Should Ross and Brand get sacked?

[Tom M]

That man did get sacked a lot didn't he? V.funny though.

The 'cake' stuff was excellent. Who was it he announced was dead on radio at some point?

[clarion]

Prince Edward, I think...

[Deano]

I remember a Brasseye episode where he announced that Noel Edmonds had been murdered.  By whom, I can't remember.

[JT]

Prince Edward, I think...

Michael Heseltine.

I think funnier and possibly more "shocking" than The Gush (as posted by Damon) was the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/xhEqIgnrH7A&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/xhEqIgnrH7A&rel=1</a> sketch.

[Canardly]

A lets bring this up to date post. 

[andrewc]

Brand is supposed to be doing a show at Wembley tonight.  Apparently he’s running late….

[Hot Flatus]

It's always the ones you least expect

[spesh]

Brand is supposed to be doing a show at Wembley tonight.  Apparently he’s running late….

Anyone checked the stationery cupboard at the Ecuadorian Embassy?

[rogerzilla]

His defence seems to be that "everyone knows I was promiscuous".  Also, a certain type of women throw themselves at him.  None of that really helps if it comes to a "he said, she said" trial, and goodness knows how they will find an impartial jury.

Personally, I can't stand the bloke but SO is a massive fan.

[Hot Flatus]

Well, he certainly has rape conviction rates in his favour 

[rogerzilla]

Tory Scum, specifically James "Not Very" Cleverly,  already trying to turn it into a culture war opportunity by asking what the BBC and C4 knew.

[Robh]

A soon as I saw that The Times and the Sunday Times were involved in digging up the story, I figured it would become a convenient stick with which to bash the BBC.

[Peter]

Whether or not Russell Brand is guilty, Cleverly, a high-ranking, though not high-thinking, member of the government has publicly suggested that he is by asking what the BBC knew, hasn't he?  Surely that has to be wrong?

[Beardy]

The fact is that these people who are successful via the medium of media, often at a younger age, receive lots of adulation and following. The men in particular, tend to get a disproportionate level of support and love from younger women, something the men start to beleive is their right. Over time, they start to see any minor friendliness from young women as a come on and take it for granted that they can do as they like.

Unfortunately, even without taking into account the power disparity, the men are wrong and it’s likely that even those that thought they wanted a dalian e with a celeb, really they didn’t, but didn’t know how to stop something they may feel they started.

Basically men need to lear to keep it in their pants unless they receive a clear an unequivocal invitation to proceed. And even then, they need to be sure that their advances are wanted.

[ian]

Wasn’t Brand a bit of media-made bad boy anyway? Hardly surprising he grew into his image. I didn’t realise he’d gone so far beyond the mad antivaxxer in recent years.

Sadly, famous blokes taking advantage of their female fans is a forever grim affair and most seem to escape censure, public or legal. I don’t remember John Peel’s dabbles in paedophilia and domestic violence getting much coverage in his wake.

[Jakob]

Brand is a full-on alt-right-conspiracy wacko.
He's fairly moderate on his youtube channel, but completely off the rails on his Rumble channel.
He and his supporters will see this as an attempt to cancel him.

[Peter]

Whether or not Russell Brand is guilty, Cleverly, a high-ranking, though not high-thinking, member of the government has publicly suggested that he is by asking what the BBC knew, hasn't he?  Surely that has to be wrong?

I really have to apologise, here, everyone.  I thought James Cleverly had mentioned the BBC when in fact he hadn't.  What he actually said is perfectly reasonable, I think.  Sorry.

[rogerzilla]

Brand is a full-on alt-right-conspiracy wacko.
He's fairly moderate on his youtube channel, but completely off the rails on his Rumble channel.
He and his supporters will see this as an attempt to cancel him.

He certainly looks like Neil Oliver's younger brother these days.

[mrcharly-YHT]

The fact is that these people who are successful via the medium of media, often at a younger age, receive lots of adulation and following. The men in particular, tend to get a disproportionate level of support and love from younger women, something the men start to beleive is their right. Over time, they start to see any minor friendliness from young women as a come on and take it for granted that they can do as they like.

