Comedian Russell Brand has vehemently denied serious allegations made against him. Photo / Getty Images
Comedian Russell Brand has vehemently denied serious allegations made against him. Photo / Getty Images
“I’m a bloke from Grays ... who’s been given a Wonka ticket to a lovely sex factory ‘cos of the ol’ fame,” Russell Brand once said of his many sexual encounters.
The comedian has been linked with a string of high-profile women, from supermodels to pop stars. After this weekend’s allegations, which Brand denies, his exes will be forced to re-evaluate their time with him. Some have already spoken out.
Kate Moss, 2006
The famously tight-lipped model is now rumoured to dislike Brand so much that nobody is allowed to mention his name in her presence. Photo / Getty Images
In his follow-up autobiography, My Booky Wook 2, Brand wrote about his night with the supermodel, whom he claims he went home with after she attended his gig in Islington, north London.
Writing about waking up next to her the following morning, Brand says, “The raging dawn of a sleeping Kate Moss, the illumination warring with the daybreak – intimidated by her radiance, the sun disappears behind a cloud. Her hair fans over the pillow like a peacock’s tail.” History does not recount whether these florid descriptions led to further encounters between the pair – but the famously tight-lipped model is now rumoured to dislike Brand so much that nobody is allowed to mention his name in her presence.
Peaches Geldof, 2006
Peaches Geldof with Russell Brand at the Jezebel launch party at the Shepherds Bush Pavilion, on June 23, 2006. Photo / Getty Images
Peaches Geldof was 16; Brand was 31. Today, we see this sort of union as problematic, but in the mid-noughties we had no such qualms. And while Brand’s relationship with Peaches – who died aged 25 of a drugs overdose – was never confirmed, the then-schoolgirl’s family certainly seems to dislike him.
At the 2006 NMEs, Brand presented an award to Bob Geldof but appeared to mispronounce his last name, calling him “Sir Bobby Gandalf”. Geldof responded, “Russell Brand, what a c***.” In 2015, a year after Peaches’ death, her sister Fifi Geldof allegedly called Brand an “uber douche extraordinaire” during a charity fundraiser for drug addiction.
Jordan Martin, 2007
PR executive Jordan Martin was one of the first women to publicly raise the flag when she claimed in her 2015 self-published book that Brand had subjected her to emotional abuse over the course of their six-month relationship.
Allegations included the fact he invited two women to have sex in their house, which they briefly shared, that he forced her to brush her teeth to the point that they bled, and that he accused her of being sexually attracted to her own brother.
When asked why she didn’t leave him, Martin said, “I was vulnerable, at a low point in my life, and I was living with Russell, an extremely powerful character who would verbally knock me down and then cuddle me 10 seconds later.”
In the book, she renamed herself “Dina” and Brand “Randall Grand”, but she told the Sunday Times she stood by her account. Brand denies all the allegations made by the Sunday Times, but he has never challenged the content of the book.
Georgina Baillie, 2008
Russell Brand claimed to have had sex with Georgina Baillie. Photo / Getty Images
It is an indictment of the noughties that one of the few occasions when Brand’s behaviour with women did have professional consequences involved the humiliation of a man.
Sachsgate – when Brand and Jonathan Ross left obscene messages on Andrew Sachs’ answer phone – cost the comedian his job at Radio 2. In one of the calls, Brand boasted about having sex with the actor’s granddaughter, Georgina Baillie, saying, “It was consensual and she wasn’t menstrual, it was consensual lovely sex.” The BBC received 40,000 complaints and was fined £150,000 ($314,000) by Ofcom.
At the time Baillie was a dancer and at 23 was a decade younger than Brand. She has subsequently said that she was not abused by him, but that in the months after the scandal, she turned to drugs and alcohol.
“After Sachsgate, Russell made millions of pounds doing a stand-up routine about it and that was very hard and painful for me,” she said. “I was the butt of the joke, I was young and didn’t know how to process it.”
Katy Perry, 2009-2012
Russell Brand and Katy Perry were married for 14 months. Photo / Getty Images
Before his current marriage to Laura Gallacher, Brand’s most notable relationship was with the American megastar Katy Perry, who was his wife for a little over 14 complex-sounding months. Perry, who is now engaged to Orlando Bloom, has said of Brand: “He’s a very smart man, and I was in love with him when I married him”.
It was a brutal ending, and Perry has said her last communication from Brand was a text message saying he wanted a divorce, which was sent moments before she performed to a crowd of thousands. Her devastation and subsequent professionalism as she readied herself to go on stage proved one of the most moving parts of her documentary, Part of Me.
In it, Perry also hinted at something darker in her marriage, saying “I felt a lot of responsibility for it ending, but then I found out the real truth, which I can’t necessarily disclose because I keep it locked in my safe for a rainy day. I let go and I was like: ‘This isn’t because of me; this is beyond me’.”
Geri Halliwell-Horner, 2012
Geri Halliwell has never spoken about her brief relationship with Russell Brand. Photo / Getty Images
Now, those words provide some insight into why the relationship cooled off after little more than a month, with Halliwell allegedly describing the comedian as “too intense”. Neither has spoken about their brief union.
Jemima Goldsmith, 2013
Jemima Khan and Russell Brand attend the Hoping Foundation's Rock On benefit evening for Palestinian refugee children at Cafe de Paris in 2013. Photo / Getty Images
It was an unlikely pairing – an heiress from a British banking dynasty and a comedian from Essex – but they were together for almost a year. One scandal from the relationship now stands out: masseuse Szilvia Berki was paid £500 ($1050) by Goldsmith (who then went by the name Khan) to give the comedian a treatment at her Oxfordshire home.
Berki subsequently said Brand assaulted her and when the police dropped the matter, she attempted to contact newspapers and MPs. In a 2014 high court ruling, a senior judge said that Berki’s “claims are on their face internally inconsistent and have enlarged over time”. The masseuse was banned by Mrs Justice Carr under an “anti-harassment order” from contacting Brand and Khan. Goldsmith and Brand – who have never spoken publicly about their relationship – had already split by the time of the ruling.
