David Walliams unmasked: How the actor abused his power and fame

0:02The Telegraph.

0:30go rogue. Okta secures AI. Learn more at okta.com. Hi folks, it's Farnoosh Tarabi from the So Money Podcast here to talk about NerdWallet Wealth Partners. They offer free tools for high earners who'd actually like an answer, like their calculator that estimates if you're on track for financial independence. Plug in a few numbers to see how your savings path may support your goals or their wealth building checklist for high earners. It's a step-by-step guide for prioritizing your dollars once you're making six figures. And if you still have questions, you can connect with one of their financial advisors who specializes in working with high earners in their 30s and 40s.

1:04Learn more at nerdwalletwealthpartners.com slash so money. NerdWallet Wealth Partners LLC is an SEC registered investment advisor. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training, nor does it constitute an endorsement by any securities regulator. Please see nerdwalletwealthpartners.com for disclosures and important information. We can finally say it. David Walliams is the celebrity accused of sexually harassing women. With the injunction now lifted and with Russell Brand serving 10 years in jail, do we need to have a conversation about men, celebrity and abuse of power?

1:43It's something about the power of celebrity that it is different. If a much older man, some random much older man, privately messaged you on MySpace, you might just go, That's weird and creepy and ignore them. But because they're a celebrity, there's a different dynamic between you and that person. Tim, I'm back. And can I just say that somebody has staged a David Cameron-like intervention? Remember when he said to Jeremy Corbyn, do you know what my mother would say? Put on a suit and tie and sing the national anthem. Somebody has said to you that it is totally inappropriate for you to be appearing on this podcast with your sleeves rolled up.

2:21Why did you do that? It's because we're inside an oven. Yes, this is what people have to understand. It is about 100 degrees in here. I don't know what's wrong. The air conditioning's broken or something like that. I'm regretting knitwear at my time of life. Let's put it that way. We've just had a quick 2K march from Marsham Street where we just observed a press conference with Kemi, which is being blown out of the water, I'm afraid, by the news that David Wallians is the anonymous celebrity at the heart of yet another celebrity sexual assault scandal. We'll get onto that in a minute. But basically, it's so hot that you felt that you wanted to imitate Don Johnson yesterday.

2:55And it's gone badly wrong. People were lucky it was just the sleeves rolled up. Could it have been your trousers rolled up as well? If it gets any hotter. And the strange thing is, it's Arctic conditions outside. Yes. But we could actually feasibly podcast in our pants. And nobody except each other would notice. That's a thought for another day. No, it's on YouTube now. Oh, yes. Good point. Yeah, but you can't really see. Well, actually, yes, you could see. That's how hot it is. And that would probably be deemed completely inappropriate behaviour in light of the allegations surrounding Russell Brand and David Walliams.

3:25I think this is the time to say I've absolutely never done that. No, that's right. Put that on record. Some of the behaviour you do look at and you go, why? What? Sorry. What were you thinking? What were you doing? Why were the people around you sanctioning it? But we'll get on to that. I always hate it when stories like this break that name a celebrity, because like everyone else in the industry, I knew the name of the celebrity for weeks. Yes. And I feel as if I'm on the side of an establishment conspiracy to protect that individual. Yes. But we couldn't go around naming David Walliams because of an injunction.

4:01Yes, which was meaningless, really, because as you say... Which was meaningless because people were all saying it anyway. But you take my point that when the name is then named and the media all goes, well, we knew all along. Well, why didn't you tell us is what people tend to ask. And it's not an unfair question. If you all were talking about this for weeks, why couldn't we just say it? Actually, I do think that's a fair question, isn't it? And we come on to Brand a bit later. And I think it's important at this stage to not to equate David Walliams and Russell Brand. The former has not been accused of anything in a court of law.

4:30he has been subject to allegations that have been made to both ITV and The Guardian who have done a long-standing investigation into claims made by women that he behaved sexually inappropriately towards them with one claim of sexual assault all of this he denies that's quite different to a discussion that we will have about the latest on brand who is now a convicted rapist and been sentenced to more than 10 years in prison that's we can talk about the commonality of men abusing positions of power in show business. I think we can talk about the commonality of their employers, plural, turning a blind eye.

