Russell Brand is on trial for rape and sexual assault. His career has been a catalog of controversy

LONDON — British comedian and actor Russell Brand will stand trial in London on Monday, accused of rape and sexual assault.

The 51-year-old has pleaded not guilty to three charges of rape, one charge of indecent assault and three counts of sexual assault, relating to six women.

The charges go back to the beginning of his career.

Who is Russell Brand?

Brand became a household name in British television in the early 2000s, presenting the talk show "Celebrity Big Brother's Big Mouth," a spin-off from the popular reality series "Celebrity Big Brother," and receiving accolades such as Best Male Comedy Newcomer at the British Comedy Awards for his talk show "Russell Brand's Got Issues."

As well as garnering many TV fans, his eccentric stand-up performances made him one of the UK's most popular live entertainers.

Brand's energetic character and provocative jokes, often relating to sex, made him a distinctive voice in the UK media. In 2006, he became host of "The Russell Brand Show" on BBC Radio 2, a weekly Saturday night program during which he had frank, comedic — and often X-rated — conversations with a co-host and guests.

'Sachsgate'

While the popular radio show attracted around 400,000 listeners on average, it came to an abrupt halt in 2008 when Brand quit the show after offensive voice messages, left by him and entertainer Jonathan Ross for "Fawlty Towers" star Andrew Sachs, were aired on the program, sparking outrage and breaching UK broadcasting regulations.

In the voice messages, Brand joked — using explicit language — about having sex with Sachs' granddaughter. He and Ross went on to say that Sachs, who was 78 at the time, might kill himself on hearing the news. The episode was widely criticized, with the BBC receiving tens of thousands of complaints and regulator Ofcom receiving almost 2,000.

Even the British prime minister of the day, Gordon Brown, reacted to what was later labeled "Sachsgate," calling Brand's comments "inappropriate and unacceptable."

At the time, Brand said he took "complete responsibility," adding: "I got a bit caught up in the moment and forgot that, at the core of the rude comments and silly songs, were the real feelings of a beloved and brilliant comic actor and a very sweet and big-hearted young woman."

However, he changed his tone five years later in a BBC Radio interview. While he admitted that listeners' offense was "genuine" and apologized for his "wrong" actions, he also said that "there was obviously a pre-existing agenda in privately owned media to destabilize, attack and diminish the BBC."

Off to Hollywood

Despite the notoriety of Sachsgate, Brand's rise was only briefly impeded.

The same year he quit his radio show, his Channel 4 TV show "Russell Brand's Ponderland" was nominated for a BAFTA, and he became a recognized name in Hollywood after portraying the hedonistic rock star Aldous Snow in the romantic comedy "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." Two years later, he reprised the role in the spinoff "Get Him to the Greek."

It was around this time that he began dating U.S. pop star Katy Perry. The high-profile relationship didn't last, however. After marrying in October 2010, the couple were fending off divorce rumors by 2011 and, by the end of that year, Brand had announced he was divorcing Perry, reportedly catching the singer off guard.

Perry revealed in 2013 that Brand told her that he was divorcing her via a text on New Year's Eve and that she hadn't heard from him since, adding that while he "wanted an equal" at first, strong men "get that equal and they're like, I can't handle the equalness. He didn't like the atmosphere of me being the boss on tour. So that was really hurtful, and it was very controlling, which was upsetting."

Brand, however, blamed busy schedules for their split, and said in 2017 that the up-and-down nature of fame contributed to the brevity of the marriage. He said he still felt "very warm towards her."

A shift to wellness

Brand has credited yoga and meditation for helping him deal with addictions to drugs, alcohol and sex.

In 2017, he wrote a self-help guide, "Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions."

He had previously published his autobiography, "My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up," which became a best-seller in the UK and was published in the U.S. two years later. Critics described the book as "funny and frequently awful," as well as a "relentless ride with a comic mind clearly at the wheel."

Brand's stand-up shows and podcasts began to focus more on societal trends, spirituality, psychology and childbirth, and his on-stage performances moved from theater stages to speaking at wellness gatherings, such as Wanderlust Wellspring in Palm Springs, California, in 2018.

With his second wife, author Laura Gallacher, whom he married in 2017 and with whom he has three children, Brand launched a spirituality festival in Wales, titled "Community," which had its first outing in 2023. A subsequent edition was postponed and then canceled.

More recently, Brand has been hosting a podcast, "Stay Free," and making YouTube videos for his "Awakened Wonders" online community — paying members with whom he shares his thoughts on spirituality, culture, politics and global affairs.

Brand promotes his community as a counter to what he describes as the "corrupted and broken" old systems that govern the world, with "a New Spirit" being born among them.

He frequently airs conspiracy theories about a "concealed agenda" and deception by governments, Big Pharma and Big Tech, as well as voicing suspicions about the Covid vaccine, and corruption and dishonesty in the mainstream media.

In a YouTube video published in September 2023, Brand accused the British government of trying to censor him online, and he described the claims against him as "coordinated" and "egregious attacks" by the media, questioning, "Is there another agenda at play?"

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