Russell Brand’s Fame Years Reach a London Court

A woman told a London jury on 16 October that Russell Brand turned into a “wild-eyed maniac” and tried to pull her into a toilet at MTV. The 51-year-old comedian denies seven charges against six women.

He has pleaded not guilty to three counts of rape, three of sexual assault and one of indecent assault, alleged between 1999 and 2009. The second complainant gave evidence at Southwark Crown Court from behind a blue screen.

A 20-Second Struggle at MTV

She said they first traded banter about his T-shirt at MTV Europe in 2001, when she worked there and he was on air. He asked where the toilets were. She offered to show him.

At the door, she told the jury, his manner flipped. He grabbed her arm, pulled, and pleaded “come on, come in with me,” then “go on, go on, come in.” She called him affable one moment and “a wild-eyed maniac trying to pull me into the toilet” the next.

He had hold of my arm in a grip. I’m pulling back. He has a wild look in his eye. I wrenched my arm back and he realised it was not happening and he went into the toilet.

Second complainant, evidence to Southwark Crown Court, 16 October 2026

She put the tug of war at about 20 seconds. She said she did not take it to her bosses because Brand was treated as a valued asset, and she doubted she would be believed. She did not see him again before he left MTV that year.

Ian Winter KC, for Brand, called the episode short-lived and suggested she had recast it after a 2023 television film. She had mentioned it at reception at the time, the prosecution says, but made no formal report until the later publicity. Brand is 51. He sat in the dock in a suit and did not give evidence on this sitting.

Prosecutors Assembled the Case in Two Waves

The indictment in front of the jury is not one charging decision. The Crown Prosecution Service put five counts before the magistrates in spring 2025, then added two more before Christmas, and only then did the 2009 allegations join the 1999 to 2005 set.

Jaswant Narwal, then chief crown prosecutor for London North, said her office had reviewed a Metropolitan Police file opened after a Channel 4, Sunday Times and Times investigation in September 2023. The CPS authorised the first five charges on 4 April 2025, for reported offences against four women between 1999 and 2005.

The Met issued a charge and requisition in April listing rape, oral rape, indecent assault and two counts of sexual assault, and named Brand, date of birth 4 June 1975, of Oxfordshire. He appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 2 May 2025 and later pleaded not guilty at Southwark.

Lionel Idan, chief crown prosecutor, then authorised two further charges of rape and sexual assault on 23 December 2025, for two more women and alleged 2009 offences. The extra rape is put between 7 February and 1 March 2009. The extra sexual assault is put between 31 August and 1 December 2009. Brand was due at the magistrates on 20 January 2026 on those counts.

A Southwark trial on the first five counts had been listed for 16 June 2026. The seven-count case opened instead on 14 October, with Riel Karmy-Jones KC for the prosecution. Detective Superintendent Andy Furphy, and later Detective Chief Inspector Tariq Farooqi, asked anyone affected to contact a dedicated Met team. Support also sits with the independent 24/7 rape and sexual abuse support line.

HOW THE CASE REACHED SOUTHWARK

1. September 2023: Detectives open an investigation after a Channel 4 Dispatches film and Sunday Times and Times reporting.
2. 27 September 2023: The first complainant gives a video police interview, telling officers she is reporting that Brand raped her.
3. 4 April 2025: The CPS authorises five charges involving four women, alleged between 1999 and 2005.
4. 23 December 2025: The CPS authorises one further rape count and one further sexual assault count, alleged in 2009, involving two more women.
5. 14 October 2026: Karmy-Jones opens at Southwark. Brand’s former flatmate Mark Pinheiro is the first live witness.

Brand has said, in a video posted the day of the April charges, that he was a fool, a drug addict and a sex addict when he was young and single, “but what I never was, was a rapist.” He has pleaded not guilty to all seven counts and says any sex was consensual.

Seven Counts Across a Ten-Year Span

Karmy-Jones told the jury the six women did not know one another and came forward separately. The alleged offending, she said, ran as wide as his career: a hotel room, workplaces, a toilet cubicle in a bar, and his home.

He was ruthless, he was calculating, he was manipulative, and the prosecution say he was a sexual predator.

Riel Karmy-Jones KC, opening, Southwark Crown Court, 14 October 2026

She said his method varied. Sometimes he told women what they wanted to hear. Sometimes he seemed interested in a cause. Sometimes, she said, he made a sexual advance within minutes of meeting someone young at a gig. Afterward, she said, he looked untroubled, left promptly, or carried on as if nothing had happened.

THE INDICTMENT AGAINST THE CAREER LADDER

The 2001 count is charged as indecent assault. The later non-rape counts are charged as sexual assault. Karmy-Jones said that by 2001 his “sense of entitlement to have what he wanted whenever he wanted it” was growing with his profile.

What the Jury Has Heard About the 1999 Hotel

The first complainant was 27 when she met Brand at a fringe cabaret during the Labour conference in Bournemouth. He was 24, not famous, and performing with a cabaret group. She told the jury she thought he was gay, found him playful, and talked for hours about a possible play on social problems.

She declined a pub. She invited him to her room to keep talking. Jurors were shown photographs she took there of Brand topless in white jeans, blowing a kiss. She said he made her take them, and that she was frightened, in a small room, with no phone and nowhere to run.

She described coming out of the bathroom to find him partly undressed and prancing, “a bit like an ostrich, doing silly walks like Basil Fawlty.” Then, she says, he pushed her onto the bed and raped her. In the police video, played on 15 October, she said he told her it was fun, it was fine, it was normal, “almost like trying to convince me it’s all OK.”

He changed from camp and friendly and effeminate to monster-like. I was scared in that moment.