5:06And we can talk about the commonality of a post-Me Too, unacceptance by women of behaviour that went by in the past. And we can often talk about whether Lucy Powell is right to dismiss Labour's cosying up to particularly brand by saying, well, it happened in a different era. And you and I can have a discussion as journalists. We are slightly pot calling kettle black if we're accusing people of knowing about the behaviour of both men being bad and not doing much. I mean, it was an open secret that David Walliams had a, let's put it this way, difficult relationship with some of the people he worked with.

5:41I remember an old colleague at the Sunday Express throwing a glass of wine over him at a party because he was rude. I mean, he's not the kind of celebrity that has covered himself in glory just from a personality perspective. lots of people that reported on him thought he was a bit tricky yes similarly i mean we all knew that russell brand was a wrong one i don't believe in sharing gossip to be clear and we have been through a period in which people have been named and it's turned out to be completely inaccurate and that was based in some cases upon one deranged individual making up lurid stories about men in the public eye so i don't believe in sharing gossip but my point in this occasion is david Walliams was known.

6:24It wasn't just a rumor within the industry. For several weeks now, people have been saying, yeah, it's David Walliams. But they were prevented from saying that because of the injunction. And I think many people will say, isn't the point of journalists to tell us the truth? And if you're all engaged in a process of holding back something, not our fault, but I understand why people then perceive that as if we are involved in some way in the cover-up. And it should be pointed out that it's the Telegraph that initially reported the allegations that were made by women working for harper collins his publisher for the uninitiated as well as being a comedian and a tv star and a talent show judge he's also tried to reinvent himself as a modern day rold dahl producing stories for children illustrated by quentin blake which is where the parallel comes in my other issue is to say to give context of this conversation is i'm not a celebrity journalist i don't know the entertainment world at all but in the case of both Russell Brand and David Walliams I'm not saying you can judge someone on the basis of their art but in both cases their persona was of someone who was lewd and lascivious and jokes were made about them in that day and so as an outsider who's a bit of a stranger to this world I didn't even know I didn't actually own a television during the 2000s why doesn't that surprise me if you can believe that so much of this cultural phenomenon genuinely passed me by but as an outsider I look at it and think why didn't the public or the industry recoil at men who seem to be making light of things that shouldn't be made light of yeah mistreatment of women in general it might not have been criminal but it was extremely no no it wasn't immoral behavior no and i'm not a prude i'm not a prig you can have fun you can make jokes etc but my point is the public persona of both men aligns with what they're later accused of so as an outsider and a consumer of the culture i'm looking at them thinking, why didn't the industry earlier on say something ain't right about these two?

8:21Let's go through the allegations. So the Telegraph had previously reported repeated alleged inappropriate behaviour towards female employees at his publishing house, HarperCollins. We have with this ITV News and Guardian expose now, allegations from two women who said they first met the star when they were 15 years old. Both women now in their 30s said they'd been groomed by Walliams and that the experience had affected them for nearly two decades. We have allegations dating back to 2003 that Walliams preyed on teenage girls and young women for sexual purposes. One woman described an alleged encounter with Walliams at 15 years old as a sexual assault.

8:59Multiple women accusing Walliams of grooming them when they were teenagers. One says he began contacting her when she was 15 after meeting her at a Little Britain fan event before starting a sexual relationship with her at 17 also accused of inappropriate conduct and sexual harassment at Britain's Got Talent um investigation reveals he had a sexual relationship with at least one junior employee at HarperCollins and pursued another um he has denied all the allegations against him stating I am not a sexual predator I have not broken the law and it's worth before you come in Tim just let's just read out the whole statement because we've listed a great many allegations there and in the interest of balance let's see what Walliams is saying in response quotes looking back I realized that at times I behaved thoughtlessly towards other people I had casual sexual relationships with I realized I did not always take people's feelings properly into account that is something I regret and whilst a power imbalance is inevitable when one party is famous abusing that power is something else entirely and it is something I never did I am not a sexual predator.

