Russell Brand Part 1

8:04Russell Brand:right? You're like, this fucking Nazi, like, won't let me run around during nap time or something. But later on, you'd be like, yeah, it must have, I must have been a challenge for my teachers.

8:13Mike Hobbes:Or like, that was unsafe, what I was doing. Or I can see where they're coming from that probably made their jobs harder. Yeah. Even just to sound like a grounded person when you're talking about it in, say, a book.

8:27Russell Brand:The perfect example of this is in his second memoir, My Bookie Wook 2. Oh my God. For the love of God. Oh my God, there's a second one. Oh yeah, I read both of them. The second one's much worse.

8:38Mike Hobbes:Michael, Michael, I have been semi-pro hating the title of My Bookie Wook for so long. And I did not know that there was a second one.

8:48Aubrey Gordon:And frankly, that's on me. So this is describing himself on an airplane.

8:54Mike Hobbes:I was thrown off an Iberia Airlines jet at Barcelona Airport after I refused to remove my feet from the top of the seat in front of me. Scruffy people are not welcome in any class other than economy. If you find a way of affording overpriced travel without dressing like a boffin, it irritates conformists.

9:15Aubrey Gordon:Oh, Lord. So Boffin is like a egghead, like expert kind of thing.

9:20Mike Hobbes:If someone's like, I got kicked off of a plane because I irritated conformists. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

9:25Aubrey Gordon:I immediately have a minimum of 20 questions.

9:28Russell Brand:So then he tells the rest of the story.

9:30Mike Hobbes:I offered the haughty air hostess the perfect chance to tell me off by being a bit drunk and bawdy and lounging about. She told me off, but I ignored her. I thought, I wonder what'll happen if no matter what happens, I refuse to cooperate with this woman. I know she was just doing her job, but I sensed she was enjoying being authoritative, and we all know just doing my job is the excuse offered up for enacting genocide.

9:57Russell Brand:She's basically a Nazi for asking me to put my feet down on an airplane.

10:01Mike Hobbes:And for like being drunk and bawdy, which I assume means like hitting on her while she's at work.

10:06Aubrey Gordon:It's basically like I was being a huge asshole and she was a Nazi for telling me to stop.

10:12Mike Hobbes:She became increasingly agitated and elicited the support of the pilot who, who honestly flung open the cockpit door and had a go at me over his shoulder, like a dad chastising naughty daughters on a motoring holiday. I ignored that too. I was in a silly mood.

10:29Russell Brand:There's like hundreds of people that need to get where they're going, but like I was in a silly mood and I didn't want to put my feet down.

10:33Mike Hobbes:The pilot made an announcement that because of quote unquote passenger disruption, the flight would not be taking off, thereby falling back on a form of psychological warfare constantly deployed against me in childhood where the teacher says because russell's been naughty the whole class has to stay behind in the hope of turning everyone else against you wow dude the investment in persecution here is fascinating sort of stunning i had a friend in high school

11:03Russell Brand:who would always just like was constantly getting fired from jobs and every the story was always something totally benign he's like i got fired for being like five minutes late to a meeting and then like oh well what actually happened he's like i showed up late and my boss was like why are you late and i was like shut up you fucking bitch i don't think you were fired because you

11:19Mike Hobbes:were late to a meeting dude it goes in the same category to me of like oh this is enough red flags for me to disengage as like someone who complains about work but just talks about like everyone they work with is an idiot yeah exactly boy it doesn't matter what job you're at it doesn't matter what

11:35Russell Brand:role you're in he even after he's like in recovery he's now sober he can't look at this situation and go man it must have really sucked for the stewardess that day like she's got a drunk passenger who for no reason refuses to do this like extremely basic thing before takeoff he's still the hero of the story and she is still literally a nazi it's also like feels reminiscent of our

11:55Mike Hobbes:like metabolife guy in that there's like zero reckoning with the effects on other people yeah completely i just like to imagine a serene pastoral landscape a cool breeze blowing in the air and just the sound of one giant red flag flapping in the wind the other i mean this book

12:16Russell Brand:is like all fucking red flag anecdotes the other one that like really stood out to me especially as far as his politics go is apparently when he's very young five six he's walking around the neighborhood and there's an old guy who sort of stops him and it's like hey i grew some flowers Look at how nice my front yard looks. And then the guy's like, hey, I got to run inside to go to the bathroom for a second. I'll leave you out here. Don't stomp on the flowers. Oh, no. Kind of a weird thing to say, honestly.

12:41Mike Hobbes:Whatever. I just am going to flag that my bullshit meter is already fucking going off here. Like, do we think an adult was like, hey, don't stomp on those flowers?

12:50Russell Brand:Well, the thing is, I think probably because it's a neighbor, he probably knew that Russell was like kind of a troublemaker. Oh, I see. I mean, he might have said that to any kid or maybe he was joking or something. But what's so interesting is Russell hears the phrase, don't stamp on those flowers. And he's like, well, I have to stamp on the flowers. So the minute the guy goes inside, he just destroys the entire flower bed, like jumping up and down, just like pulverizes all of these flowers. The fact that he's telling this in his book means that like he on some level gets to this as kind of like disordered behavior.

13:20Russell Brand:Like this is bad, right? But I think also what you find when you watch any of his political videos or you read like anything kind of quote unquote political that he's written he just hates being told what to do he doesn't want to stomp on the fucking flowers right it's like it's this hollow opposition where if you tell him what you he'll do the opposite even if it makes no sense and he doesn't want to

13:41Mike Hobbes:do it yeah and i think there's something about that that he like comes to believe that that's like a charming thing yes also this whole anecdote is like chekhov's anti-cancel culture turn completely fast forward fucking 30 years and this kid is like you can't say anything anymore

13:59Russell Brand:so at seven years old his mom gets cancer she recovers the cancer comes back when he's 11 he doesn't really understand sort of the nature of conditions like this and so he blames himself a little bit and he feels like i'm not able to protect my mom and so the acting out in school gets significantly worse. She also starts dating a man, Colin, who he doesn't like. He says, I had a growing sense that I was a disappointment to people. Not only that I wasn't the kind of person my dad would have wanted me to be, but also that I wasn't able to look after my mom, either to prevent her from getting ill or to stop Colin from moving in.

14:38Mike Hobbes:This guy grows to be a real shithead but like for this kid even with like behavior issues even with this oppositional shit like feeling like you have failed a parent for getting a terminal illness or for being in a bad relationship yeah is like horrible and is legitimately like a big thing to figure out how

15:00Russell Brand:to shake off and then he tells the most fucked up story in the entire book oh no did i empathize too early we've i like haven't checked this in years but apple podcast has the thing where they allow you to see where people like stop listening to your podcast like how many people make it to the end and stuff i'm so glad i didn't know about this feature michael it bums me out i never check it but like i i want to check it for this episode because i think we're gonna lose like half of the listeners after the story this story is so fucked up so his dog the only thing you need to know for this is his dog is named topsy so here's this story oh god you're gonna make me tell the fucked

15:35Mike Hobbes:up story?

15:35Russell Brand:You're reading all the slurs. You're reading all the terrible stories. It's all you.

15:40Mike Hobbes:When we first got Topsy, she would be allowed to sleep in the bed with me. But when Colin came, an absurd edict was introduced whereby she was no longer allowed upstairs. I evidently had a lot of anger and hate in me about this because I would perch at the top of the stairs and lure her to come up. Topsy, Topsy, Topsy. Then when she would slink nervously upward to the forbidden terrain of the upper floor i would suddenly become mr hyde oh dear topsy i would declaim in a rather arch manner you know perfectly well you're not allowed upstairs before cruelly kicking her back down to the bottom again where i would rejoin her and give her a sympathetic cuddle regretfully muttering oh christ were you kicked down the stairs this is terrible holy fuck it's like all there dude yeah

16:31Russell Brand:On some level, it's sympathetic because you're like, he's clearly hurting, but also he's lashing out at like this innocent creature.

