Julie Burchill

The unspeakable truth about Russell Brand

We risk trivialising serious allegations

  • From Spectator Life
(PA Images)

Before the accusations of being a Bad Feminist start, can I say that I am inclined to believe the women who claim to have been sexually assaulted and raped by Russell Brand. Nevertheless, I found another of the complaints about him featured in the Dispatches documentary – that sexual partners would telephone Brand’s employees ‘in tears’ after being ‘treated poorly’ – somewhat trivialising of a serious situation. Insult is never the same as injury, especially in the arena of sex.

The problem with shagging culture is that young women in particular find that casual sex is rarely casual and that catching feelings is common

Look at Brand. He’s vile. You can tell he smells. If he’d been Joe Schmo, would he have been having sex with ‘different women three, four, five times a day – in Ireland, nine in one evening’? No; his father even took him to a hooker to lose his virginity at an age when most of us are attractive enough to be effortlessly relieved of it for free.

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