Euan McColm: Russell Brand's conviction likely to be another 'watershed moment' that changes nothing

Russell Brand outside Southwark Crown Court in London, where a jury convicted him of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault. Picture: James Manning/Press Association

Russell Brand told us who he was for years. He didn’t, as the cliché has it, hide in plain sight, he flaunted his predatory behaviour and was cheered for it.

Long before his trial on rape and sexual assault charges, the comedian-turned-online grifter was known in showbusiness and media circles as a danger to women.

Almost two decades ago, female comedians on the stand-up circuit were sharing horrifying stories of their encounters with him. In the years following, many who worked with him on television and film projects added equally grim tales of his abuse.

But, even as the number of his victims rose, so did Brand’s star. He was celebrated for his outrageousness, his persona perhaps squared in the minds of his admirers as a cartoonish exaggeration of a Lothario (no man could actually be like that, could he?), and amply rewarded with film, TV, and publishing deals.

Brand’s conviction on Thursday for rape and sexual assault means he faces a lengthy prison sentence when he returns to court tomorrow morning.

Perhaps his conviction will deliver – if such a thing even exists – closure to those he harmed.

But what else will this moment bring? What impact will Brand’s imprisonment have?

The airwaves buzz with chatter of a watershed moment but, when it comes to the abuse of women by powerful men, we’ve already had more than enough of those.

We’ve had the Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, and Jimmy Savile “watershed moments” and, still, a certain kind of man keeps raping women.

If there is a positive fall-out from Brand’s downfall, it may be in showing victims that – if they are willing to come forward – justice can be done.

But, if we think the conviction of Russell Brand is going to stop men like Russell Brand doing the things they do, then we’ve not been paying attention.

Brand’s crimes are remarkable because of the way in which his celebrity served – for a long time – as both enabler and cover. But the acts of which he was convicted, the rape and the sexual assaults, have become commonplace.

In 2024, Police Scotland recorded almost 3,000 rapes and attempted rapes. Forces in England and Wales recorded more than 71,000 rapes.

And those numbers don’t begin to tell the full story. It is estimated that as many as five out of six rape victims do not report their attackers to police.

Underneath that tangle of hair and those rattling beads, Russell Brand is just another rapist and there are a lot of those around.

Brand was able to do what he did for so long because, in part, of the cowardice of other men. In private, he humiliated women without challenge while, in public, he was feted for his “conquests” (doesn’t every talkshow appearance during which Brand discussed his activities sound now like a man getting his defence in early?).

The star’s personal reinvention, a little over a decade ago, as a political animal saw him celebrated, first, by the progressive left then by the crank alt-right, from which he retains a great deal of support.

Brand’s endorsement of Ed Miliband’s Labour Party in the 2015 General Election should, one particularly ridiculous columnist suggested, have had the Tories worried.

Brand’s “politics” was an incoherent mess of slogans and contradictions. His big “idea” – until that Miliband moment – was that young people shouldn’t bother voting.

But he was taken seriously because he was a famous man.

In recent years, Brand has peddled a combination of crackpot conspiracies and entry-level Christianity: The government is lying to you about everything but God is good. There’s a huge audience for that kind of nonsense and Brand has built a new army of acolytes, many of whom are hard-wired to believe the guilty verdicts delivered on Thursday represent evidence of a conspiracy against a man who was in danger of getting “too close to the truth”.

To more fools than we might comfortably count, Brand remains a hero.

While men let Russell be Russell, it was women who brought him to justice. Of course, the victims who stepped forward played the leading role but the journalist Rosamund Irwin, who led a Sunday Times investigation into Brand, and the comedian Katherine Ryan, who famously called him out on his predatory behaviour while the two were filming a television programme and is said by comedy industry figures to have helped other, less powerful women feel able to speak up, are among a number of others who deserve great credit.

I expect that, before long, more women like them will be called on to act again.

The conviction of Russell Brand is a watershed moment only for those involved in the case. It will not change men, not the deviant ones who prey on others nor the weak ones who enable them.

Of course, we’re not all like Brand but most of us, I think, know or have met someone with his hatred of women. And all of us, if we are honest, should be comfortable in admitting that we understand something of what drove him.

Instead, as ever, men will pretend that what we’re dealing with is an anomaly, a freak and that will excuse us from thinking too hard about what part we might have played in making the world less safe for women.

Last week, a male celebrity lost a legal challenge to prevent him being named in the press as a sexual predator.

He remains anonymous, pending appeal, but it is likely we will soon be discussing the allegations against him and marking another of those watershed moments after which nothing changes.