Russell Brand Receives Standing Ovation Hours After Assault Allegations

Russell Brand received a loud show of support from the crowd at his Bipolarisation show amid his misconduct scandal.

Brand, 48, brought his stand-up routine to London’s Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre on Saturday, September 16. The actor was met with a rousing round of applause when he took the stage, per footage obtained by the Daily Mail.

In the video, many attendees rose from their seats while clapping. He appeared to get a second standing ovation at the end of the performance.

Several hours earlier, The Times reported that four women have accused Brand of rape, sexual assault and abuse. According to the British newspaper, one of the women was allegedly 16 at the time of her encounter with Brand. The Times’ investigation was completed in conjunction with Channel 4’s Dispatches, which further detailed the allegations on its Saturday night broadcast. (Brand’s show began at 7:00 p.m. BST, two hours before Dispatches aired.)

Brand has denied the “very serious” claims about his alleged behavior.

“I’ve received two extremely disturbing letters, or a letter and an email, one from a mainstream media TV company [and] one from a newspaper, listing a litany of extremely egregious and aggressive attacks,” he said in a Friday, September 15, video posted onto his social media pages. “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.”

Brand did not reveal the nature of the accusations at the time nor who sent him the “disturbing” letters. He did claim that the alleged incidents took place “when I was working in the mainstream” as an actor.

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“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,” he said. “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 [if] there is another agenda at play?”

Brand further condemned the stories revealed in The Times report and the Dispatches investigation as false. “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 coordinated attack,” he claimed.

In his Friday video, Brand said that he “obviously” planned to investigate the “very, very serious” claims.

If you have experienced sexual assault, call the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 for confidential support.