The BBC has revealed it is ‘urgently looking into the issues raised’ surrounding Russell Brand, while Channel 4 will be conducting its own internal investigation.
The St Trinian’s actor, 48, has been accused of rape, sexual assault and physical abuse, in a Channel 4 special episode of Dispatches airing in a joint investigation with The Times.
He has also been accused of pursuing audience members for sex while presenting Big Brother spin-off shows EFourum and Big Brother’s Big Mouth on Channel 4, while other allegations relate to when he was a radio presenter for the BBC.
Brand, who has denied the ‘very serious allegations’ in a video shared on Friday night, has been accused by multiple women, including one who claimed she was 16 years old at the time.
Alongside the alleged assaults, the documentary and The Times investigation make several claims about Brand’s behaviour in the workplace, at both BBC and Big Brother, insinuating predatory behaviour.
The Channel 4 special also hears Brand offering to take his naked assistant to Jimmy Savile when he interviewed the disgraced paedophile in 2007 for BBC Radio 2.
Brand worked for the BBC between 2006 and 2008, until he stepped down after a controversial prank call to Andrew Sachs, later dubbed Sachsgate.
The investigation in The Times claims Brand’s behaviour towards women was an ‘open secret’, noting: ‘Many felt the BBC should have been awake to the concerns about Brand’s on-air behaviour well before the Sachsgate scandal.’
Brand elsewhere made a series of sexual remarks to newsreader Andrea Simmons, calling her a ‘sex bomb’ on air.
The BBC has said it is ‘urgently looking into the issues raised’ in the joint investigation by The Sunday Times, The Times and Channel 4 Dispatches.
In a new statement, a BBC spokesman said: ‘The documentary and associated reports contained serious allegations, spanning a number of years.
‘Russell Brand worked on BBC radio programmes between 2006 and 2008 and we are urgently looking into the issues raised.’
Elsewhere, in the documentary, a former Big Brother runner said they feel as though they ‘acted as a pimp’ to Brand’s needs.
Brand hosted Big Brother spin-off Big Brother’s Big Mouth from 2004 to 2006, and Celebrity Big Brother’s Big Mouth from 2005 to 2007.
A former runner from the show claimed they and their fellow co-workers were ‘basically acting as pimps to Russell Brands’ needs’ as they put him in contact with women in the audience of the show that were ‘all over 18, but under 22.’
The researcher claimed concerns about Brand’s behaviour were reported to production managers at Endemol, the company commissioned by Channel 4 to produce the programmes in 2004 and 2005, but were dismissed.
On Sunday, Channel 4 announced it is conducting its own internal investigation following the allegations made about Brand.
In a statement, the broadcaster said: ‘We have asked the production company who produced the programmes for Channel 4 to investigate these allegations and report their findings properly and satisfactorily to us.
‘Channel 4 is also conducting its own internal investigation, and we would encourage anyone who is aware of such behaviour to contact us directly.’
The statement added: ‘We will be writing to all our current suppliers reminding them of their responsibilities under our Code of Conduct, as we are committed to ensuring our industry has safe, inclusive and professional working environments.’
Meanwhile a statement from Banijay UK, which bought Big Brother production company Endemol in 2020, said: ‘In light of the very serious allegations raised by Dispatches and The Times/Sunday Times investigation relating to the alleged serious misconduct of Russell Brand while presenting shows produced by Endemol in 2004 and 2005, Banijay UK has launched an urgent internal investigation and will co-operate with any requests for information from broadcast partners and external agencies.
‘We also encourage anybody who feels that they were affected by Brand’s behaviour while working on these productions to contact us in confidence.’
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The bombshell piece by The Times and Channel 4 investigation reveals four women making the allegations against Brand, with one saying he raped her up against a wall at his home in Los Angeles and he later allegedly apologised over text after she told him: ‘When a girl say[s] no it means no.’
A second woman alleges that Brand assaulted her when she was 16 and at school, and he was 31.
She says she had to punch him in the stomach to make him stop after he ‘forced his penis down her throat’.
Another woman claims Brand ‘forced a finger inside of her’ after becoming angry when he found out she had spoken to an ex-boyfriend, and says that he forced her to brush her teeth so hard and make her gums bleed so she would taste ‘anonymous’ to him.
On Friday night, Brand said he had been approached by a mainstream TV network and a mainstream newspaper with ‘extremely disturbing’ correspondence listing ‘a litany of extremely egregious and aggressive attacks.’
Amid some ‘stupid stuff’ in the correspondence, including, he said, that he ‘shouldn’t be able to attack mainstream media narratives,’ were ‘some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute.’
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Brand said: ‘These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies.
‘As I’ve written about extensively in my book, I was very, very promiscuous. Now during that time of promiscuity, the relationships that I had were absolutely always consensual. I was always transparent about that then, almost too transparent, and I’m being transparent about it now as well.
‘And to see that transparency metastasise into something criminal that I absolutely deny makes me question is there another agenda at play.’
He said there had been ‘coordinated media attacks’ in the past against people like controversial podcast host Joe Rogan, and that he himself had previously been labelled a conspiracy theorist.
Brand went on to claim media outlets had been trying to contact people he knows ‘for ages and ages,’ but ‘what I seriously refute are these very, very serious criminal allegations.’
He claimed he had ‘witnesses whose evidence directly contradicts the narratives that these two mainstream media outlets are trying to construct, apparently in what seems to me to be a coordinated attack.’
‘Now, I don’t want to get into this any further because of the serious nature of the allegations, but I feel like I’m being attacked and plainly they are working very closely together.
‘We are obviously going to look into this matter because it’s very, very serious.’
The Metropolitan Police force has encouraged anyone who ‘believes they have been the victim’ of sexual assault following the accusations against Brand to come forward.
The force has said it will speak to the Sunday Times and Channel 4 after their investigation about Brand.
They said in a statement: ‘We are aware of media reporting of a series of allegations of sexual assault.
‘At this time, we have not received any reports in relation to this.
‘If anyone believes they have been the victim of a sexual assault, no matter how long ago it happened, we would encourage them to contact police.
‘We spoke with the Sunday Times on Saturday, September 16. We will be making further approaches to the Sunday Times and Channel 4 to ensure that any victims of crime who they have spoken with are aware of how they may report any criminal allegations to police.’
Russell Brand: In Plain Sight is available to watch on Channel 4.
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