10:02I have not broken the law. I am devastated that some of the women I met 10 to 20 years ago have now expressed hurt or anger towards me. David Wanham is innocent until proven guilty if indeed any criminal kind of action is taken. So we must be very careful. We don't want to confuse what might be very, very poor male behaviour with criminal activity. There is a question though to be asked about the role of celebrity in all of this yes so one striking account is by someone called jade who says that when she was a school girl she went on myspace in 2007 that's a now defunct social media website and she commented on a photo of david walliams and that david walliams then got in touch with her directly and that this then led on to a series of encounters between them that were intimate and sexual now she said there's something about receiving a message from a celebrity that makes you feel a bit special yes my point is it's something about the power of celebrity that it is different if a much older man some random much older man privately messaged you on myspace you might just go that's weird and creepy and ignore them but because they're a celebrity there's a different dynamic between you and that person And I was struck in the accusations against Russell Brand, again, not comparing Walliams and Brand here, but I was struck in how women talked about how they met him as a fan.

11:34Because, you know, there's some talk online about, Russell Brand's father said outside the courthouse, women threw themselves at him. Yeah, that's probably true. In fact, that is true. That is true. but it's incumbent upon the man who's having someone thrown at them to exercise some degree of discernment yes but you can have and you can have a fun consensual relationship yes with someone who throws themselves at you i wouldn't know it's never happened but you can you can do that the difference here is someone exploiting the attention of a fan that's the allegation but also i think that's what celebrity gives you the opportunity to do it was reflected in the sentencing remarks um at russell brand's hearing that a woman is perfectly entitled to throw themselves at a celebrity a woman is perfectly entitled to approach a celebrity in a pub a woman is perfectly entitled to wear what she wants to wear contact whom she likes but she's also perfectly entitled to not consent to sex yes and you know so yes we have this whole dialogue don't And we are, well, at the end of the day, women were throwing themselves at these people.

12:41But a line is drawn at consent. And in Russell Brand's case, he was found guilty of raping somebody who initially consented to a certain kind of sex and did not consent to a different kind of sex. And that is clearly where the line is drawn. Now, there is clearly issues as well. I think it's abuse of power, but there's a generational divide going on in some of these cases as well. We saw it with Saville. We saw it with Hugh Edwards. We saw it with Russell Brand. Tales of the BBC paying for Addison Lee cars to collect a 16 year old from school and bring her to his home or the studio. In the case of Alex, not her real name, one of the complainants in the Walliams case, she's talking about being 15, seeing him in a pub in London, being begged for sex, being begged for oral sex.

13:33obviously she comes of age but as she points as she points out herself let's quote her okay it's legal to have sex when you're 17 18 or 16 even but the context of who you're having sex with if that person is double your age if that person has promised you things and is in a much bigger position of power than you both in age in work in finance in stature in size i really don't think that's okay. And that's where this element of a power imbalance and grooming comes in. But again, we can have a debate about that is, I think, grotesque behavior. It's immoral behavior. Is it necessarily criminal behavior?

14:09Well, not if it hasn't resulted in underage sex. So that needs to be discussed. Well, again, I'm not comparing them, but Kevin Spacey said in his defense, never found guilty of anything, by the way, that the so-called power imbalance ignores how sometimes younger people might exploit the desires of an older person. I'm just throwing that in there to say it's complicated. What I would say, and one reason why I'm framing it in terms of celebrity is because it's almost assumed like celebrity as a free-for-all, like you've got a golden ticket in life. Women now fancy you or boys fancy you. So, okay, you can have sex with them.