16:37Mike Hobbes:I can understand not wanting to recognize the quote unquote authority of a fucking stepdad you don't like. I'm like, sure, fair. But I think not even recognizing that like a different person has different wants. Being like, I'm just going to respect that this is what this person wants or I'm going to figure out how to navigate that or whatever. I will also say not for nothing. I am not alleging anything about Russell Brand, but like this is on the fucking serial killer checklist. Yeah, I know.

17:03Russell Brand:This is the fucking dark triad fucking shit. So his mom decides to put him in boarding school at this time. He doesn't really specify why. I think it's probably because he was acting out in school. And then he immediately starts acting out again. He says, whenever I'm in any kind of social group, I always tend to think I won't fit in and gravitate toward an identity that will stand out. So this sort of makes his stand-up persona make a little bit of sense, right? He's like, maybe you won't like me, so I'm just going to act crazy.

17:33Mike Hobbes:Right, and it's all like a shtick, right? So if you don't like me, it's that you don't like the act.

17:37Russell Brand:He then, based on this, gets a reputation as kind of a weirdo and an outcast. And so he says, another dubious attention-seeking device that I invented at the school was the game Genital Grabbing.

17:49Mike Hobbes:What a cool, fun game for all of us.

17:51Aubrey Gordon:Russell Brand walked so Donald Trump could run.

17:55Russell Brand:So he like walks up to people at school and just like grabs their junk. I mean, outside of their pants is like the only saving grace of this. But like he starts doing this, obviously gets in fucking trouble.

18:04Aubrey Gordon:Is this a boys school or a co-ed?

18:06Russell Brand:Co-ed, it appears. Okay, Jesus fucking Christmas. Great, good stuff. And then he eventually gets kicked out of boarding school, not for this. This is also a very telling thing where he says he like really wants to like have sex. Like he's getting into his teenage years where he's like post-puberty. And he like – he says he really wants to like get with girls. But at one point he says, I didn't want to get with girls as much as I wanted to tell other boys that I was getting with girls. But he becomes desperate to get laid at this time. And so the way that he gets kicked out of boarding school is a whole scenario that he doesn't describe very well.

18:39Russell Brand:But he's like – he sneaks into a girl's room to try to hook up. But then like her roommate is there. And then he sneaks girls into his own room. and then his like prefect finds out that the girls in his room and you can't have girls in your room and so he gets kicked out but also what tellingly talking about this prefect like basically the guy that like figured out that he was doing this and busted him he says children

18:59Mike Hobbes:shouldn't be given ss style powers what in the fuck is going on with this dude and comparing like a flight attendant and a school prefect to nazis yeah there's like that whole part of the Metabolife book where he's talking about how like lawyers have one of the best grifts around or whatever and you're like oh you think everyone is grifting yeah and I think similarly Russell Brand thinks any boundary that gets set for him is someone who's like drunk with power totally yes it's really telling and I think the other thing is earlier when you said like he wasn't really doing this to impress women but to impress men you and I were talking the other day about sort of looks maxers as like a women optional space, right?

19:46Mike Hobbes:Or like actually the point is to create a space that rejects women and you actually just get to relate to other men and like one up other men and women, if present at all, are like tools for that. Like, I think that's really an undercurrent of like a lot of misogyny. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Women are props to display your value to other men. And that's about it.

20:07Russell Brand:The other interesting thing about his identity is also this sense of himself as having this kind of threatened masculinity. So after he's kicked out of boarding school, he then goes back to his comprehensive school. He talks a lot about being like really insecure about his appearance. He's fat at this point. He's getting bullied a lot for being fat. And like, there's something really interesting about the struggles that Russell is having at this time where he is kind of feminine. People are calling him gay all the time. People are calling him, you know, fat all the time. And his sexuality feels really threatened.

20:36Russell Brand:And I think a lot of what he does for the next like 30 years of his life is like to try to prove to himself and to the rest of the world that like i'm i'm i'm a man like i i can be a masculine guy i can i can

20:48Mike Hobbes:still have sex with girls it can be easy to underestimate how much a constant drumbeat of other people's messages about your sexuality shape your own understanding of your own gender and sexuality, right, to be constantly made fun of for being gay is like actually gonna sort of fuck you up, whether you're gay or you're straight. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

21:11Russell Brand:Just in different ways, right? He also says that he starts cutting himself at this time. He gets a really rough eating disorder. He just starts engaging in like pretty hardcore bulimia to lose all of the weight. He also, throughout the book, he sort of mentions various psychiatric assessments that he's had. He gets arrested later on and as part of that, he'll go to a psychiatrist or their school psychologist. But it seems like every single mental health professional who has ever seen him in any capacity has said, like, you have serious mental illness. He's been diagnosed with depression, bipolar, ADHD.

21:47Russell Brand:Everyone seems to give him a different diagnosis. But every page of this book, you're like, this is an unwell person.

21:53Mike Hobbes:Did any of this come up in the media around the book? dude like when he's doing interviews around this shit are people like hey bud you okay when the

22:02Russell Brand:book came out i read a bunch of reviews this was like well reviewed it's like oh a wild romp through like working class essex and like trying to become an actor in london but like yeah nobody really pointed out how like super fucked up the stuff in this book is we're not even to the fucked up shit yet yeah holy fuck so his big epiphany comes when he gets a role in the school play he is cast as Fat Sam in Bugsy Malone. Great.

22:28Mike Hobbes:Good.

22:28Russell Brand:The minute he starts acting, he's just like, this is it. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

22:32Aubrey Gordon:Yeah. I get to pretend to be somebody else. Great. Yeah. And also he, I mean, I don't want to sound mean, but like he does describe this as

22:38Russell Brand:like, I get to be the center of attention.

22:39Aubrey Gordon:I don't think it's mean to say what's in his book.

22:42Russell Brand:He also starts a pattern that he does throughout the book numerous times. He says, you know, now that I'm acting, people had like seen me in the school play. I started to get a lot of attention from girls. So he's like, ooh, girls were like really into me. But then when he actually describes the nature of like girls were really into me, it seems to be mostly him pestering women. He says, I became a schoolboy Tony Montana, rampaging around the playground, indiscriminately spraying girls with chat up lines. Say hello to my little friend. I hollered in canteens and corridors. No one was safe for me.

23:16Russell Brand:Charged by a white mound of my own newly discovered potency, every female was a potential target.

23:22Mike Hobbes:No one was safe from me is a dark as fuck line.

23:26Russell Brand:I like stopped copy pasting them eventually. There's so much foreshadowing in the book of like the kind of creep that he turns out to be. So he says, by my twenties, I would relish the challenge of chaste maids and the search for the correct combination of words required to decode their moral resistance. Jumping through hoops, ducking questions, feigning indifference to sex, the knobstickle course i call it jesus christ and he had lots of like bits in his stand-up comedy about this like the knobstickle course thing of basically like how to like kind of trick women

23:55Mike Hobbes:into saying yes to having sex with you yeah this is the guy who thinks that like cutting a hole in the bottom of the popcorn bucket is like actually a good gag he then describes losing his virginity

24:05Russell Brand:he is 15 it sounds like it's like a fairly awkward situation he doesn't even like take his clothes off. It's with a fellow actor from the play who seems like she's older and more experienced than him. It's almost kind of like classic losing your Virginia as a teen story where it takes like five minutes. And he's like, oh, I guess that happened. But then afterwards, I think because he's like not super popular, the girl is like, hey, let's not talk about this. Like, let's just act like this never happened. And then Russell says, I blabbed to anyone who'd listen. Instead of telling no one as requested, I told anyone I encountered.

