Branded!

Apparently, ITV are planning to revive the dating show 'Take Me Out', although Paddy McGuinness  won't be presenting this time around.  Unfortunately for the search for a replacement, Russel Brand has become suddenly unavailable.  Which is a pity, as surely a dating show with lots of single women looking for love/sex would be the perfect vehicle for a Russel Brand comeback.  But, hey, he's now at His Majesty's Pleasure - perhaps it will give him time to write another book.  Something autobiographical: My Rapey Wapey, maybe.  (See, that works on more than one level - one for the smartarses out there who like to think they are sophisticated).  Incredibly, despite his conviction, Brand still has supporters out there, mainly on Twitter, granted, but supporters nonetheless.  Even more incredibly, some of them are women.  It's all the usual stuff about 'two tier' justice and 'them' conspiring to put away brave teller of the truth Russel Brand.  Even more unpalatable has been the right-wing press' attempts to politicise the conviction by playing up Brand's previous links to the left, with one repugnant headline even accusing the left of having 'enabled' his sex offending.  All of which ignores the fact that it has been a long time since Brand had any association with 'the left', he has instead spent the last decade or so drifting ever rightward, into the land of paranoid conspiracy theories and, most recently, right-wing Christianity.  This drift has accompanied his retreat from mainstream fame. As I've noted before, as he found his schtick falling out of favour and TV gigs more difficult to come by, he turned to the web and instead courted the crackpot audience: anti-vaxxers, extreme right-wing fringe conspiracies, crystals and mysticism.  It's a well trodden path that can bring you lots of clicks (which can translate into money) on platforms like You Tube.

Make no mistake, predators like Brand, particularly if they have fame and influence, will latch onto any cause, any bandwagon, that they think can get them what they want.  In Brand's case, when he first hit the big-time, those left-wing causes he sidled up to helped him connect with a potential audience: young, educated, often idealistic and naive people.  More importantly, it gave him access to young women who would look up to him.  The left, especially at its more extreme ends, has long been a happy hunting ground for those seeking sex - I recall that when I was a student, the Student Socialist Workers Party (SSWP) was well known for the number of attractive posh girls who joined it, mainly as an act of rebellion against their middle class upbringings. (Indeed, there was one girl, a redhead, I remember vividly - it was said that her father promised to buy her a new car for her twenty first birthday if she left the SSWP.  Well, she turned twenty one and suddenly lost interest in the SSWP in favour of her new set of wheels).  It was something of a running joke that blokes would join the SSWP (and the full fledged Socialist Workers Party,) just to meet 'posh birds'.  Anyway, getting back to Brand, as he got older and less popular, he realised his demographic and hunting ground lay online, with the middle aged cranks and crazies.  Speaking personally, I can't say that I had any kind of insight or inside knowledge about Brand's activities, but, like Jimmy Savile before him, I just knew that I thought him incredibly creepy.  I really didn't like him.  I tried to like him - everyone kept telling me that he was some kind of comedic genius.  But I just couldn't.  There was just something about him that meant that, if someone had accused him of sex offences back then, I wouldn't have been surprised.  (In point of fact, I believe that there were complaints, but, like Savile, Brand was famous, wealthy and litigious and could make them go away through threats of counter legal action).  So, there you go, just some random thoughts about another celebrity rapist.