Open Your Eyes

IS THIS FINALLY BRITAIN'S METOO MOMENT? by @RosamundUrwin Russell Brand's behaviour had been an open secret in the British TV industry and the comedy circuit since about 2018. When I began approaching potential sources in January 2019, I rarely named him in my initial emails or messages, saying only that I was investigating a Me Too story in comedy. I was shocked by how many senior figures in TV would, once on a call, say “oh, of course”, when I mentioned Brand’s name. This casual acceptance made me furious. Those executives now appear to be suffering from a collective amnesia about what they knew back then. Brand was not exposed during the Me Too movement, although there was a growing jitteriness about having him on television shows from that point onwards, perhaps a sense that his time would soon come. His retreat from the mainstream media – he even once guest-edited this very publication – into the world of online cranks began soon after. In his early videos, he dabbled with different genres – relationship advice; therapy gobbledegook – before settling in the haven for sexual predators online: the hard right. At trial, Brand’s defence barrister, Ian Winter KC, sought to use the Me Too movement against the complainants. He questioned why they had not come forward in late 2017, when, in his charming formulation, “every woman in the world was examining whether they’d been sexually assaulted by a famous person”. But there is a simple explanation: although some brave women and men did speak out that year, in Britain Me Too was only ever half-baked. Cover art by Nate Kitch