The grotesque Russell Brand, now accused of sexual assault, has had enough attention already, so I’ll keep the section on him short.
He was never funny and always grim. Edgy Channel 4 made him a star and when in 2008 the BBC fired Brand from a radio show, for leaving disgusting messages on the answer phone of Andrew Sachs, the corporation was presented by cool types as having behaved like a bunch of Tory squares. When he then moved into amateur political philosophy, parts of the Left in Britain, usually men, fawned over the grifting of a tinpot revolutionary. The books sold. Audiences packed out theatres. A Guardian writer hailed him as a “hero of 2014”, the Guardian featured Brand as a columnist on its pages and Owen Jones was an ideological supporter.