24:38Russell Brand:So he starts blabbing about this. This girl, Marianne, denies it she's like no i never had sex with russell what are you talking about right which

24:44Mike Hobbes:is because the stakes for him are he's like people will see me as more masculine yeah and she's like yeah the stakes for me is that i will be fucking slut shamed yeah exactly off the face of the

24:57Russell Brand:fucking earth he devises a scheme where he sets up a tape recorder and calls her and is like hey uh you know how we had sex the other night oh fuck off and then he like gets her on tape admitting to this. But then what's weird that he does this about the book too. He describes this scheme of like getting her on tape where she's admitting to them having sex, but then he just, he never mentions it again. It's not clear what he did with the tape. Did he play it for his friends? Did he show it to people at school? You would think, especially from someone who went to sex addiction treatment to be like, you know, at the time I had these ideas about women that like I was in control and they didn't have any autonomy and it was up to me.

25:33Russell Brand:Like some description of like, I later learned that this was wrong. But he just tells it as a funny story. Like, ha ha ha, this is my losing my virginity story.

25:43Aubrey Gordon:Keep making that sound for the next two to three hours.

25:46Russell Brand:This is part one. Michael!

25:48Aubrey Gordon:We're still in his teenage years, Michael. He is now age 16.

25:53Russell Brand:He gets into an acting school in London. So he moves to London.

25:58Mike Hobbes:Yeah.

25:58Russell Brand:He then describes again, he says, like, oh, I was getting all this attention from girls because I was at a good school and I was acting. but then when he actually describes the specific girls that he has like flings with it appears to be him showing like worrying levels of infatuation so he says i became obsessed with louise i spoke to her recently and she reminded me that i'd sent her up to six letters a day he also says penny i was so helplessly infatuated with her that i followed her to her home in wygen at the end of

26:28Mike Hobbes:term so earlier on you mentioned that he seems to be invested in this in a way that is like in order to sort of prove something or illustrate something to other men. When he talks about being like hopelessly infatuated, does he talk about anything about these women that he particularly likes about them or particularly wants about them or whatever?

26:50Russell Brand:You know what I'm about to say, Aubrey. He talks about their looks. He talks about like, oh, this like she was a radiant creature and like her blonde curls. You know, it's like physical appearance stuff. it's clear that these are like sort of trophies to him or like conquests like based on their attractiveness so the girl penny he meets her at school she's like oh i'm going home for the holidays he goes oh let me walk you to euston station but like then i'll leave you alone don't worry about it she's like okay you can walk me to the station and then he sort of like worms his way

27:18Mike Hobbes:onto the train so here's this penny didn't want me to come to her house but i used charm and relentless pig-headed persistence to persuade her. I'd pursued her with poetry and promises, neither of which were original or true, for months. I tackled the nobstacle course with such dogged aplum that when night fell, I was allowed to sleep in her bed top to toe. I spun gags and yarns till she let me turn round. I painted verbal pictures and begged until she kissed me. I lied and danced and evoked the spirit of pan till reluctantly she removed her bra charming stuff evoke the spirit of pan like that's the kind of stuff that i'm like yeah that sounds like his stand-up act where you're like oh you're just sort of throwing in weird references and thinking that that's like a joke or i know that like makes this okay we're not gonna read them all but this thing happens

28:17Russell Brand:many times in the book where he's super infatuated with a girl like, oh, I can't stop thinking about you. He's writing, you know, six letters a day, whatever. He talks her into sex, wears her down, and then he never mentions her again.

28:30Mike Hobbes:Yeah.

28:30Russell Brand:So this girl Penny is not mentioned for the rest of the book. Yeah, I'm sure. He can't stop himself from going to the next infatuation. Like, once he's kind of won, like the conquest is over, he's had sex with them. Like, he has no more attention for them.

28:41Mike Hobbes:Infatuation may be his language. I'm not sure that that's how I would describe it as an outside observer.

28:46Aubrey Gordon:Wait, what would you say? Love? You think it's pure love? You think it's really beautiful? I think it's true love.

28:52Mike Hobbes:Honestly, like the thing that comes to mind is like almost like Marx. Oh yeah. Yeah. Right. That he's sort of like in it to, to win and the winning happens when you have sex and then there, then the game is over and we're done. It's not really infatuation because that implies some level of like attraction to something innate about that person. To me, it seems much more like he's just sort of constantly setting personal bests.

29:17Russell Brand:But so the next bit of lighter fluid that is poured on this dynamic is that he starts doing drugs. Oh, great. He discovered alcohol when he's like nine or 10. Him and a friend were going through a sort of supply closet at the school and they found some alcohol and then he drank it. And he was like, I fucking love this. Like he took to it immediately. It's not clear how much he's drinking because I think it's hard to get a hold of. but he talks about how he started smoking weed. He says,

30:09Russell Brand:lean, I was astonished to learn that I don't actually enjoy my own company. I always thought I loved being on my own, but actually I don't. It was being on drugs that I liked. Jesus God. So this then creates a pattern where he gets kicked out of acting school for showing up drunk and high all the time. He then has like this weird period of sort of like floating about, he's only 17 years old at this point. Him and a friend decide that they're going to put on a play based on the Tibetan book of the dead, which neither of them have read. very good move but they find like a performance space and they start holding auditions and it appears the only reason they're holding auditions is to like get contact with attractive women oh no so he's talking about them here let me just send you this because it's gross thank you so much you do the gross ones there were two women that were particularly sexy

30:59Mike Hobbes:claudine and maria maria was an asian girl with all this tumbling black hair who turned up in this red dress and looked impressive and we were just a couple of jerks sat there high okay right this play do you want to improvise a scene will you do kissing there's lots of kissing and bras the tibetan book of the dead is full of women kissing in their bras that's what makes it such a fucking good read. Cool story. It's nuts that like, this is almost exactly what like gets him on TV. Yeah. Is this kind of material, right? It's not like, oh, this was the dark side that none of us knew about. It's like, no, no, he was talking about this shit.

31:39Russell Brand:This is also the beginning of a pattern where the minute he can, he starts using his power to get laid, right? This isn't even that much power. It's like, I'm putting on a play. I'm like a random guy who's like writing a play and I have a performance space, immediately he's using that power to get women in their bras.

31:56Mike Hobbes:He's, how old is he at this point? 17.

31:58Russell Brand:Great.

31:59Mike Hobbes:So he's 17 and he's already doing the fucking Weinstein thing.

32:03Russell Brand:It's really shocking. And also telling us about it years later without any, like, man, this was really like how fucked up this was. It's like, ha ha ha, funny story, a thing that I did when I was a kid.

32:12Aubrey Gordon:Right. This is like sex criminal supervillain fucking shit.

32:15Russell Brand:So the other big thing that happens when Russell is 17 is his dad gets divorced from his third wife and wants to go on a sex trip to East Asia.

32:28Mike Hobbes:Oh, fuck. His dad is a passport bro.

32:31Russell Brand:He's a passport bro, dude.

32:33Mike Hobbes:I've watched enough 90 Day Fiance to know all the fuck about this guy.

