Brand tells court consent 'important' as he denies rape

Russell Brand has told a court in London that he had an obsession with sex as a younger man but denied setting himself a "goal" to sleep with 5,000 women.

The former comedian, 51, insisted as he gave evidence to his rape trial that he has never forced himself on a woman, telling jurors consent is "non-negotiable" and "more important than sex itself".

Mr Brand said he blames the media for his downfall after being the focus of 2023 reporting on sexual misconduct claims and he told Southwark Crown Court he has been unable to find any friends or former colleagues willing to give evidence in his defence as the trial approached.

He has been accused by six women of sex assaults between 1999 and 2009, including forced sex in a hotel and sexual assaults in a bar, at a radio station and at Channel 4.

The court heard he stored the number of a fan who has accused him of rape with the letter "T" next to her name, meaning "tart".

Under intense questioning from prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones KC, Mr Brand denied pretending to be gay in his pursuit of women.

The comedian's former friend, Mark Pinheiro, has told the trial that Brand had boasted on a car journey to the Labour party conference in Bournemouth about his techniques for "pulling" women and allegedly revealed an ambition to sleep with 5,000 women.

Ms Karmy-Jones asked: "Is it a goal you may have had?"

Mr Brand replied: "I don’t agree, I don’t recall the conversation you are referring to."

When pressed again, he replied: "No, not a goal."

Mr Brand admitted he was "obsessed" with sex in his younger years but denied the extent of the impact on his life.

Ms Karmy-Jones asked him: "Do you accept that you were desperate for it and sometimes couldn’t function without it?"

"No," Mr Brand said.

The prosecutor said Mr Brand had not answered police questions when first challenged over the claims and accused him of "forging" his case around the evidence of his alleged victims, a suggestion he rejected.

At times, Mr Brand went completely silent when Ms Karmy-Jones posed a question, leading her to ask whether he found the questions "difficult to answer".

Turning to Mr Pinheiro’s claims about their car journey conversation, and the suggestion he wanted to sleep with 5,000 women, he said: "While I don’t remember, it’s entirely possible it’s the kind of badinage (banter) I would have engaged in when I was 24."

He added that it would have been a "joke" if he had told Mr Pinheiro he would not leave a situation with a woman without a conquest.

"That sounds specifically like a riff on a Woody Allen joke when he said the only advice my dad ever gave me on his death bed was 'always try and (f***) the waitress’."

On the Bournemouth trip, Mr Brand is accused of raping a woman he met on the last night of a week of performances of the Soapbox Cabaret, a event staged on the fringes of the 1999 Labour party conference.

Mr Brand told the court he was "pretty excited" to go to the conference, at a time before he was famous, but he also conceded he was "more interested in having sex than the show".

It was suggested Mr Brand had pretended to be gay in order to convince the woman he is accused of raping to let him join her in her hotel room.

Mr Karmy-Jones then produced a page from Mr Brand’s book, My Booky Wook, which had a picture of him aged seven with the caption: "This is the exact moment when I decided to act gay to attract girls. It took 15 years to produce results."

"Is that what you did Mr Brand? Pretend to be gay to attract women?," asked the prosecutor.

"No," Mr Brand replied.

He then added: "It’s a joke. ‘Look at me, I’m a little boy in my garden and 15 years later… I was meeting women’. It was a joke."

Among the allegations that Mr Brand faces is that he raped a fan after meeting her at one of his Hammersmith Apollo stand-up performances in 2009.

He told the court he stored her name next to the letter T, which he said stood for "tart".

The woman says Mr Brand forced himself on her during an encounter at his north London townhouse, a few days after she had willingly engaged in a threesome with the star backstage at the Apollo.

Asked what he meant by the word "tart", he replied: "That was what I used to denote casual hook-ups."

He also put two asterisks next to the woman’s name, which he told the jury meant: "Never, ever forget this individual, this is a memorable encounter."

Mr Brand is accused of forcing the woman into anal sex when she came to his home, but he said in evidence that he was "excited and enthusiastic" ahead of their meeting, and he believed she was consenting because of how she had behaved during the backstage threesome.

He suggested the woman had not said "no" or told him to stop during sex, and described her attitude as "coquettishness, coyness" but consensual.

He also said he cannot remember exchanging texts with the woman months later during a chance encounter at the Edinburgh Festival, but accepted it was possible he had messaged to say he wanted to "push you further".

He said he may have been intimating they could "have sex more, maybe have another threesome", and conceded he may have said "sorry" when she told him he had treated her "like an animal".

But he told the court the apology would have been because she "expressed sadly, unhappiness, regret".

At the start of his evidence, Mr Brand repeatedly and tersely said the word "no" when the individual claims were put to him and he was asked if he had raped and sexually assaulted the women.

Mr Brand is accused of three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one charge of attempted indecent assault.

The trial continues.