Russell Brand tapping fans up for £50 is the desperate last stand of a scoundrel

He is, one presumes, a very wealthy man. So why is he asking people to shell out cash to hear what he’s got to say on Rumble, asks Sean O’Grady. And why are so many being taken in by it?

Russell Brand appearing on his Rumble channel on Monday evening (Alex Ross)

Given the apparent ban imposed on him by theatres and other venues, I think it’s probably safe to say that we’ve now seen Russell Brand’s last stand-up routine for a while; now it looks as though we are witnessing Brand’s last stand.

He’s long-since been “cancelled” by the mainstream channels, and, while tolerating his presence, YouTube have taken the view that he shouldn’t be allowed to monetise his activities on their platform. Elon Musk, capricious as ever, has decided to support Brand, despite, one suspects, not knowing that much about who the geezer is, let alone what he may have been up to.

Brand’s last stand is certainly a defiant one, if not flamboyant, as tends to be his way. The last refuge of a scoundrel in the social media age would seem to be Rumble, and from what I’ve seen, Brand is digging in there as eagerly as a front line of Russian infantry in Donbas faced with a high-intensity barrage by state-of-the-art rocketry. He has found a refuge, of sorts.

He’ll certainly need some strong lines of defence – and money. Lots of it.

Since Channel 4 and the mainstream media broke the accusations of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse against him, more women have come forward, according to the Metropolitan Police, who said they have received a “number of allegations of sexual offences in London” as well as elsewhere in the country.

If he does end up in court then I imagine he knows full well that he will need huge sums to defend himself, as well as to maintain his lifestyle. Hence, presumably, the appeal on Rumble for his fans to subscribe to his channel at an annual fee of $60 (about £50). “You now know that I have been demonetised on YouTube... fully well aware that the government wrote to social media platforms to demand that I be further censored,” he said during the live broadcast. Reading between the not-so-opaque lines, this is how he makes his living and now that he is banned from monetising on YouTube, he has moved to Rumble where no such restriction currently applies. So please, he’s effectively saying, put your hand in your pockets and help a fella out.

He has about 6.6 million followers on YouTube, so if he persuades them to effectively payroll him by becoming paid subscribers he’ll do very nicely indeed. Better, certainly, than Dan Wooton did recently with his attempt to actively crowdfund a libel action against Byline Times, a “hard left blog [that] is on a deranged campaign of harassment designed to destroy me financially, mentally and professionally”.

Last time I looked, the GB News motormouth had managed to raise £39,313 of his £150,000 target. He wouldn’t get the best silks to get out of bed for that sort of pittance. Brand, we may assume, will fare better because he’s a far more established and famous name.

Brand’s critics will no doubt throw shade on his blatant bid for subscribers – and indeed this sort of behaviour should make one feel uncomfortable. Surely, if he is defending his honour – in the media and possibly in courtrooms – he should pay for his own campaign, if that is what he is doing, from his own funds? He is, one presumes, a very wealthy man. There’s something not quite right, not quite dignified, about him seemingly asking people far less well-off to pay for (one imagines) his hot-shot PR flunkies and lawyers.

No matter. The breaches in Brand’s digital barricades appear to be growing wider. His line that he’s a victim of some vast conspiracy stretching from Big Pharma to the House of Commons is (to me) risible, but, like Donald Trump has also found to his advantage it seems there are plenty of people out there prepared to believe him. So that part of the “front” might hold, and provide funding.

In my view, what should be more worrying for Brand is that so many of his defenders have adopted the line that they’re against “trial by media” and “cancel culture” and in favour of “free speech” – but only unless and until Brand is convicted in a court of law. If, in other words, Brand does end up on trial and his convicted – and that may be far away if it ever does come to pass – then they will have to concede that he’s not really the sort of chap that they’d wish to support, financially or otherwise.

Brand would – or should – be utterly discredited in such a circumstance.

But what if, like with Trump, his fanbase decide that the whole justice system is also corrupted, and controlled by the “legacy media”, “globalists”, the World Economic Forum and the Reptiloids of their tortured imaginations? Could it be that Brand might become an even bigger cult than he already is?

Unhappily, things do seem to be going that way, but, sequestered on the fantasy island of Rumble, where nonsense can still be alchemised into wisdom by our fallen foppish hero, at least we won’t have to put up with him.