Melanie Phillips

Melanie Phillips

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Melanie Phillips
Melanie Phillips
The mirror to society held up by Russell Brand

The mirror to society held up by Russell Brand

The west has defined the intolerable down

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Melanie Phillips
Sep 19, 2023
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BBC Question Time panel, June 23 2013; (from left) Russell Brand, Tessa Jowell, Boris Johnson, David Dimbleby, Ed Davey and me.

In June 2013, I was a panellist on BBC TV’s Question Time. Among my fellow panellists was the comedian Russell Brand.

I was dismayed and perplexed by his inclusion in the BBC’s most prominent politics show. Brand was a louche, lewd, drug-addicted, motor-mouth provocateur, given to voicing outrageous left-wing and anarchistic views.

Five years previously, he and a BBC executive had resigned from the BBC after public outrage over a prank performed by Brand and TV presenter Jonathan Ross. They had left cruel and profane messages on the answerphone of actor Andrew Sachs, including a claim that Brand had had sex with the actor’s grand-daughter. 

But Brand had an enormous following. I assumed that his inclusion on the Question Time panel was further evidence of the BBC’s dumbing-down in a cynical attempt to bump up the ratings.

In the green room before the show, when Brand strutted in dressed in his trademark way with his shirt open almost to the navel, the young women staffers swooned, giggled, simpered and fawned on him. But I was astonished by who followed him almost unnoticed into the room. It was his mother. 

This might merely have been viewed as a sweet gesture, bringing his mum along to see the show. But suddenly a number of things clicked into place. 

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