I n the early 1990s, when he was a student at the Italia Conti theatre school, a teenage Russell Brand became so fixated on a classmate that he followed her for 200 miles, trailing her through the streets of London before sneaking, ticketless, on to her train to Wigan.

By his own admission, she did not want him to accompany her, far less come to her family home, but he did anyway, and got into bed with her. There, he “lied and danced and evoked the spirit of Pan till she reluctantly removed her bra” before deploying “tears and emotional blackmail to secure the immolation of her knickers”.

This anecdote was not one laid before Southwark crown court in London by prosecutors seeking to bring Brand to justice this week; it was relayed by Brand himself in his memoir, published long before his arrest.

The supposedly comic entry exists in the public record as a harbinger of how he would go on to treat women as his star rose and he found fame as a comedian and actor.…