2023-09-21
24 分钟Russell Brand faces allegations of sexual assault, rape and emotional abuse by four women, which he denies. This week Chanté looks back at the noughties and asks why the culture around comedy and women was so different back then
This is the Guardian.
Before we start, this week's episode includes swearing and some references to sexual assault.
Russell Brand has dominated headlines all week.
These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies.
And as I've written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscu.
Now, during that time of promiscuity, the relationships I had were absolutely always consensual.
In a series of news articles and a documentary published by the Sunday Times and Channel 4's Dispatches, four women from the US and UK made a range of allegations, including rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse against Russell Brand when he was at the peak of his fame between 2006 and 2013.
It's really been grim the last few days listening to what these women allege they went through, and it's really made me me wonder what was the culture of the noughties?
You're listening to pop culture with me.
Shantae Joseph for the Guardian since the story broke, Russell Brand's live tour has been postponed.
The BBC and Channel 4 have taken down their shows that include him.
And Even more significantly, YouTube has suspended his popular channel from making any advertising money.
So how did we end up here?
I think I'm horrified by some of the stories that have come forward and also slightly depressed that once again we're on a cycle of bad media.
Man does alleged bad things to women and it feels that this is a sort of almost endless cycle and there's a lot more to come.
Jim Walterson is the Guardian's media editor and as you can hear, has been writing about the story this week.
Why did this not happen in the MeToo period?
These stories are so hard to tell.
This one we're talking about came about because three different outlets who had been working on it separately decided to combine their resources.
One of those outlets said they'd been looking into it since 2019.