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<\/p>\nLondon’s Hammersmith Apollo has hosted some of the biggest names in British comedy, and in 2009 they didn’t get much bigger than Russell Brand.<\/p>\n
Warning: This article includes allegations of sexual assault some readers may find distressing.<\/p>\n
In February that year, the famous art deco theatre with its 3,500-seat auditorium was home to the flamboyant comedian’s Scandalous tour.<\/p>\n
Now, 17 years later, what happened in a dressing room at the Apollo after one of his shows, and at Mr Brand’s home a few days later, is under close scrutiny in a London court.<\/p>\n
Mr Brand, 51, is on trial in Southwark Crown Court on three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault relating to six women in the United Kingdom across a decade from 1999.<\/p>\n
Under UK law, the women are all granted lifelong anonymity by the court.<\/p>\n
The allegations levelled against Mr Brand by one of the women, referred to by prosecutors as Ms E, came after she went to see Scandalous at the Apollo with a friend when she was 21. Mr Brand was 33.<\/p>\n
“I was a massive Russell Brand fan, a massive comedy fan and my dad had actually bought me and my friend the tickets,” Ms E told a detective in her 2025 police interview, which was played to the court this week.<\/p>\n
In the video, she is sitting on a blue sofa with a can of diet cola and a roll of toilet paper at her feet, and a crumpled pile of white tissues beside her.<\/p>\n
The court heard Ms E’s friend remembered that during the show its star said words similar to: “If you see me out in the foyer and you think, I really fancy him and would like to have sex with him, but I can’t because it is Russell Brand, you probably can have sex with me. My age range is from 16 to death.”<\/p>\n
He allegedly continued with: “But if I do speak to you and ask you to come to my dressing room, please know I am not doing that to give you an autograph.”<\/p>\n
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Russell Brand has listened intently during the prosecution’s case. (PA: Elizabeth Cook via AP)<\/p>\n
Ms E told the detective that after the show there were lots of women in the foyer and when Mr Brand came through, “he looked at me and my friend and said, ‘You’, and pointed at me”.<\/p>\n
She said after drinks at an afterparty, security officers took the two women and another young woman backstage to a dressing room.<\/p>\n
Ms E said she performed a consensual sex act on Mr Brand but did not go further.<\/p>\n
“He asked me, ‘Why?’ I said I had a boyfriend and his response was, ‘We don’t belong to anyone, we are all free,'” she said in the video played to the court.<\/p>\n
In the video, Ms E detailed how Mr Brand took the woman’s number and invited her to his home in upmarket North London area of Hampstead a few days later.<\/p>\n
“The entire kind of makeup of the house was kind of a Gothic feel, I would say,” Ms E told police.<\/p>\n
In the video and in court, she said that Mr Brand took her upstairs soon after she arrived at the three-storey Victorian townhouse.<\/p>\n
“He asked me to shower because he said my hair smelt funny … when I came out, he asked me to brush my teeth,” the woman said.<\/p>\n
She described in detail how the consensual sex that followed suddenly became an act she did not consent to.<\/p>\n
“He didn’t give me a warning, he didn’t ask,” she told the detective in the video. “It was traumatic … he hurt me and harmed me and when I asked him to stop, he didn’t.”<\/p>\n
She added that afterwards Brand told her to “clear up the mess”, as he turned the TV on, took a phone call, then left the room.<\/p>\n
In court, the prosecution showed the woman and the jury photos of Brand’s home taken by a real estate agent eight months later.<\/p>\n
“Do you recognise that bedroom and bathroom?” Crown prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones asked.<\/p>\n
“I do,” Ms E replied.<\/p>\n
“Is it where the sexual activity with Mr Brand took place?” Mr Karmy-Jones continued.<\/p>\n
“It was,” Ms E answered.<\/p>\n
Court told comedian treated 21yo ‘like an animal’<\/p>\n
During cross-examination, Mr Brand’s barrister, Ian Winter KC, challenged several parts of the woman’s evidence.<\/p>\n
He put to her that she knew the famous comedian was sexually active with multiple women, that he had won The Sun newspaper’s Shagger of the Year three years running, and that she went to see a live show that was sexually explicit.<\/p>\n
Mr Winter put to her: “You knew full well the reputation he had at that time about the way he treated women?”<\/p>\n
Ms E replied: “I had not heard at that time about Mr Brand raping somebody.”<\/p>\n
If you or anyone you know needs help:<\/p>\n
During another tense exchange, the barrister said Ms E’s adoration of his client “completely clouded” her judgement and she agreed to do things in the bedroom that she would not have done with anyone else.<\/p>\n
“In a way, you went along with what he wanted because you were young and impressionable and obsessed with him. I’m putting to you that you agreed to do that,” Mr Winter asked the witness.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t agree to do that,” she replied.<\/p>\n
Ms E told the court Mr Brand “didn’t act like he’d done something criminal” after the alleged rape, to which Mr Winter replied: “That’s because you consented.”<\/p>\n
She insisted she had not, adding: “We’re not here to discuss my morality.”<\/p>\n
“I didn’t consent to what happened to me. I have said that repeatedly,” she continued.<\/p>\n
“I agree that I haven’t painted myself in a very good light. I did just meet Mr Brand at the Hammersmith Apollo and I did have a partner who I really loved and I made a huge mistake.”<\/p>\n
The jury was also played the video of the woman’s second police interview in which she said that, months after the alleged rape, she bumped into Mr Brand at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival but ran away.<\/p>\n
She said he later texted her saying: “You’re dirty and I wanna push you further.”<\/p>\n
“I said, ‘I think you pushed me far enough, you treated me like an animal,’ and I remember his response was immediate. He said, ‘I’m sorry,'” Ms E told the court.<\/p>\n
Mr Brand’s barrister put to her: “You did not reply, did you, that ‘You raped me’?”<\/p>\n
“No,” she said.<\/p>\n
Mr Winter then said: “You replied, ‘You pushed me far enough and you treated me like an animal’. And that’s because he had pushed you and probably had treated you like an animal, but he didn’t rape you.”<\/p>\n
“I didn’t consent,” Ms E said.<\/p>\n
The woman told the court she reported the alleged rape in 2025 because she said she did not want to feel guilt or shame anymore.<\/p>\n
“I felt lots of things but particularly for exactly the reason that you are doing right here, making me feel like I brought it on myself,” she said to Mr Brand’s barrister.<\/p>\n