32:38Russell Brand:Apparently the friend that he was going to go with dropped out. so he thinks what if my 17 year old son would like to come with me to asia and go to a bunch of brothels holy fucking shit they go it appears first to thailand and then to hong kong russell only tells the story of like the first experience they go to some sort of brothel where there's like a runway catwalk kind of thing where women are like walking back and forth and you can like pick one you know and so his dad picks two and he picks one named mary lou like part of the issue

33:15Aubrey Gordon:with passport bros a long digression about why passport bros are bad no why i have this like

33:23Mike Hobbes:gnawing pit in my stomach about whatever is about to happen when people are flying halfway around the world to do that, there is often a justification that is like Western women are too mouthy. And like, there's like a cultural expectation of subservience, right? They've sort of written a series of myths in their head about like, what amounts to if I go to this other country, there's a kind of woman who won't say no. And there's something extremely dark about a kind of man who wants to engage in what they believe on some level to be like boundaryless sex.

34:01Russell Brand:So he chooses one sex worker named Mary Lou. His dad chooses two sex workers. They go back to their hotel. They're staying at some fancy hotel. Once they get to the room, they're like fooling around with these women. He says this.

34:14Mike Hobbes:Naked. I was shy about my body then. I had trouble getting hard. The blowjob seemed daft the way it feels when a customs official pulls your trousers down or a doctor puts his finger up your arse. Not sexual, just giggly and intrusive. So he's clearly kind of uncomfortable. Not sexual, just giggly and intrusive is how I would describe a lot of Russell Brand's sort of vibe. Yeah, Jesus Christ. She was a good prostitute, Mary Lou. She played her part very well. She didn't make me feel embarrassed and was incredibly romantic, really, given the context. I stroked Mary Lou's hair and kissed her cheek and traced my finger down her perfect nose scored by the cacophony from the adjacent bedlam yeah come on and fwa you're juicy so he's listening to his dad have sex with sex workers next door as he's having sex god jesus god and he he clearly is like impressed by his dad

35:12Russell Brand:he describes this as in this like aspirational way of just like oh someday i'll be as cool as my dad. But like, this is unbelievable fucking loser behavior.

35:22Mike Hobbes:Before there was Andrew Tate, there were fuck off dads like this.

35:26Russell Brand:And here's the next morning. He comes up the next morning. His dad is like reading the newspaper at the breakfast table.

35:31Mike Hobbes:My dad concealed behind a newspaper folded down the top right hand corner. Did you wear a condom with that bird last night? Oh no, I didn't dad. He sniffed. You should have. Then the corner of the page flicked up once again and he was gone. In the course of the rest of that holiday, I fucked loads more prostitutes, always got a hard-on, never wore a condom, and never fell in love. Cool. In Bangkok, when bar girls in Pat Pong left their posts to follow me down the street, cooing and touching my hair, I felt that I had my dad's unequivocal approval. Fucking Jesus God.

36:11Russell Brand:There are many memoirs that include, like, kind of disturbing stories. And then a person's like, I went into recovery and I learned and I don't do this anymore, whatever. But like, there's no moment of reflection on this. Also the fact that he's like, I never wore a condom. It's like, wow, cool, man. Why?

36:26Aubrey Gordon:Yeah, cool story, bro. What a good thing to put in your memoir about sex addiction. I mean, like, I guess. So then he gets back to London.

36:33Russell Brand:He gets into another acting school. He then gets kicked out of that too.

36:39Mike Hobbes:I don't really know what it takes to get kicked out of acting school. like not to say that it's not like a serious endeavor or whatever but just like i genuinely

36:47Russell Brand:don't know what conduct he says he shows up drunk every day oh he drinks before school and then he's like hammered that would do it this is like too much because we already dislike this guy but like god this either is fake or it's real and fuck off so here's this for he's talking about when he's uh in this period like post uh drama school post getting kicked out of drama school number two

37:09Mike Hobbes:One of my brilliant gimmicks was to have a mouse living in my hair. He's doing a ratatouille! I know.

37:17Russell Brand:Maybe this explains the rest of his career. Maybe it's actually just the mouse is in charge.

37:20Mike Hobbes:I kept this going for quite a long time, at least a month or so. I'd gone out and got a mouse from a pet shop and let it live on my shoulders and in my hair. Mice are incontinent. They poo and wee whenever they feel like it. So my hair was all full of mouse excrement and urine. I'd put it in a little Tupperware box when I went to sleep.

37:44Russell Brand:So I hope this is fake. If this is real, this is like one of the most pathetic, like attention getting things I've ever heard in my life.

37:51Aubrey Gordon:Jesus fucking hell. Surely you could just get attention from people by being like nice to them.

37:56Mike Hobbes:This is absolutely the kind of behavior that would make me avoid being around a person. Yeah. Not necessarily because of the mouse, not necessarily because of mouse smell, not necessarily because of any of that kind of stuff.

38:08Russell Brand:Well, for me, it would be because of the mouse and the mouse smell, but okay.

38:11Mike Hobbes:No, but just because of the level of red flag that is like, oh, this person thinks this is how you engage with other people. Dude, I know. It's so weird. And I don't want to be engaged in these kinds of ways by a person, so I'm just going to give them a real wide berth.

38:26Russell Brand:I think this is the only way that he knows how to relate to people. It's like people kind of gawking at him or being like, wow, you're so wild and crazy, Russell.

38:34Mike Hobbes:Yeah, and in that way, the sort of like... very like Hollywood experience of like sort of having an entourage, but maybe not necessarily having friends, I would think might suit him.

38:45Russell Brand:We then have a period where he's dropped out of acting school. He's getting kind of odd jobs. He starts doing like stand up open mic nights. He joins a comedy duo. He does a couple of performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He's at like the very early stages of kind of like making it as an actor slash comedian. He also starts doing heroin at this time. We also have in 1999, toward the end of this period, we have the first alleged rape by Russell Brand. What a cool fucking guy. There's, I believe, seven rape allegations at this point that he's on trial for. And so as we're going, I'm going to sort of put them in the chronology.

39:22Russell Brand:I mean, I should say that he denies all these allegations categorically. He says, yes, I was a sex addict, but everything 100 % was consensual. So we need to get that on the record. In the UK, they don't seem to release indictment documents with like details of any of the charges. So literally all we have is one sentence. Brand of Oxfordshire is accused of raping a woman in a hotel room while she attended a Labour Party conference in Bournemouth in 1999. That's the entirety of the charge. Jesus. I guess from these stand-up comedy gigs, he then gets noticed by MTV. And in 2001, he gets like a segment on MTV called Dance Floor Chart, where like he goes around to nightclubs and interviews people.

40:08Russell Brand:He then gets fired from MTV in late 2001. The way that he tells this story, he goes to work and he's fiending for drugs. so he invites his drug dealer to the set of mtv and then the drug dealer brings his like eight year old son because he's like oh i'm going to mtv like my kid likes mtv i'll bring my kid with me and then russell brand and this guy apparently smoke crack in the bathroom in front of the kid according to him you know he's high walking around this drug dealer is also high it's the same day as Kylie Minogue is like filming an interview or a segment or something. So Kylie Minogue is around and he walks up to Kylie Minogue with his drug dealer and he's like, meet Grant or whatever the guy's name is.

40:57Russell Brand:And he like introduces Kylie Minogue to his drug dealer. And he's like, and the next day they fired me. But he does mention this, but he doesn't really get into it.

41:08Aubrey Gordon:The actual reason that he got fired. I was going to say, what are the chances that there was zero sex pesting from russell brand no it actually isn't a sex pest thing aubrey what if

41:18Russell Brand:you go to his like wikipedia entry and he does mention this in his book but in this weird cursory way this story is taking place on september 12th 2001 and he is dressed as osama bin laden what in the fuck so like he does say this here i'm gonna send it to you i was dressed in a white

41:38Mike Hobbes:Muslim tunic with matching white bottoms, a camouflage flak jacket, a false beard, and a tea towel on my head held in place by a shoelace. I'd been aware of Osama bin Laden for about a year. He wasn't someone who people of my age group generally knew about, but he'd been involved with some other bombings and he was top of the FBI's most wanted list. And I was fascinated by that sort of stuff. That day, I was going to present this program called Select, where kids phoned in and chose videos for us to play, and pop stars would come on to flog their records. That afternoon, our guest was to be Kylie Minogue.

