sighthe

RUSSELL Brand, they say, was a man hiding in plain sight.

Let me tell you now: no, he was not. This was a vile predator openly peacocking about precisely how depraved and sick he has always been.

“What kind of man was I?”’ he wrote in his own book. “Treating women in this way.

“If this is what I’m telling you, can you imagine what’s being left out?”

Now, in part, we know.

Quite why it took so long for the world to wake-up, and act on the clues he was liberally throwing around – as narcissists tend to do – are questions that shall follow in due course.

We must commend the brave, courageous women – his victims – for speaking out in a judicial system which traditionally views are as notoriously hard to prosecute.

It must also be stated: were it not for hard-working, incredibly diligent journalists at The Sunday Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches – ones Brand and his lawyers tried to shut down – this man would still be free today.

In fact, after getting wind of the investigation into Brand, I introduced my contact to the Dispatches team. He willingly shared his testimony which, I believe, proved helpful for background.

I also wish to add, I have deep sympathy with the other victims of this fall-out: his loyal family, members of whom appeared this week in court. This will be unbearably hard for his three children too, and they must have our compassion.

Three years ago, in a column for this newspaper, I wrote about my own torrid encounter with the erstwhile toast of Hollywood.

To rewind, on August 18 2010, I had written a story revealing Brand was having relationship counselling with his then-fiancée, American singer Katy Perry.

The star procured my number and wanted to know who’d given me the story: A name. He pushed, and pushed, and pushed.

For the next ten days or so, I would receive daily texts and calls, begging me to betray my sources.

If I did so, he promised a joint interview with him and Katy, or the exclusive news if the couple should become pregnant. He was an arch manipulator.

After fobbing him off, or so I thought, one horrifying afternoon, I received a tearful phone call from my contact.

His elderly mother had received an unannounced visit from one of his terrifying and burly flunkies, threatening in the most terrifying of ways.

She was home alone in North London, and the minder called my source – after demanding his number – and said: “Don’t forget where I am. I’m stood here with your mum.”

He went on to tell her that her son was “in a lot of trouble”.

Afterwards, the two entirely blameless pensioner was, understandably, left reeling.

I was later told Brand had “blagged” the number from my former newspaper’s unsuspecting accounts’ department.

It was but a flavour of the man, and so deeply unnerving. For years, I have hated myself for being so flattered, initially, by his attentions.

After the initial investigation into Brand, colloquially I have heard from so many people about things he is alleged to have said and done. All pretty awful.

One colleague recalled how Brand, sitting in his dressing room, would get his penis out to a young make-up girl. In her early twenties, she felt deeply uncomfortable but also too powerless, too afraid, to raise the red flag.

Certainly, such a narrative – the abuse of power – appears to be a long-running theme in this harrowing case: his influence and popularity acting as the ultimate enabler, a bullet-proof shield.

Naturally, as a showbiz reporter in the noughties, our paths crossed on numerous occasions.

Perhaps it should be noted that at no point did Brand try it on with me. In fact, I’d go as far to say we found one another mutually repellant.

He was mercurial. He could be wildly charismatic. Charming.

A long-time member of AA, he was never drunk or obnoxious, but his moods could swing enormously.

I interviewed him in Los Angeles one year, at a time when Hollywood couldn’t get enough of this louche, skinny jean-wearing, open-shirted man.

He was charm personified, and spoke elegantly and idiosyncratically, as always.

Indeed, if Brand was hiding behind anything, it was his florid vocabulary: big words used to obfuscate.

My former colleague and friend had a very different experience.

Speaking to him a London hotel room, mid-interview he stood up, went to the toilet with the door still open, and p***ed, telling her: “You can keep asking me questions”.

She felt wildly awkward.

At parties, women flocked towards Brand; he was rarely shy of female attention, and clearly he basked in it, like a flower gravitating towards the sunlight.

Sex – we now know, some of it, heinously, non-consenting, was his drug of choice.

Today, we know he is a rapist.

In the intervening years, of course, Brand famously reinvented himself as born-again Christian.

He has repented, he insisted, often clutching a Bible. He was very, very sorry. Nothing to see here, M’Lord.

Except there is, and there was.

Guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault following his trial at Southwark Crown Court, we are assured he faces a “lengthy” sentence.

Thank God, as Brand himself might, in this rare instance, probably not say.