‘I confronted Russell Brand about his behaviour years ago – he had no regrets’

When she challenged him six years ago about his sexual exploits, Katie Glass found the newly styled guru utterly lacking in self-awareness and contrition. What he told her revealed everything we know about how he sees women – and what is flawed about the age of consent

Brand, pictured in 2013 (Getty)

I was not a 16-year-old schoolgirl when I went to interview Russell Brand six years ago. I was a professional woman in my thirties, a journalist from a national newspaper doing my job. When I arrived, I shook his hand. When I left – after he’d complimented my “Malteser” eyes – he offered me a cuddle, an exchange that reveals a lot about how Brand sees women. The tip of a misogynist attitude, which I wanted to confront him about. But then, as now, the only victim he recognised was himself.

Today, Brand faces very serious and specific allegations of rape and sexual assault from a number of women and the police have begun inquiries. As the investigation into him takes place it bears all the signs of a comedy MeToo moment. But as Brand’s supporters claim he is innocent until he is tried in a legal forum, a larger cultural shift is taking place of women who want a wider discussion about consent and who – like me – think the age-old defence that “if nothing illegal happened then there is no problem” no longer cuts it.

Brand has refuted the sexual assault allegations, characterising them as a coordinated attack by mainstream media, he has argued his relationships were always consensual and his promiscuous past was something he’d always been open about. It is an admission, for me at least, which takes on new meaning when viewed in the context of an old stand-up routine where he jokes about liking women to give him oral sex that left them choking and their mascara running. A description, echoed by a woman called “Alice”, who told the Dispatches investigation team how Brand forced his penis into her 16-year-old mouth: “I couldn’t breathe, he was just choking me. I was crying and he said, ‘Oh I only wanted to see your mascara run anyway,’” she said.