Russell Brand – the comedian, actor and podcaster – is no stranger to controversy.
The day after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US in 2001, Brand turned up for work as a video journalist at MTV dressed as Osama bin Laden and was later sacked.
The next year he was sacked by XFM radio after he read pornographic material on air during an afternoon show.
In 2008, during a performance at the Royal and Derngate theatre in Northampton he made a hoax call to police saying he had seen a man responsible for a series of assaults. Northamptonshire police decided not to bring charges.
The same year Brand made headlines again in September when he presented the MTV video music awards and described then US president George Bush as “that retard and cowboy fella”.
Perhaps his most infamous stunt was also in 2008 with the prank call on Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs on his BBC Radio 2 show.
Brand and Jonathan Ross left “gratuitously offensive, humiliating and demeaning” messages on the actor’s voicemail referring to Brand’s brief relationship with Sachs’ granddaughter Georgina Baillie. The BBC was fined £150,000 and Brand resigned from his Radio 2 programme.
In 2017, the regulator Ofcom ruled Brand breached broadcasting rules by making sexual references during a weekend morning radio show on Radio X. He asked an Elvis tribute act: “Have you ever had sex as Elvis?”
On Saturday, the comedian, 48, was accused of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse over a seven-year period; allegations he denies.
Born and raised in Grays, Essex, Brand has openly discussed his past problems with drug addiction. He left the Italia Conti theatre school in Surrey after he was found to be using drugs.
He has been clean since 2003 and documented his journey in the book Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions and in his one-man show Better Now at the Edinburgh festival in 2004.
In recent years, he has ventured into podcasts, primarily Stay Free with Russell Brand where he discusses “revolutionary politics and spiritual awakening”.
His YouTube channel, where he discusses his radical views, has 6.59 million subscribers.
Recent topics have included “New GREEN LIGHT UFO Spotted in Ohio as Alien Reports CONFIRMED by Senators” and “Why We Are REALLY Sending ILLEGAL Cluster BOMBS to Ukraine”.
During an interview on BBC Newsnight with Jeremy Paxman in 2013, Brand said he had never voted and he never would as the UK’s political system has created a “disenfranchised, disillusioned underclass” that it fails to serve.
“It is not that I am not voting out of apathy. I am not voting out of absolute indifference and weariness and exhaustion from the lies, treachery and deceit of the political class that has been going on for generations,” he added.
He married Laura Gallacher, an author and illustrator, in 2017. In June he announced they are expecting their third child later this year.
He was previously married to the American singer Katy Perry between 2010 and 2012.
The actor reflected on the start of his career during a recent episode of Running Wild with Bear Grylls: The Challenge.
He acknowledged his relationship with Perry was “chaotic”. “Some aspects of [that time] were amazing, she’s like an amazing person. It was kind of incredible to live for a moment in that eye-of-the-cyclone type aspect of fame.”
Brand added: “Aside from my sort of feelings of affection for Katy, it’s a time that I remember has been a little bit chaotic and a bit for me, to speak for myself, a little disconnected.”
He has appeared in several films and television dramas including Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to the Greek and Arthur.
His writing debut, My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs and Stand-Up, earned rave reviews in Britain and the US. It also led to a follow-up, My Booky Wook 2: This Time It’s Personal, published in 2010.
Brand received the British Comedy Award for outstanding contribution to comedy and was honoured in 2011 with the ShoWest Award for comedy star of the year.