Unfortunately, even without taking into account the power disparity, the men are wrong and it’s likely that even those that thought they wanted a dalian e with a celeb, really they didn’t, but didn’t know how to stop something they may feel they started.

Basically men need to lear to keep it in their pants unless they receive a clear an unequivocal invitation to proceed. And even then, they need to be sure that their advances are wanted.

'younger age'
He just looked young.
He was 31 when he was taking 16 year old schoolgirls out of school, shagging for the purposes of.

That is legal, but so bloody ick he isn't deserving of any admiration or publicity.

[citoyen]

It should have been clear at the time that the Sachs incident was evidence of, at very least, an underlying misogyny and nastiness to Brand's shtick that should never have been dismissed as "edginess" or "banter" or whatever. But some people were wise to him all along - reading back over this thread, you can see who has ended up on the right side of history.

See also his interview with Jimmy Savile, which sounds even more troubling in the context of these new revelations than it did at the time.

[Peter]

I'll point out that in my first post, I wasn't defending Russell Brand but criticising what I thought was an inappropriate intervention by James Cleverly.  I know now I was wrong.  I have never liked Russell Brand but I confess I used to enjoy Neil Oliver when he did his history programmes (though never the hair).  But not for a long time, now.

[L CC]

How did the creep-o-meter fare for Russell Brand then

Creepy

Huh?

He looks like he didn't wash his hair. Of course he's creepy.

[Peter]

Science - this is what is needed!

[L CC]

In all seriousness, a long time ago I did some safeguarding training for working with children. One of the things taught was to trust your inner creep-o-meter. That it's more than OK to say to yourself, "I think he (or less often, she) is creepy and I don't want to hang around with them". And that lots of people have very reliable creep-o-meters.
Part of Mr Smith's question was because I've claimed to always have found Jimmy Savile creepy. Ditto DLT.

[barakta]

100% agree about creep-o-meters. You may be wrong, but a quiet internal "creep rating" gives me the power/confidence to 'AVOID!' people who set my meter off.

I am told by others that I have a very reliable creep-o-meter. Most creeps are cis men but I have dealt with creeps who are cis women or some flavour of trans or nonbinary. Their gender/history doesn't matter so much as their current/past behaviour.

It helps I've run 'conduct' for events where unfortunately a minority of attenders misbehave inappropriately, sometimes sexually/creepily and sometimes in other ways. Our event is for bisexual people, so we can attract people who think bisexual=sexual/free-for-all -- despite our best efforts to advertise otherwise. It's astonishing how consistent the creeps' responses are when quietly and firmly called out on their creep-behaviour often with an Absolute_Refusal to manage their own behaviour "e.g. please don't approach lone young women/women-only-groups for the next 24 hours"... Which says everything we need to know and when we got better at doing conduct, would enable us to boot the fuckers out of our event.

Almost ALL of the reported creeps had some kind of history, often starting with "low level incidents" which are testing the waters, and escalated to various levels of shittery. Sometimes we'd get several reports come in at once about one person which was always a screamingly red flag and it was a race to find Perp and remove them ASAP. This testing waters stuff is one reason 'woke' events now often have stuff in their codes of conduct about firmly challenging "low level" boundary-testing behaviour like creeps unconsensually raising explicit subjects out of the blue (e.g. kink or bestiality) with someone they are targetting to see if they get a pushback or a fear freeze reaction etc.

We try and take a dual pronged approach of 1) naming/articulating red-flag behaviours and challenging them (or encouraging reporting of them) and 2) teaching people what red-flag behaviour such as grooming, or shock/control behaviours look like from the earliest stages to help people try and spot them sooner (while also being 100% clear the fault is entirely the perp not any victims).

A lot of people, esp women are taught or told not to trust our creep dar "you're being mean" "you shouldn't judge" and socialised to "be kind" even though I think the 'gift of fear' can be useful if you have support/ability to develop the skills to spot the early signs and AVOID, even if that makes you unpopular.