On Thursday 5 November, global superstar Russell Brand was convicted of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault, for incidents occurring between 2004 and 2009. The actor, comedian, recent convert to evangelical Christianity and one-time guest editor of the New Statesman has been remanded in custody and will be sentenced on Monday.
It has been a surreal trial to follow, verging at times from the harrowing to the bizarre. In total Brand faced seven criminal counts, and has been acquitted of three. Over a surprisingly short four weeks (the judge had initially suggested the jury should expect to be there for eight weeks or longer), the court travelled back in time to the toxic nexus of pre-MeToo celebrity culture in the late Nineties and Noughties, where famous men felt emboldened to demand a massage off a stranger or paw the breasts of a woman they had just met.