14:52Well, a different way of looking upon it is celebrity is a position of responsibility. Yes. And that actually, if you exploit it, you're betraying the nature of celebrity. In our society, there's kind of a running assumption throughout modern society that it's natural for people to want to get something out of each other. yeah so you see my celebrity becomes this key that unlocks things for you but actually should it not be seen the other way around that celebrity is this opportunity and when people come up to you i mean people come up to you they come up to me i'm not saying i'm on that level of celebrity at all but you you must know what i mean that you feel a responsibility to speak to them and act with them in a certain way because they're doing something really nice and they might think quite highly of you in which case you need to rise to that level of what they think you're like with great power comes great responsibility to quote spider-man i mean why are there some a-listers that wouldn't treat i mean keanu reeves is this classic example of a lifelong heartthrob okay from point break to speed to matrix or whatever right this bloke has been he's never aged a day he hasn't aged a day this book has been a poster boy for women and girls and teenagers or whatever, probably boys as well, for decades.

16:10And he has absolutely made it his mission to behave appropriate with people. He won't even touch people when they want to come up for photographs. He's totally down to... I mean... And that'll partly be to protect himself, sadly. Of course it is to protect himself, but it's also because he's an honourable chap and he behaves in an honourable way because he's grateful for his fame and fortune, huge amounts of which I understand he's given away to charity. Listen, we aren't expecting celebrities to be popes. No. That's ridiculous. But at the same time, we're expecting people who have got a huge amount of privilege surrounded by staff to go and cater to their every whim and need.

16:47And this is the other problem with this, which is endemic. You know, people around these people seemingly turning a blind eye to the behaviour. And if in the case of Brand, it's the BBC, it's Channel 4. We'll get on to labour rights in just a minute and lefties. Let's look at this as well. And I don't mean to besmirch Jonathan Ross. Jonathan Ross obviously had the association with Brand because of the absolutely grotesque way in which they phoned Andrew Sachs, Manuel from Forty Towers, and made completely lewd remarks about Brand's sexual relationship with his granddaughter. They were both admonished by the BBC.

17:21We then have evidence at the British Comedy Awards in December 2004 of Jonathan Ross telling the audience, the Comedy Awards is 15 years old, 15 years old, and like all 15-year-olds, it's drunk, it's unpredictable, and it's probably going home with David Walliams. right now that's very much a joke of its time isn't it the noughties and if we wanted to we could go all the way back in history to the 60s and 70s and analyze some of i don't think anyone would say that in the 60s and 70s well i don't know in the appropriate relationships that's it that's not a carry-on joke no i know carry-on joke is that looks like a nice pair that is a joke about having sex with an underage girl yes it is i think actually there's something about the noughties that we need to distinguish here from previous periods of being saucy and fun, because that's not seaside humour.

18:08But to take us back into that era when you didn't have a television. It really wasn't around. I did, right? So I went to the first ever recording of Little Britain because we had friends who knew Walliams and Lucas. And I remember going with my now husband and we watched this thing thinking it's really very funny. You know, all of the characters, There was something completely inventive and original about it all. Subsequently, because I was working on the Sunday Express and these were two virtual unknowns, Matt Lucas had made his name as the baby on Vic and Bob, if anyone remembers that very wacky series with Reeves and Mortimer.

18:42But basically, Walliams had injected himself onto the scene. It was around the era of the rise of Steve Coogan doing Alan Partridge, of Catherine Tate doing Bicky Pollard, and a general environment, Jimmy Carr's star was in the ascendancy. And I did quite a lot of showbiz reporting at the time where I was moving in those circles, hence my knowledge of Walliams being coated with a Chardonnay. And I then approached Walliams because I was a journalist and he was just starting out to see if I could get an interview with him. He took very badly to that and responded to the intermediary. He was saying, don't ever give out my email address and all the rest of it.

19:19So it was a bit awkward. fast forward many many years and I see him at a party of a mutual friend that was September 2025 we have a fairly long chat because he says oh I've seen you on GB News which I found surprising because he's a renowned lefty and why would he necessarily be watching a right-leaning channel anyway no matter and we had a discussion about various things including the fact that Britain's Got Talent got into hot water because it was revealed that they had been catching the judges on hot mic moments and that they were still recording while people like Walliams and others were off air and then transcribing it into notes.

