Richard Madeley probed by Susanna Reid as old Russell Brand interview resurfaces
Russell Brand denies Dispatches documentary claims
Richard Madeley was questioned about his interview with Russell Brand after old footage featured in Channel 4’s Dispatches documentary.
On Monday’s instalment of Good Morning Britain, Susanna Reid and Richard were speaking about the hour-and-a-half special as women came forward to detail allegations of rape, sexual assault, and emotional abuse against Russell Brand.
Introducing the subject, Susanna revealed Richard made an appearance in the documentary as an old interview with him and his wife Judy Finnigan was featured.
Shocked, he replied: “Is there?! In the documentary?”
Highlighting the time he would’ve spoken to Russell in the late 2000’s, Susanna mentioned it was to do with publicity over his book.
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She said: “Judy sort of raises an eyebrow and says, ‘Oh yeah, you’re all innocent Russell Brand, the way you behave’.
“You say, ‘Mmm butter wouldn’t melt’, it was almost- as you were watching…I was thinking, did you say that in a way that you kind of knew his reputation, or was there anything more to that do you think?”
Richard replied: “It was a long time ago now, looking back I certainly never heard allegations that he was a rapist or that he’d done anything criminal, never heard that.
“If I had, we would’ve had to deal with that in an interview.”
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Richard highlighted Russell had a terrible reputation as a womaniser, which the 48-year-old referred to in his statement before the documentary.
He continued: “His reputation was, and I won’t use the four-letter word beginning with S and ending in R but that’s what he was known as
“But, I never heard allegations that he was anything other than a consensual operator in that field, but yes, he was an operator and where there was an opportunity sexually, he would chase it up.”
Before the documentary aired on Saturday evening, Russell took to social media to strongly deny the allegations that were going to be made against him.
His statement in full is as follows.
Hello there you awakening wonders. Now this isn’t the usual type of video we make on this channel where we critique, attack, and undermine the news in all its corruption, because in this story, I am the news. I’ve received two extremely disturbing letters, or a letter, and an email, one from a mainstream media TV company, one from a newspaper, listing a litany of extremely egregious and aggressive attacks, as well as some pretty stupid stuff like, my community festival should be stopped, that I shouldn’t be able to attack mainstream media narratives on this channel, but amidst this litany of astonishing, rather baroque attacks are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute.
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 promiscuous
Now during that time of promiscuity, the relationships I had were absolutely, always consensual. I was always transparent about that then, almost too transparent, and I’m being transparent about it now as well, and to see that transparency metastasized into something criminal, that I absolutely deny, makes me question, is there another agenda at play?
Particularly when we’ve seen co-ordinated media attacks before, like with Joe Rogan, when he dared to take a medicine that the mainstream media didn’t approve of, and we saw a spate of headlines from media outlets across the world, using the same language.
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I’m aware that you guys have been saying in the comments for a while, ‘watch out Russell, they’re coming for you, you’re getting too close to the truth, Russell Brand did not kill himself’, I know that a year ago there was a spate of articles, “Russell Brand’s a conspiracy theorist”, “Russell Brand’s right wing”. I’m aware of news media making phone calls, sending letters to people I know for ages and ages, it’s been clear to me, or at least it feels to me, like there’s a serious and concerted agenda to control these kind of spaces, and these kind of voices, and I mean my voice along with your voice.
I don’t mind them using my books and my stand up to talk about my promiscuous, consensual conduct in the past, what I seriously refute are these very very serious criminal allegations.
Also it’s worth mentioning that there are witnesses whose evidence directly contradicts the narratives that these two mainstream media outlets are trying to construct, apparently in what seems to me to be a co-ordinated attack.
Now, I don’t want to get into this any further because of the serious nature of the allegations, but I feel like I’m being attacked, and plainly they are working very closely together. We are obviously going to look into this matter, because it’s very very serious. In the meantime I want you to stay close, stay awake, but more important than any of that, if you can, please stay free.
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