days now, there has been no talk in the United Kingdom about anything other than the life and missteps of Russell Brand, which has served Rishi Sunak's Government and the Tories wonderfully as a smokescreen in the face of their accumulation of postponed problems. until new notice. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly has in fact taken advantage of the situation to reignite the cultural battle, with his statements to the BBC about the protection that Brand, winner of a Bafta and three British Comedy Awards, has had for decades: “The entertainment industry You have a lot of questions to answer…