19:55And that did seem to be an invasion of privacy and I think he successfully sued them on the back of that. So we had a conversation. Two months later, the Telegraph reveals the allegations that had been made against him by female employees at HarperCollins. The injunction was put in place and there was an attempt to keep it in place by making the point that we now know Walliams was suffering severely from a mental health crisis and that had been twice sectioned under the Mental Health Act. But at the same time, we need to ask ourselves whether it is right for the details, such serious allegations to be kept out of the public eye on the basis of the human rights of the person who is at the centre of the allegations.

20:37In this case, the lawyer tried to deploy his right to life and right to dignity and right to privacy under the European Convention on Human Rights. But I wrote a piece in response to that saying, oh, hang on a minute. The human rights of a powerful man, regardless of some of the mental health problems that he's suffering, cannot possibly trump the public's right to know if we're all interested in freedom of expression and transparency and the press holding people accountable. And also, how on earth can it trump the human rights of those who have accused him of very, very serious offences? I'm more interested in the latter, I have to say.

21:13I mean, if this is a debate around trying to control damage to a reputation, I think that's distinct from a conversation around our right to know if someone is accused of criminal activity. But of course, this was about trying to protect a reputation. Exactly. Outside court, Ron Brand and others saying Russell's the real victim here is an attempt to protect a reputation. But what's interesting is... These people pay people to protect their reputations. But society has changed so radically that the injunction has had its day. And you cannot use the court simply to silence people and safeguard your reputation anymore.

21:51Why? Well, because Scotland can get around it. A foreign country can report on it. And you can go online and everyone's just talking about it. therefore what it has the effect actually of adding a new dimension to the story of the attempted cover-up it's an example of the barbara streisand effect yes where a celebrity tries to prevent someone from talking about something and that draws attention to the issue yeah and actually massively increases interest in it so this this to me is a good example of how the injunction has had its day well we know that as well because of the jemima goldsmith element in all this in regard to her relationship with Russell Brand.

22:30Yes. Goldsmith has now come forward and with the help of her brother, Zach, said actually the injunction was born about because this woman ended up making vile, anti-Semitic remarks towards Goldsmith and that actually it was a harassment order to get her to stay away. And Goldsmith has alleged that during her relationship with Russell Brand, it all ended because he was violent towards her. And following that incident, they have not spoken since and that happened around 10 years ago. So what's the point of a gagging order if you can just go on Google and find out all the information you need anyway?

23:06Also, celebrities themselves now have the ability to manipulate public opinion in ways they couldn't have done before. And the classic example of that was in the middle of his own trial, Russell Brand recording a Sunday service religious prayer event in which he was very clearly commenting upon the trial while not quite doing it. Yes. So he could get away with it. So it's almost like he is almost in contempt of his own court case. Exactly, yes.

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25:31Meanwhile, by the way, and let's not forget that Brand was a proponent of redistributing wealth. I think he meant on a more societal level. I think he meant in a kind of Marxist way. But check this out, this renowned lefty turned righty turned. Who on earth is he or what does he believe in? I'll tell you what he's doing now. He's secretly dumped nearly$9 million from his TV firm while awaiting trial, which may stop victims from suing him. Honourable stuff. And we also have here evidence that he wound down companies and transferred property before his trial. So is that what he meant by redistribution of his own wealth before being behind bars?

26:08I mean, this is absolutely classic champagne socialism, isn't it? It is. Speaking of which, we do have to comment upon the relationship between the political left and Russell Brand in the past. And in so doing, as we said with Jacob yesterday, we've got to be fair minded here and point out that conservatives have known plenty of wrong-uns too. Yes. Some of which have even gone to jail. People like Geoffrey Archer, Jimmy Savile was friends with Margaret Thatcher and also with the current king. Yeah. So everyone falls prey to celebrity. I think one reason why it's judged slightly differently with Labour is because they bring the element to it of virtue signaling.

