Panel Discusses Russell Brand's Conviction

I mean, just on Russell Brand. I think it is worth dwelling on perhaps at the end of this conversation on where you both started, about just how prominent Russell Brand was across so many walks of life. I think I had slightly forgotten that because he's disappeared from mainstream view over the past decade or so. But seeing some of the archive footage, I say archive like it was a long time ago. It wasn't that long ago. Over the past few days since his conviction, you are reminded that he was a Hollywood movie star for a time, that he was ubiquitous on British television, that he had a column in a British newspaper. And I have to say I was pretty taken aback to see two quite distinguished journalists, albeit of a slightly earlier vintage, discussing on social media the other day why the newspapers were spending so much time on Russell Brand's conviction when tech stocks had been sold off en masse around the world. Obviously that is also a big story and I was just quite shocked by that because I had taken it as given that almost everybody would see this as an enormous moment. Not just because Russell Brand is a famous person who has been convicted of serious crimes, because he is a famous person who was really profoundly influential. And then also, as you say, Laura, seeing these clips of things he said. And yes, comedy often skirts close to the line and that's part of what gives it some kinds of comedy, their impact. But where you sort of start to think, oh, actually perhaps some of the tendencies that have been exposed in court were not lurking that far below the surface after all. And for many years he was someone who, people in public life, some of people in public life wanted to be seen to be close to 100%. I mean we saw that mid mega famous, various people in the, in the shadow cabinet in 2015 tweeting this interview that Ed Miliband and Russell Brand had done. Russell Brand endorsing Labour ahead of 2015. Now, of course there's no suggestion that Ed Miliband was aware of any of these allegations and he has put out a statement expressing that and expressing his, his sort of sadness for, for what has happened since and the seriousness of these, these crimes. But it does show how central he was and how people in politics saw him as a pretty powerful figure who you wanted the endorsement of completely. I mean he was somebo who was massively famous and was seen by many people as massively cool and someone they wanted to be seen with. Even at the time when his comedy was.