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18th September 2023
08:24am BST
Russell Brand once offered to take one of his assistants naked to meet Jimmy Savile.
In a clip that resurfaced as part of the joint The Sunday Times and Channel 4 Dispatches investigation into Brand, the star is heard offering up his staff member to Savile, whose television career was eclipsed with news that he was a serial sex offender.
Four women have accused Brand of sexual assaults between 2006 and 2013, one of whom was 16 at the time, and the Met Police has urged any alleged victims to contact them. Brand, 48, denies all of the allegations.
In the audio clip - that featured in the Dispatches report on Saturday - Brand rings Savile and is told he could meet him, if he brings his sister along.
"I don't usually meet fellas, but if you've got a sister, that's ok," Savile says.
Brand, in the 2007 audio, explains he doesn't, but could bring a a female employee instead.
“I’ve got a personal assistant…and part of her job description is that anyone I demand she greets, meets, massages she has to do it," Brand explains.
"She’s very attractive Jimmy.”
Savile, who died in 2011 age 84 before his crimes as a child sex abuser and sex offender came to light, replies that "that is a good start."
In a video ahead of the report on Brand, the comedian and former BBC and Channel 4 presenter, issued a video denying what he called “very serious criminal allegations” and reiterated that his relationships have always been consensual.
One of Brand's accusers has alleged he raped her against a wall in his LA home and that she sought treatment at a rape crisis centre the same day. Another alleged he assaulted her when she was aged 16 during an emotionally abusive and controlling relationship. A third claims Brand sexually assaulted her in Los Angeles and later threatened to take legal action if she spoke about the allegation to anyone else. And a fourth described being sexually assaulted by Brand and also claimed he was both physically and emotionally abusive towards her.
In his statement, Brand said the allegations against him "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 have written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous.”
He continued: “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 am being transparent about it now as well.
“To see that transparency metastasised into something criminal, that I absolutely deny, makes me question – is there another agenda at play?”
Brand has claimed that their is witnesses whose evidence “directly contradicts the narrative that these two mainstream media outlets are trying to construct.”
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