26:53That's right. We are such good people. And of course, the left sees everything as a power imbalance. Everything is about the rich versus the poor, the strong versus the weak, and they are on the side of the poor and the weak. Well, what happens then when you end up playing host to and posing as comrade of someone who is himself at the centre of a power imbalance? So Lucy Powell has gone on today on the broadcast round. She's talking about banning phones in schools, no matter. She's being asked about Brand and Labour's historic relationship with this guy. She suggests that Miliband didn't know what he was like back when he appeared on Brand's show Trues, which was after, by the way, Saxgate.

27:36Well, how can you claim you didn't know what Brand was like when he'd already been fired from his Radio 2 show and admonished alongside Ross by the BBC for making disgusting remarks? I mean, he basically said into Sax's answer phone about Georgina Bailey, with whom he'd had a relationship, I effed her. I mean it was absolutely disgusting and yet still he continues to be feted by the left. Meanwhile by the way anyone with any familiarity of any of his stage shows or his entire shtick was that he made a career out of bragging about his mistreatment of women. That was the whole point of him. So nobody in those left-wing circles could have said they didn't know that this guy had a propensity to be at times a grotesque controversialist, that he had all of the makings of a misogynist.

28:25I mean, he admitted that much himself. That great everyman, Andy Burnham, who's so down with the people. I mean, he practically is a pork scratching. He knew about Saxgate before he decided to support Russell Brand in some battle that he had with a newspaper somewhere in 2014 tweeting, keep going. I mean, he was big and clever enough to know better, wasn't he, Tim? At the time, Andy Burnham said it was, quote, depressing to see media mission to discredit someone who stops playing their game, and urged Brand to keep going. He also praised an article that he'd written about Margaret Thatcher and said it was the best thing he'd seen written by a West Ham fan.

29:08Oh, my goodness. But also, Brand was such a charlatan because, OK, he came out with all of this rhetoric, but none of it ever made any sense. And some people on the left are seeing him as some kind of sage. For me, part of this comes back to this question of discernment, both in terms of morality and taste. Part of Brand's act when he was a young man was to take roadkill, I'm laughing as I say it, and a golf club and whack it into the audience. Yeah. Right. I mean, if that's your cup of tea. But when I was growing up, comedians were men in bow ties in smoky clubs who told jokes about their mother-in-law.

29:50Well. Okay, there was always crudity. There was Roy Chubby Brown and all that. Okay, there was always misogyny. Of course, there was always... Yeah, but Camilla, Roy couldn't be shown on telly. Chubby couldn't be shown on telly. No. They used to have a late night stand-up set on ITV and they would cut away from Chubby and go to the advert and then they'd come back and the audience would be howling with laughter and the presenter would say, well, I'm sorry, we couldn't show you any of that. Meanwhile, Brandt being platformed on the BBC and he does an hour of comic relief. Likewise, I have barely ever watched Britain's Got Minimal Talent.

30:23No. But the little bits I have seen, I don't find David Walliams amusing at all. It's just him being grotesque and in your face. This man ended up having a publishing empire writing kids' books and a theme park ride. I know. Again, all this stuff has passed me by. I would have just looked at all that and thought, well, OK, maybe it's some people's taste, but I can't quite understand on the basis simply of their ability how these people were able to gain such attention. And on the case about Brand, we can pick on individual left wing journalists and say, how could you have had anything to do with that man in the mid 2010s?

30:59I would remind you that he's done Turning Point USA events. Well, he has now because the left abandoned him. Russell Brand is like a force of nature. That's not to take away moral responsibility, but it's like a wild animal, a wild animal that both wants to have sex and make money. And what happened at various stages was that different people from different political positions and different bits in the media all saw that and they exploited it too. And you have to understand this. This is the quality of certain men unleashed. They're doing what they're going to do. Again, they should take responsibility for it.

31:38But it's also up to the establishment, and such a thing does exist, by the way, it's up to the establishment to exercise discernment and say, something wrong about that man, either morally or it's tacky and shouldn't be encouraged. Or isn't it up to the establishment, the BBC and Channel 4 to exercise some restraint? Yeah. Well, protect your own people, your own staff. The other quality that both these men share is a degree of overexposure. Yeah. Beyond their own discernible talents. Yeah. I mean, you know, we've all had it up. There was a period where we'd all had it up to here with Walliams and Brand.