First complainant, evidence to Southwark Crown Court, 15 October 2026

She said he then acted as if nothing had happened, wrote down an email address, and said he had to get back to his mum. She locked the door, put a chair against it, and spent hours washing. She blamed herself and did not go to police until 2023, after she watched the documentary. “He raped me and I know the truth,” she told the jury, voice breaking, from behind the screen.

Winter put to her that she would have left if she were in danger, that Brand was younger and not famous, and that there was “no power imbalance.” She said she did not want sex, did not find him attractive, and had thought he was sexually safe. At one point Winter talked over Mr Justice Bennathan, who told him: “Shush. I’m the judge.”

Mark Pinheiro Recalls a Hurried Exit From Bournemouth

Pinheiro, a former friend and flatmate, was the first live witness on 14 October. He said they were travelling to the same fringe show when Brand talked in the car about “meeting girls, pulling girls,” and a target of sleeping with 5,000 women. One line he recalled was that you only had to “tell the woman what they need to hear.”

He said Brand did not come back that night. In the morning, Pinheiro told the jury, Brand was ruffled, wanted to leave town at once, and cowered at police sirens on the drive to London. Later, Pinheiro said, Brand told him things “got a little bit heated and a little bit out of hand.”

“Those were his words: ‘I think I may have gone a bit too far,’” Pinheiro said. Pressed by Winter on his memory, he refused to dress the comment up as a rape accusation. “I haven’t alleged Russell did anything,” he said. “All I have volunteered is information; I haven’t accused Russell of rape.” He said he was sure of the gist, and sure there was only one night Brand did not come home.

A Judge Warns the Jury About a 2023 Film

The defence case is not yet fully opened, but its shape is already on the record. Karmy-Jones told the jury Brand will say sex was always consensual, and that the accusers “reimagined” old encounters after the 2023 coverage. Winter has already used the film in cross-examination of the first two women.

Bennathan gave the panel of eight men and four women a tight direction on what that film is allowed to mean. He said a few women made anonymous allegations on television, that they were not prepared to speak to police, and that Brand denied those claims at the time in “robust and detailed terms.” Those television claims, he said, have never been tested in any court.

WHAT THE JUDGE TOLD THE JURY

• No extra weight: The fact that women spoke anonymously on a 2023 programme adds no support to the prosecution case, and must not be treated as if it does.
• The live defence point: The defence may argue the programme led complainants to revisit old sexual events and twist consensual encounters into crimes.
• The task: Jurors must consider that argument on the evidence they hear in this trial, not on the television film itself.

That is the fight this case is actually in. A hotel invitation, a 20-second corridor struggle, a toilet door, a dressing-room meeting after a gig: the defence will treat those as sex, banter, or memory spoiled by television. The prosecution will treat the same moments as a method that followed him from a Bournemouth bedsitting room to studios that still employed him.

I’ve never engaged in non-consensual activity. I pray that you can see that by looking in my eyes.

Russell Brand, video statement, 4 April 2025

He arrived with his wife, Laura, and on 15 October told photographers he felt “most blessed.” The first two women have now been heard. Four more are still to come, including a then-21-year-old fan who says a later meeting at his Hampstead home became anal rape, and a Channel 4 worker who says his team told her the job would not finish unless she massaged him.

Hotel Rooms, Toilets and Studios Fill the Indictment

The remaining counts, as opened by Karmy-Jones, stay on that same ladder. In 2004, a woman at a Soho bar says Brand grabbed and squeezed her breasts with a “big, weird grin,” pulled her into a toilet, and orally raped her while she said she did not want to; she says he then stood at the bar and asked to swap numbers. Between 2004 and 2005, a radio-studio worker says he grabbed her face, pinned her to a wall, and groped her until she shoved him off and told him to get lost; she says the woman with him did not step in.

In February 2009, the fifth complainant, then 21, says she had consensual sex in a dressing room after a Hammersmith Apollo show, then later, at his home, he anally raped her. She says she later told him by text that he had treated her like an animal, and that he replied, “I’m sorry.” Brand was about 33. The sixth complainant says that on a Channel 4 recording in 2009 his colleagues told her he would not finish an advert unless she massaged him, that she froze when he dropped to his knees and said “Come on then, do it,” and that they gestured for her to go ahead.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The charges: Seven counts, six women, alleged from 1999 to 2009, denied in full.
• The forum: Southwark Crown Court, Mr Justice Bennathan, a jury of eight men and four women.
• Heard so far: The opening, Pinheiro, the 1999 complainant’s police video and live evidence, and the 2001 MTV complainant.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The remaining evidence: Four further complainants have not yet finished their accounts in front of this jury.
• The defence case: Brand has not yet given evidence. Winter’s full case is still to come.
• The verdict: Nothing the opening or the first witnesses said is a finding of fact.

The women have lifelong anonymity. Brand remains on bail. He denies every count, and the jury has been told, in plain terms, that a television film is not proof of any of them.

On 16 October the second woman was still in the box, describing a corridor, a forearm, and a door she says she would not go through. The first had already told the same jury, the day before, that a man she thought was safe had changed in a hotel room in 1999. The rest of the indictment is still ahead of them.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting on a live criminal trial and is for information only. It is not legal advice, a finding of guilt or innocence, or a guide to anyone’s rights or liabilities. Russell Brand has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent unless and until a jury convicts him. Anyone affected by the issues described, or considering their own legal position, should contact a qualified solicitor and, if they need support, a specialist service such as Rape Crisis. Charge lists, listings and witness evidence are taken from official notices and what has been said in open court, and they can change as the trial continues.