General Election 2015: 'I'll talk to anyone' says Ed Miliband as he defends Russell Brand interview

Comedian says the much-anticipated video will be released at lunchtime

Russell Brand interviews Ed Miliband for his YouTube channel The Trews

Ed Miliband has declared he will “engage with anyone” in his bid to persuade people to vote in the General Election as he defended his decision to record an interview with comedian Russell Brand.

He batted away criticism that it did not look Prime Ministerial to give a 35-minute interview to a celebrity who actively urges people not to vote and who once abused the granddaughter of Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs live on radio.

"You’ve got millions more people who may well note vote who are not watching, frankly, who are not watching, not listening and are planning not to vote and therefore I will do anything and engage with anyone to try and persuade people to vote.

"Russell Brand is somebody who has in the past expressed the view that voting doesn’t change anything; I believe voting is the thing that changes thing. Look at the history.

"As I said in the interview with him, as you’ll see when it eventually comes out, I said to him, ‘think about the change that have happened in our country – the NHS, workers’ rights, the minimum wage, rights for gay and lesbian people’. Now here’s the thing, they happened because of a combination of leaders - but not just leaders, leaders and movements and people – that’s how change happens."

Ed Balls, Labour’s shadow chancellor, also defended his boss’s decision to agree to the interview, despite becoming embroiled in a row with Brand earlier this year. Brand described Balls as a “clicky-wristed snidey c***” on a TV show, with Balls hitting back by calling him a “pound shop Ben Elton”.

But this morning the shadow chancellor said he would be happy to meet Brand to “kiss and make up” and dismissed the spat as “banter”.

"I think it's really important that we get interviewed by all sorts of people on all sorts of broadcasts. You've got Russell Brand saying to people 'don't vote', and he's got a million YouTube viewers.”

Brand hit back at the Prime Minister after he called him a "joke," taking to Twitter to rebut Cameron's jibe and mocked him for forgetting which football team he supported and posting an ironic message along with the infamous Bullingdon Club photo featuring the Prime Minister and Boris Johnson in their Oxford University days.