42:18Russell Brand:And then he tells the Kylie Minogue story. I'm stealing this from the On Brand podcast, which is an entire podcast about how much Russell Brand sucks, which is very enjoyable. But Kylie Minogue has met drug dealers before. Kylie Minogue has met weird people backstage at things. Like the Kylie Minogue thing has nothing to do with you getting fired. Right. Kylie Minogue probably had like a two minute conversation with this guy. I was like, well, gotta go. Like, I don't think Kylie Minogue fucking like reported Russell Brand. I think you got fired because you dressed as fucking Osama bin Laden the day after September 11th.

42:47Mike Hobbes:Well, and also like you dressed in such a way as to like make manifest a fucking slur. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

42:54Aubrey Gordon:You put a towel on your head, you fucking asshole. He doesn't give any explanation for why you did this.

43:00Russell Brand:It's the day after 9-11 you're dressing as the killer? Why? Like, oh, I've been aware of him for a year and like he did some crimes and I knew about him. And also he was presenting a children's show. There's no description of why he did this or what he was even trying to do. I think it was again just this like, I put a mouse in my hair. Like I wanted to get attention kind of thing.

43:19Mike Hobbes:I don't know, man. Like the day after they capture the fucking Golden State Killer, are you going on TV dressing up like that guy?

43:25Russell Brand:So the only other thing we know of that takes place in 2001 is another alleged attempted rape. This is also from the charging document. He is charged with indecently assaulting a woman by grabbing her arm and dragging her toward a male toilet in 2001. That is the entirety of the information that we have. He then gets fired from MTV and then he almost immediately gets another job. He gets another kind of like man on the street interview show on a like now defunct cable channel.

43:53Mike Hobbes:Oh my God, stop giving him this specific job. I know. Or they're like, how do we expose him to the most people possible?

44:01Russell Brand:He says, together we contrive to take on taboos. Have a fight with your dad to examine the idea of an Oedipus complex. Have a bath with a homeless person. Get to know a member of the British National Party to see what they're like and seduce an old woman. What? And like, these are like little stunts that he does. He ends up like jerking off a man.

44:21Aubrey Gordon:They're all just props. for him to do an outrageous thing. That is, I mean, I do think that's core to the ideology.

44:28Russell Brand:It's just like, these are taboos. But he doesn't seem to have any kind of like basic moral compass because one of the episodes is about hanging out with this guy who's part of the British National Party, which is like basically the UK Nazis. But in his brain, it's like, well, it's taboo to be nice to a homeless person and it's taboo to be in like a super racist political party.

44:44Mike Hobbes:It feels like a house with no foundation. Yeah. He's not meaningfully on the left or meaningfully on the right, no matter how he shows up, because there's not like a foundational thing that he's tied to. Right. Right. There's not like a core driving morality underneath it. It's just, oh, you don't want me to do this?

45:00Russell Brand:So then at the end of 2002, he finally gets sober. He's like drinking every day, using drugs every day. Eventually he goes into rehab. He doesn't say that much about it. He just like goes into inpatient rehab. It seems to work and he's sober for the rest of his life, according to him.

45:14Mike Hobbes:Does he mention anything about staying in recovery spaces? Like, does he go to meetings? He's really into 12 steps.

45:22Russell Brand:Oh, okay. He wrote a book called Recovery that is kind of like part of his wellness pivot. It has 12 chapters and each chapter is like one of the steps. So he's like very much a 12 step guy.

45:31Mike Hobbes:The reason that I ask is there's this concept in AA of like the dry drunk, which is someone who's like not drinking, but also not dealing with the shit that made them drink in the first place. Based on what we know comes next, it just seems like that might be part of the picture.

45:47Russell Brand:It's actually really interesting because he's fairly open in the book about the fact that getting sober makes him worse with women. He says, Once I started to feel a bit more confident and realized there was now a great gaping hole in my life that wasn't filled by drugs and booze anymore, my tendency to pursue women, which had always been quite rapacious, somehow became enhanced further. I started seeing different women, quickly acquiring a harem of about 10 whom I would rotate, in addition to one-night stands and random casual encounters. encounters.

46:17Mike Hobbes:Boy, there's nothing quite so chilling as a white man referring to a harem.

46:22Russell Brand:And also, how are you doing this to? I mean, 10 people and also one night stands? Do you think that's real? Oh, yeah. Okay. And if you read the accounts of his accusers, he has this urgency about sex. And oftentimes, he'll have a couple women in one night. It's not like you come over and you have sex with Russell Brand and you cuddle and you watch a movie. It's like he kicks you out or sometimes he will invite over another woman while you're there.

46:47Aubrey Gordon:This is gay men territory. What are you doing? It's really, even as a gay man, I'm like, this is, you're fucking unwell. No, totally.

46:53Russell Brand:So that is 2002 when he gets sober. One of the rapes he's accused of is in 2004. The Met Police say in 2004, a woman was orally raped and sexually assaulted in the Westminster area of London. That's basically all of the information that we have.

47:08Mike Hobbes:There's something about this like lack of detail on like one sentence that is so fucking chilling to me.

47:13Russell Brand:There's another one, I believe, also in 2004 that says he is also alleged to have grabbed a radio station worker's face, pushed her against a wall and kissed her before groping her breasts and buttocks. In the expose about him that was published in 2023, they talked to a female comedian who knew him on the comedy scene. A female comedian said that in the early 2000s, when they gigged together, Brand chased her around backstage and bit her on the face. whenever he saw me he would grab me and bite my face and it was coupled with this weird horrible energy she recalls i said to him i don't like this and he still did it so much before he stopped it

47:52Mike Hobbes:was him crossing boundaries it's so dark because i think his way of relating to himself is to interpret all of his actions as sort of playful yeah yeah biting someone's face is an unhinged

48:05Aubrey Gordon:thing to do also imagine someone doing that to you with a mouse in their fucking hair oh it makes it worse somehow you're like oh drunk mouse in hair hair smells like mouse piss and shit so in 2005 that's when he goes to sex addiction treatment yeah uh this is where

48:21Russell Brand:his first book ends the book is really strange in that he goes to sex addiction treatment and then he just publishes verbatim excerpts from his diary that he kept when he was there and they're kind of all over the place there's a section where he says like oh the most the worst thing about being in rehab is that I really miss Sarah, but he hasn't mentioned Sarah. That's the first mention of Sarah. I guess that's the woman he's dating, but it's like, does anyone edit these books? Like they're just this person that he misses. And then he mentions that she's 19. They were fighting. He says that he like smashed a glass and then was like sort of using the shards to pretend that he was going to cut his wrists.

49:00Mike Hobbes:Pretend is doing some heavy lifting there.

49:03Aubrey Gordon:But again, this is just in his diary entry.

49:05Russell Brand:So you're like, is this in the book or something else? What? And of course, she's never mentioned again. The book ends with him like, oh, I went through sex addiction rehab. But then all he says is, after Keystone, I did continue to have sex with adult human females, but I made sure it didn't interfere with my work.

49:23Mike Hobbes:That was the point of concern.

49:25Russell Brand:So he ends with this like, oh, I learned all my lessons, none of which I'm going to actually explain at the end of this book. He then starts book two, fucking bookie book two. he starts book two by bragging about the time he fucked Kate Moss.

49:37Mike Hobbes:Well, again, like if the point is to prove your worth to other men, the thing that matters is that you had sex with a woman who is famous for being beautiful.

