Russell Brand’s misogynistic behaviour was enabled by industry focused on protecting its asset

DAME Joan Collins ain’t nobody’s fool, but her reminiscences from the early days of her acting career are a perilous maze of trying to avoid no-way-out situations with powerful but dodgy film bosses.

Take Darryl Zanuck, for example, producer of screen classic The King And I and someone Marilyn Monroe had warned her about.

He had a golden replica of his penis on his desk and pounced on then 20-year-old Joan, trapping her against a wall and saying: “You haven’t had anyone until you’ve had me, honey . . . I can go all night.”

Ugh. Another producer put her hand on his open fly and called her “a frigid little witch” when she didn’t respond to his advances, and she says some of the actors she worked with “considered it their divine right to have sex with their leading lady”, too.

One of them, Richard Burton, said that if she didn’t sleep with him it would break his record of bedding “all my leading ladies”. She didn’t, so he barely spoke to her again.

In her new memoir, Behind The Shoulder Pads, Dame Joan writes: “Men who, because they were rich or powerful, thought that women were playthings could be very cruel.”

Sound familiar? Whatever the truth behind the serious allegations levelled at comedian Russell Brand from the period of 2006 to 2013 (he denies it all), it’s fair to say that he was, at times, cruelly casual and often misogynistic in how he talked about women throughout what he freely admits were his promiscuous years.

And it’s also fair to say that his behaviour was enabled by an industry so focused on protecting its asset (and the ratings/profit he brought in) that he was able to behave like, at best, an a***hole, at worst (if proven) a sexual predator towards women.

Just like all the older men who preyed on the youthful Joan Collins in a warped bid to exercise their power in the industry, knowing full well that any complaint she dared to make would go precisely nowhere.

Decades later, it was the same story when producer Harvey Weinstein used his power to make or break careers if actresses and female staff didn’t give in to his sexual demands, and in 2017 it took a few very brave women to bring him down and spark the #MeToo movement.

But where are we now? Well, in the acting industry, there are now due processes and intimacy co-ordinators in place to, one hopes, protect female stars. But what of the muggles . . . aka women in normal jobs?

It seems that little has changed and the sexual harassment of young females by certain (by no means all) grown-ass men continues in plain sight.

Comedian Katherine Ryan is reported to have called out Brand, alleging he was a sexual predator on a TV comedy “roasting” show in 2018, but according to sources “close to production staff” the segment was ripped (what does that tell you about the industry?).

She has recently spoken about how her 14-year-old daughter Violet and her 16-year-old cousin were harassed on the London Tube while enjoying a day out of “wholesome activities”.

A man sitting opposite started openly filming them, and when they got off, “they continued to be harassed by other men around London”.

“There’s no mistaking Violet’s age. She’s 14, she has braces on her teeth . . . you’re a sick freak and you shouldn’t be talking to teenage girls the way you are. I need it to stop,” says a furious Katherine.

Violet had the wherewithal to film the man, and the transport police are now involved, but this is the tip of the iceberg.

A friend’s daughter gets sexually harassed when she leaves the house by a man in the house opposite who stands at an open window naked. They say the police did nothing.

My youngest daughter (19) and her friends say they constantly have to keep their wits about them on a night out to stave off the sexual attentions of older men who really should know better, and a radio phone-in earlier this week took calls from women in various industries who reported sexism, sexual discrimination and sexual harassment. How depressing.

Only last week, a major analysis of NHS staff showed that nearly two thirds of female surgeons say they had been the target of sexual harassment and a third had been sexually assaulted by colleagues in the past five years, some of it while surgery was taking place.

Some were fondled inside their scrubs, male surgeons wiped their brow on their breasts and others rubbed erections against female staff. Some were offered career opportunities for sex.

And again, they feared reporting incidents because they doubted the NHS would take action and it would damage their careers.

Which, considering those expressing concerns about killer nurse Lucy Letby claim the management at one hospital didn’t even listen, rings true.

To make matters worse, the reaction from certain quarters of the public regarding sexual harassment claims remains along the lines of, “oh, get a sense of humour” or “there are far worse things going on in the world”.

Others express the worrying belief that if a sexual assault happens when a woman is in a relationship with a man, or after she’s had sex consensually with him on another occasion, then it can’t possibly be a crime. Seriously?

Then there’s the “he was always nice to me” brigade, which is as nonsensical as saying, “I met Ted Bundy and he didn’t murder me”.

In the case of Russell Brand, be it the as yet unproven criminal allegations or simply his promiscuous and often casually misogynistic treatment of women in the past, it amazes me how many people are turning their guns on those who have spoken out.

“Why have they taken this long to say something?” is a common refrain. Well, probably because they felt they were alone at the time and wouldn’t be believed.

Or perhaps they did report it to their bosses and it went nowhere? Or they have now matured, perhaps had children, and only just realised that what they allegedly endured was wrong?

“Loads of women willingly slept with him,” is another. Yes, but that doesn’t make all women fair game.

And as for those who agree with Brand that he is being subjected to “a co-ordinated attack” by the mainstream media because of his anti-establishment narrative and outspoken conspiracy theories on Covid etc, words fail me.

Police investigation

Brand is smart, a great talker and has many valid points to make on his popular YouTube channel.

His book Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions is excellent and the last time I spoke to him, in 2017, he was a happily married father who seemed calm, content and on a completely different page from his high octane drink and drug years.

But none of that means he should be immune from his past behaviour being scrutinised if, as alleged, some of it was criminally abusive.

Yes, ideally, the accusations should have come to light via a police investigation, but as Farah Nazeer, chief executive of Women’s Aid, wrote in The Sun, “many women simply do not trust the police or the court systems”.

Little wonder when statistics show that just five per cent of rape allegations made to police result in a charge, and many of that small percentage take three years to come to court.

One woman’s response to the Victims’ Commissioner Survey 2021 was: “The whole process has been more traumatic than the actual rape. I have zero belief in the justice legal system.”

This has to change. For if women still feel powerless to speak out, or are then shot down in flames when they do, then we have achieved nothing at all since the bad old days when they were told to put up and shut up.