32:11Just on TV too much, being given too much. Yes. And then people wonder why these people abuse their power. That's because literally so much smoke is being blown up their ass. You and I see it all the time. The BBC bless them. And you know what as well? You know, grotesque overpaying of talent because the money keeps on coming in. You know, if you operated it as a private business, you'd be looking at people saying, well are they actually worth that price tag? We saw it with the absolute grotesque overpay of people like Gary Lineker. It's because the money just keeps on coming into the BBC and they do have this habit of latching on to little tra...

32:46Oh look, he was quite popular after Big Brother's Little Mouth. Let's give him every show in the world to present. Like no, just... Well the BBC believes everything has to be mediated through celebrity. Hence it does celebrity traitors. Which is really boring and doesn't work. Because it only works with ordinary people because they're doing it for the money. But the BBC does think that the public can only understand things if they are communicated to them via a celebrity. Yes. And it finds it extremely difficult, I think, to exercise any regulation over dodgy celebrity behaviour. Yeah. On the subject of responsibility, this morning we went to a speech by Kimmy Badenock, which was supposed to be about welfare.

33:26But questions about Ross O 'Brien came up. And of course, we were all talking about David Walliams while she was speaking. and she gave an interesting answer. She was reluctant actually to blame the Labour Party collectively for its association with Brand, which I think is correct. Obviously, she can't politically do that because of the Tory party's past association with abusers. But it's also correct to say that really you should judge these things on an individual basis. You can't say the entire institution is corrupt because an individual within it, like Ed Miliband, has sat down unknowingly with a person like Russell Brand.

33:58That would be unfair. And she gave an interesting answer where she said that celebrities are in a particular position to abuse people and that we have a particular problem with celebrities. I think it's worth reminding people that the vast majority of sexual abuse actually takes place within the family. Yes. It's people you know. It's not celebrity. And celebrity offers opportunity. It isn't necessarily a cause of abuse. and i have to be very careful about how i phrase this but i think we as a society need to be more honest and mature about the nature of male sexuality and how dangerous it sometimes can be we live in an odd moment in our culture in which we are more liberated sexually than we've ever been before and i think we confuse that with maturity we think that i think that because we because we have so much more sex outside of traditional marriage that I think people think they they've mastered it um and you can't it is a force and a potentially dangerous force and it's not very much not the case that all men are like that but some men are capable of that and I think that in our rush towards liberation we've perhaps forgotten that and that is where celebrity does give certain men a power and where it's clearly not being scrutinized properly.

35:27We have to be realistic. This is the way that some men, if given an opportunity, will behave. The problem is with my sex. I do agree with feminists about this. Women don't abuse their power in the same way, right? Women can be bullying, women can be undermining, women can do all sorts of things, but it's extremely rare, isn't it? apart from one film featuring Demi Moore back in the 80s or 90s, to have a woman sexually abusing an underling. But this is where I think we've culturally got it all wrong, because at the same time, as I'm saying, men are potentially dangerous, partly because, unfortunately, of feminism.

36:06We don't talk as much about being a man as we used to. I know there's some cultural pushback against that, getting men to talk about their emotions. It's not really about that. Men don't feel comfortable doing that. it's about giving men a realistic male archetype to live up to we don't talk about what it means to be a man what it means to have men's desires and how they are best affected i think through the traditional family and because we don't do that anymore what archetypes are we left with instead what examples are there for young men to look up to and it becomes people like russell brand.

36:42Because we've jettisoned all the old-fashioned archetypes of male behavior, the breadwinner, the husband, the father, the patriarch. The patriarchy is itself a fascist, we're told. What you're left with instead is the scoundrel and the rascal, the man who breaks all the rules. So all I'm saying is be honest about the danger that men can pose to themselves and to society. And one answer to that is to channel that instead into a proper archetype of masculine behavior, rather than allowing it to be channeled into this gross kind of sexual anarchy. We'll be back tomorrow, 5pm.

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