49:47Russell Brand:We're now entering the point where he starts to become much more famous. He gets a gig as a big brother commentator in 2005.

49:56Mike Hobbes:Sure. Very talking dead territory.

49:59Russell Brand:One of the only things I laughed at in his book, He's talking about this big brother. It's called Big Brother's Big Mouth. He says, I worked on the show for three years, which encompassed seven seasons.

50:09Mike Hobbes:Great.

50:10Russell Brand:I fucking love reality TV. Fucking reality show. It's so weird. Unhinged. Just like churn through a man. Who cares? He also, a thing that really rockets him to fame, and a thing that he's been very good at doing throughout his career, is riding controversies into more fame and more notoriety. So in 2006, he hosts the NME Awards, which is like a music magazine, music awards.

50:36Aubrey Gordon:The New Music Express, I believe. First of all, he goes through some of his jokes for the awards show.

50:43Russell Brand:He says that the band The Strokes is attending. For context, the lead singer of The Strokes is named Julian Casablanca. Yes. I guess he's in the midst of saying like, The Strokes are here. He says, Oh, my nan had a stroke. I think that's what killed her. What was Julian Casablanca's thinking? She was 90 years old and she was a lesbian. What? That's the joke. The strokes. That's the whole, that's the joke.

51:11Mike Hobbes:Again, the cadence of humor.

51:14Aubrey Gordon:I know. Delivered with a thick accent from a guy doing a ratatouille.

51:20Russell Brand:He then introduces Bob Geldof, who's like a legendary music actor guy. I know him from being the lead of Pink Floyd's The Wall, which I saw like 400 times when I was in eighth grade. This is his introduction to Bob Geldof. This is Russell Brand. He says, the winner of Best DVD is Bob Geldof. My Best DVD is Big Natural Tits 10 in a welcome return to form after the lazy and derivative Big Natural Tits 8 and 9. Of course, we ain't really captured the glory days of Big Natural Tits 1 and 2. Don't be ridiculous. But all this is academic because the big natural tit series has been overlooked. Again, here's Sir Bobby Gandalf.

52:02Russell Brand:And then he introduces him. And then Bob Geldof comes up and he just like leans. He starts out. He just leans at the microphone. He says, Russell Brand, what a cunt.

52:12Mike Hobbes:Yeah, good job. Good job. It's also sort of the shortcoming of this kind of like edgelord era of humor, which is just like you don't actually have to have a joke. Yeah. Sort of like his earlier stuff. the point is just like oh it's taboo so i'm gonna say yeah that's not a joke yeah a joke takes craftsmanship a joke takes subversion of expectation are you talking about how

52:36Russell Brand:sophisticated you were for using the soundboard on this podcast what did it say we're gaining traction what fucking soundboard is this let's really drill

52:49Mike Hobbes:down on this.

52:50Aubrey Gordon:What is this? A friend gave me a corporate jargon one. We have to be disruptive. That's good. Let's put a pin in that. Let's circle back to that.

53:00Russell Brand:That is sophisticated. You're right, Aubrey. It takes dedication. That's a no brainer.

53:05Mike Hobbes:What's standing out to me about this that I find really fascinating is it's sort of a referendum on Russell Brand, of course, and it should be, but it's also sort of like a pretty good reflection of like an era that enabled a generation of assholes like this. Yeah. Right. Like this is also the era of, uh, Adam Carolla, Don Imus. Yeah. All of these like fucking dickweed edgelord assholes who were just like, uh, I'm going to say the most shocking thing possible. And it would often be about shit that was like taboo for a fucking reason.

53:41Russell Brand:Oh, are you mad? I guess you're mad about this. And then you get to do the whole fucking shtick where you're like, they're all mad at me. again. And he also gets a chat show on MTV around this time and becomes the kind of person who just like shows up at things. He's presenting this thing. He's presenting that thing. This also dovetails with the abuse allegations. In 2023, we get the article reporting on all these kind of like specific women who allege abuse. But then we also get allegations that he was using his contacts at the BBC and at Channel 4 to recruit audience members from these shows and like send them backstage.

54:20Russell Brand:It says TV researchers and runners who worked on Channel 4 shows during this period alleged that Brand would get staff to approach young female audience members so he could meet them after filming.

54:30Mike Hobbes:Oh boy.

54:31Russell Brand:Another kind of later in the article, it says Brand would regularly have sex with women he met at events. two who went back to his home on separate occasions claim he became threatening and shouted at them when they refused to have intercourse with him one left his home in tears so we yet again see this pattern where he's like using his power to like systematically recruit

54:52Mike Hobbes:women to have sex with allegedly yeah so this is also like the mid-2000s which means that the response to this kind of media would have been like wow it looks like those women made some bad choices.

55:02Russell Brand:There's also in December of 2007, somebody makes a complaint about, quote, an alarming display of aggression and disrespect, which included Brand hurling objects across the studio in fits of rage and, quote, urinating in a bottle in full view of everyone.

55:20Mike Hobbes:Sorry, this is after he gets sober?

55:23Russell Brand:Yeah, that's actually super fascinating to me. A lot of these anecdotes are basically like what other people would describe as their rock bottom. Like the time I pissed in a cup in front of staff at work.

55:34Mike Hobbes:100 % rock bottom.

55:35Russell Brand:Yeah.

55:36Mike Hobbes:Yep, yep, yep, yep.

55:37Russell Brand:So there is, after these abuse allegations, the article detailing the abuse allegations come out, BBC and Channel 4 both launch like retrospective investigations to be like, did we get complaints? Like, was there a systematic failure here? The BBC says they only received three complaints during his time at the BBC and they weren't followed up on, However, the person who led the investigation also said the BBC did not maintain a centralized record of staff complaints regarding bullying and harassment, including sexual harassment at the time. So basically they haven't found anything, but also they weren't keeping records of anything.

56:14Mike Hobbes:God, imagine living in a media environment where the media goes, wait a minute, did we have a hand in this?

56:21Aubrey Gordon:Or like, did we write this down? Is there something we should have done differently here?

56:26Russell Brand:Here, I'm going to send this to you and I might cut it. This is from the period when he's doing his MTV show where he's interviewing like fairly big celebrities. Like he interviews like Tom Cruise and stuff. And so here is him talking about a celebrity encounter.

56:39Mike Hobbes:Neil brought Courtney Love with him, who is a mad enchantress, a rasping white witch, barmy and opinionated and lion hearted. more interesting than her lion heart though is her vagina which has been referred to as magic in that it has a mythical power to bestow stardom and heavenly gifts upon those who enter a kind of blarney fanny lord alone knows many a famous man has emerged from its confines some of whom surely must have been famous on the way in jesus fucking christ he he later says like oh we had a nice time

57:16Russell Brand:she's a nice person, we became friends. So this is him talking about like a woman he holds in high esteem.

57:22Mike Hobbes:Yeah. I mean, Mike, what do you expect? He's saying her vagina is good. What higher praise is there than that?

57:29Russell Brand:Am I not supposed to say this when I talk about you? Like, tell me, tell me about your co-host. I'm like, well, let's start with her vagina and work our way outward.

57:39Aubrey Gordon:Blarney vagina. How do you describe my vagina workshop it fellas is it gay to describe your co-host's vagina it's actually

57:53Russell Brand:not problematic because i am gay i'm allowed to describe your vagina it's gay not to

57:59Mike Hobbes:god what a fucking twerp okay so this is like the hardest transition of the whole show we're

58:04Russell Brand:like giggly and stuff we now have to talk about the 16 year old that he dated uh and allegedly

58:11Mike Hobbes:orally raped if it's a 16 year old what's the age of consent in the uk unfortunately 16 so it was

58:16Russell Brand:not illegal shit i'm saying well i'm saying unfortunate also because i don't like knowing what the ages of consent are in places because anyone who can like rattle off like oh iowa that's

58:27Aubrey Gordon:17 you're like no i don't want to be the guy who can answer your question exactly like but like

58:32Russell Brand:overhearing a conversation at a restaurant like oh actually it's 16 in the uk i think but no it's actually a fibophilia that's the energy so this is from i keep mentioning this but there's a very good investigation by the sunday times the times of london and channel 4 which produces a long investigative article and also a documentary this is a four-year investigation where they interview it appears to be like dozens to hundreds of people about various allegations throughout russell brand's career this is a woman who they are calling alice in the article who is 16 when she meets Russell Brand in 2006.

59:06Russell Brand:She has just recovered from an eating disorder and she has never had a boyfriend. And here is her description of how it started.

59:15Mike Hobbes:He approached her in Leicester Square after she had been shopping at Top Shop at Oxford Circus, and he had been working at a nearby studio. Alice recognized him from TV and had previously seen him do stand up. He took my shopping bags from me, which was quite disarming and proceeded to go through my purchases and critique them. And then he took one dress out and said to me, you're going to wear this on our date this week, she recalls. Fucking hell.

59:44Russell Brand:So again, you see this extremely aggressive way of hitting on women, right?

59:48Mike Hobbes:But also like when you're 16. Dude, I know.

59:51Russell Brand:I know.

59:52Mike Hobbes:You don't know that this dude is like actively dangerous to you necessarily yet in your life.

59:59Russell Brand:There's then this period where it's like he's acutely aware of her age and how inappropriate this is so he asked her to read lolita which is a really fucking weird detail he asked her to put himself in her phone as carly so that in case her parents check her phone or something they don't find like a man's name holy fucking shit he coaches her on what to say to her parents he also sends a car to her high school to like pick her up and take her to his house. And there's this heartbreaking scene where like the driver of the car, this is like Russell Brand's professional driver pulls up to his house and like begs her not to get out of the car.

1:00:37Russell Brand:He's like, I have a daughter your age. You don't want to go into that house.

1:00:41Mike Hobbes:This is, you know, to borrow a fucking very law and order-y phrase, this is like evidence of premeditation, right? Yeah. This is someone who knows that what he's doing will not be viewed in a kind light. Yeah. This is someone who is actively engaged in like, regardless of the age of consent in a given place. This is fucking grooming behavior.

1:01:03Russell Brand:Read Lolita. She alleges that he orally raped her as part of the relationship. And she basically was like, stop, stop, stop. She had to hit him to get him off of her. There's then this paragraph, which is absolutely fucking insane.

1:01:17Mike Hobbes:So Michael, this is how it ended. The relationship ended when Brand invited her over one day and she arrived to find another woman in his bed. I was so angry and I said to him, why would you do this to me? This is so humiliating.

1:01:34Russell Brand:It's either totally just reckless and like you're in some sort of mania and you don't really realize what you're doing. Or it's deliberately like I'm too chicken shit to break up with this person. And so I'm going to create this like horrible scene so that she has to break up with me.

1:01:45Mike Hobbes:It's also like not for nothing.

1:01:47Aubrey Gordon:It is kind of nuts that he does dress like a cartoon villain. To be fair, he has been telling us very loudly who he fucking is for his entire career.

1:01:56Russell Brand:For a real long time. Yep, totally. We also, this is like now the fucking sexual assault montage.

1:02:02Mike Hobbes:It wasn't before?

1:02:04Russell Brand:No, this is where it gets really bad. So in 2007, he was allegedly in a relationship with somebody named Jordan Martin who wrote a book in 2014 about being in an abusive relationship. It's called Not Entanglement with a Celebrity. And in the book, she calls him Randall Grand. She's elsewhere said that this was based on Russell Brand. Schmushel Schman. Yeah, basically. Yeah. And she alleges like him sexually assaulting her and cheating on her and a bunch of like really awful shit in this book. Sounds like our guy. Yeah. And then when the allegations come out in 2023, she's like, I don't want to be interviewed, but I stand by the book.

1:02:40Russell Brand:We then in 2008 have this incident.

1:02:45Mike Hobbes:The woman, who we are calling Olivia, worked for a media company in the same building as the BBC's Los Angeles office. On 16th of June, 2008, she says she answered the door to Brand and his team, who were there to pre-record an episode of the Russell Brand show for Radio 2. She then went to the bathroom to get some sinus medication. While squatting to look through the medicine cabinet, she says she felt someone behind her. Fucking hell. I know. She turned around to face a man's crotch. I was startled and got up and I realized it was Russell. She says he told her he was going to call her Betty.

1:03:24Mike Hobbes:When she, what?

1:03:26Russell Brand:That's weird.

1:03:26Mike Hobbes:When she said that wasn't her name, she says he replied, well, I'm going to fuck you. And I said, no, you're not. She says he then pulled out his penis on his hand and quote, pretty much served it to me as you would be serving someone some food. She says the door to the bathroom was closed and she felt trapped. Olivia says he then put his penis back in his trousers and she heard someone banging on the door. She says someone from his team called for him, at which point Brand left. Jesus fucking Christ.

1:04:01Aubrey Gordon:It's like having a dog that needs to be on a fucking leash.

1:04:05Russell Brand:This woman, Olivia, texts a friend and she's like, uh, fucking Russell Brand just like whipped his dick out in the bathroom. Good for Olivia. And he goes, I know. They're talking about it live on the air. What? They're like joking on air. One of his co-hosts says, it's been 25 minutes since he showed his willy to anyone. And Brand is like laughing. He's like, easy for you to judge. Boy, oh fucking boy. So this is like a bit within like 15 fucking minutes. It's a fucking bit on the air.

1:04:31Mike Hobbes:I don't even know how to fucking process this shit.

1:04:35Russell Brand:And also everyone, it's so extreme. I think everyone assumes it has to be a joke, I guess. What a Lothario. That's like, that's the persona that he was able to cultivate, but it like was not a fucking persona.

1:04:46Mike Hobbes:There are lots of like real dipshit dumb guy parts of American media and political landscapes. One of them really is like, boy, oh boy, the degree to which we get charmed by a British accent and allow terrible fucking behavior.

1:05:02Russell Brand:So the final episode that we are going to talk about before we close, are you familiar with Saxgate?

1:05:08Mike Hobbes:Is this when Winona Ryder did her shoplifting?

1:05:10Aubrey Gordon:No, it's Andrew Sax.

1:05:12Mike Hobbes:I know this name. Why do I know this name?

1:05:14Russell Brand:You're like a UK comedy nerd. You watched Fawlty Towers growing up, right? Oh, sure. I was like obsessed with Fawlty Towers when I was a kid. So the guy who plays Manuel on Fawlty Towers is named Andrew Sax. Oh, okay. He is, in 2008, kind of like an elder statesman kind of guy. He's like an old guy, kind of shows up on TV in various times. And so there is an incident where he is supposed to show up on the radio show of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross.

1:05:43Mike Hobbes:Oh, boy.

1:05:44Russell Brand:So at the time, Russell Brand is hosting a morning zoo kind of situation. I don't think it's on In the Mornings, but it's like that kind of vibe. You know, like a bunch of dudes, and it's kind of like zany, and there's like sound effects and shit. Oh, I'm so sorry.

1:05:57Mike Hobbes:do you mean soundboard energy?

1:06:00Russell Brand:I was trying not to say the word because I knew you'd get you'd get inspired. I'm at capacity. Let's take that offline. This is the worst soundboard, Aubrey.

1:06:11Mike Hobbes:It's really not good and I love it. That's kind of what I love the most about it. That's a no brainer.

1:06:19Russell Brand:So this Andrew Sacks guy is supposed to be on Russell Brand's radio show. for whatever reason he cancels and so they do a bit where they call his answering machine

1:06:29Mike Hobbes:and they talk to his answering machine i have a vague recollection about this where they are like fucking sex pests about his daughter or something granddaughter yes

1:06:43Russell Brand:creep fucking city the thing is i was gonna skip this because it's so it's just a very weird controversy for reasons we will get into. But people in the UK say like you cannot underestimate how fucking big of a deal this was. This was like literally front page news for like months. This was a massive scandal at the time. So we are going to read a transcript of the answering machine message. So I am going to send you this transcript. You are going to be Russell Brand and I'm going to be Jonathan Ross. Because I know if I made you Jonathan Ross you'd try to do the voice.

1:07:15Mike Hobbes:No I would not try to do the voice. Hello, Andrew Sachs. This is Russell Brand. You are meant to be on my show now, mate. I'm here with Jonathan Ross. I could still do the interview to your answer phone.

1:07:29Russell Brand:Let's do it.

1:07:29Mike Hobbes:Man, er, Andrew Sachs.

1:07:32Aubrey Gordon:Don't call him Manuel. That's really bad manners.

1:07:34Russell Brand:I apologize for Russell. He's an idiot.

1:07:36Mike Hobbes:I said Andrew Sachs. Look, Andrew Sachs, I have got respect for you and your lineage and your progeny. Never let that be questioned. Don't hint. I weren't hinting. Why did that come across as a hint?

1:07:48Russell Brand:Because you know what you did.

1:07:49Aubrey Gordon:That wasn't a hint. He fucked your granddaughter. Jesus fucking Christ.

1:07:55Russell Brand:Cute stuff. So cute. What a couple of little rogues. So we find out, it was not clear at the time, but we do find out later that Russell Brand did briefly date his granddaughter.

1:08:07Aubrey Gordon:Russell Brand at this point would have been in his 30s? Yeah, early 30s. Yeah. And the granddaughter's in her early 20s. Jonathan Ross is like fucking 50.

1:08:15Russell Brand:He's just always been 50. It's unclear to me what he's age is.

1:08:17Mike Hobbes:He's middle-aged for forever.

1:08:19Russell Brand:It's like a Gene Hackman situation.

1:08:20Mike Hobbes:That's fucking nuts. Like a middle-aged man being like, he fucked your granddaughter. Like, what in the fuck are we doing?

1:08:27Russell Brand:It is the two boys on the telephone being like, Marianne, so when I had sex with you, I had sex with you, right? You're confirming that I had sex with you while I'm taping it?

1:08:34Mike Hobbes:Shut up, hang up, hang up, hang up. Yeah.

1:08:35Russell Brand:Also, I was thinking about this from Georgina's perspective that like, okay, you date this guy, whatever. It appears like a week, a couple dates, whatever. It's not super serious. and then a couple weeks later you find out that he's bragging about having sex with you on the fucking bbc to your grandpa is she a public figure in her own right at this point yeah i mean not like a major public figure but she was a dancer and like was on the scene in some sense but like yeah this she was not a public figure in like you know a helen mirren sense right or like

1:09:05Mike Hobbes:i love that helen mirren was the name that's my only one british women famous sex scandal

1:09:12Russell Brand:Helen Mirren! They then hang up, and then they talk amongst themselves. So this is them sort of doing like a little recap.

1:09:19Mike Hobbes:Andrew Sachs, I did not do nothing with Georgina. Oh no, I revealed I know her name. Oh no, it's a disaster. Abort, abort!

1:09:27Russell Brand:If he's like most people of a certain age, he's probably got a picture of his grandchildren when they were young and innocent right by the phone. So while he's listening to the message, he's looking at a picture of her when she was nine on a swing.

1:09:38Mike Hobbes:She was on a swing when I met her. Let's ring back Andrew Sachs.

1:09:42Aubrey Gordon:cute fucking gross then they call again andrew this is russell brand i am so sorry about the

1:09:49Mike Hobbes:last message it was part of the radio show it was a mistake the truth is i'm phoning you to ask if i can marry that's right mary georgina the granddaughter and i would like to be the page boy he wants to be a page boy we're going to have a faulty towers themed wedding now you've spoiled it no i made it better i'm sorry i'll do anything i wore a condom put the phone down and then

1:10:11Russell Brand:there's one they hang up and then there's a third message this is russell brand singing but i'm not going to make you come up with a tune thank you i'd like to apologize for the terrible

1:10:22Mike Hobbes:attacks andrew sacks i would like to show contrition to the max andrew sacks i would like to create world peace between the yellow white and blacks andrew sacks great i said something i didn't have oughta like i had sex with your granddaughter but it was consensual and she wasn't menstrual it was consensual lovely sex it was full of respect i sent her a text i've asked her to marry me andrew sacks she wasn't menstrual what a fucking creep unbelievable if i as a human being and encountering someone who's willing to go to these kinds of lengths i'm like get away from me for forever because if you're willing to be this level of boundary crossing then i think there maybe is no rock bottom for you at the time it isn't really noticed apparently the bbc only

1:11:19Russell Brand:got two complaints about this at the time yeah but then the daily mail seizes on this as a way to attack the bbc right because the right wing hates public media yeah and so they're like the bbc allowed this smut to go on the air and then the bbc starts getting flooded with complaints and then it becomes a big scandal. I feel kind of complicated about it because like this is fucking scandalous and absolutely disgusting. But the only reason it was noticed is because it was like a right-wing smear campaign basically against the BBC.

1:11:47Mike Hobbes:It's weird to be like, am I siding with what would then become Mumsnet? I know. Right, like you don't want to sort of be in the same camp, but I do think you got to sort of stand in your repulsed reaction to this and be like, this is like not actually fucking okay.

1:12:03Russell Brand:So he is fired from the BBC over this. Jonathan Ross is given, I believe it's six weeks or maybe six months of unpaid leave. The controller of the BBC is forced to resign and the BBC is fined 140 ,000 pounds. This is like actually a really big deal and there was like accountability for this at the time. But then what's amazing is that then Russell Brand kind of just moves over to Hollywood.

1:12:27Aubrey Gordon:Yeah.

1:12:27Russell Brand:He's fired from MTV for dressing up as Osama bin Laden. he's like disgraced on the radio and on tv his award show the enemy award show thing was like considered a debacle at the time he just keeps like fucking up and then people keep giving him second third and fourth chances and this sort of happens again after this and by the time he comes back to uk it's kind of memory hold because all of a sudden he's a movie star yeah i mean part of it

1:12:52Mike Hobbes:is that that is like a little bit part of his persona right is that he's like i'm a lovable fuck up. Yeah, exactly. Don't expect better.

1:12:59Russell Brand:That would have been a better fucking title for his book than Bookie Wook.

1:13:02Mike Hobbes:Don't expect better.

1:13:04Russell Brand:So that is where we're going to leave Russell Brand and next episode we are going to pick it up with his journey to America and his travails in Hollywood.

1:13:11Aubrey Gordon:Can I give a preview of what my reaction is going to be to that? I know you're going to have your little soundboard in front of you. I know what you're going to do. Is that the sigh soundboard? Disappointed

1:13:22Mike Hobbes:sigh is the name of this one. Is that all it does? Yeah. Do you want to hear male sigh? Yeah.

1:13:32Russell Brand:Dude, you as a millennial podcaster should not have told me about that because I can now replace you with one of those.

1:13:39Mike Hobbes:I've always been replaceable by a soundboard thing.

1:14:04Thank you.