'You f***** it': Russell Brand’s lawyer in tirade at journalist after star’s guilty verdict

Disgraced conspiracy theorist argued he had suffered more prejudice than the likes of serial killer Rose West and hate preacher Abu Hamza

Court artist sketch of Russell Brand listening to Judge Mr Justice Bennathan at Southwark Crown Court, London, as he is found guilty of raping one of his fans and sexually assaulting three women during his showbiz heyday. Picture: Elizabeth Cook/PA

Russell Brand’s barrister launched into a tirade at a journalist outside the courtroom after the comedian was found guilty of rape and sexual assault.

Ian Winter confronted Sunday Times journalist Rosamund Urwin, whose investigation led to Brand’s victims coming forward, telling her: “I hope you are pleased with yourself.” 

Ms Urwin responded: “I’m pleased justice has been done,” before Mr Winter said: “Well, it wasn’t. You fucked it.” 

“Congratulations,” he added.

During the trial, Mr Winter had argued that reporting of allegations against Brand by Ms Urwin and others had “poisoned the well”, and rendered it impossible for him to have a fair trial.

The trial judge, Mr Justice Bennathan, dismissed an attempt by Brand to block his trial from taking place because of negative media coverage.

It can also now be revealed that Brand tried to smear journalists as “criminals” and claimed women accusing him of abuse were “fictional” in a doomed bid to avoid trial.

The shamed comedian-turned-conspiracy theorist, 51, argued he had been “destroyed” by a “trial by media” when the Times, the Sunday Times, and a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary exposed him as a sexual predator in 2023.

A series of women came forward to police after the media reporting, speaking out about being raped, forcibly kissed, and groped by Brand during his showbiz career.

Before his trial at Southwark Crown Court, Brand tried to persuade a judge that he had been on the receiving end of such a character assassination that he could not have a fair trial.

He argued he had suffered more prejudice than the likes of serial killer Rose West and hate preacher Abu Hamza, as Mr Winter asked Mr Justice Bennathan to throw out rape and sexual assault charges.

The attack on the award-winning journalists, particularly Ms Urwin, failed when the judge ruled the jury could be made up of people who had not seen the 2023 media reporting.

He rejected Brand’s claim that the former comedian’s reputation had been “destroyed”, pointing to a sell-out Wembley show he performed after being publicly accused of rape.

Brand claimed deliberate plot by journalists

In legal argument that can now be reported for the first time, Brand tried to claim that TV and newspaper journalists had deliberately plotted to get him prosecuted and, by publishing the findings of their investigation, had perverted the course of justice.

“The conduct of Channel 4, Hardcash Productions — the makers of the documentary — and the Sunday Times newspaper in publishing the anonymous allegations against the defendant was, and remains, unlawful and criminal,” said Mr Winter.

“It amounted to, and continues to do so, a contempt of court and to a perversion of the course of justice.” 

During two days of pre-trial hearings in September, Mr Winter called the Dispatches documentary, Russell Brand: In Plain Sight, a “work of fiction” filled with “false allegations”, highlighting that the anonymised women who had given their stories had been depicted on screen by actors.

The allegations in the documentary included rape, sexual harassment on the set of Big Brother, sexually charged comments while working for the BBC, and details of his lewd behaviour in the 2000s, including telling audiences at his stand-up shows “all sex should be a bit frightening”.

Mr Winter said televised claims against Brand had been made by the “tear-stained cheeks of professional actors”, instead of the women who were accusing him.

He told the court: “We don’t even know if these people exist.”

Rounding on the reporters, Mr Winter said: “It is not the job of journalists to take the law into their own hands.” 

The documentary, which included details of Brand’s Sachsgate scandal, evidence from his personal assistant about his behaviour towards women, and revelations about his sex addiction, “drives the observer to the conclusion” that Brand “is a rapist and a sexual assaulter and a serial abuser of women”, said the barrister.

“It is thus much worse than merely being accused of having committed a specified crime, it proves the defendant to be a person who commits those crimes all the time and has done so for very, very many years.

“What possible prospect is there of a juror thinking that when an established multiple rapist gives evidence, that he did not commit a particular identified rape that he is telling the truth?” 

He added: “It destroys him as a person. It destroys him as a credible witness. It destroys any hint of sympathy that a jury might otherwise have had for him.” 

Mr Winter said the documentary was still online and available to download in the weeks before the trial, and suggested the attorney general should have intervened to get it taken down.

He said: “We simply don’t understand how that is being allowed by the authorities.

“It is a crime currently being committed by these publishers.” 

The court was told that Brand had struggled to persuade friends and former colleagues to give evidence for him, because of a “global character assassination by the media”.

Prosecutors fought against the charges being thrown out, and the judge rejected the arguments of Brand’s lawyers, saying it was “unpersuasive” to claim that journalists had committed a crime.

He ruled: “There is a history, both modern and ancient, of the media running what they claim are exposes of misconduct.” 

He highlighted media coverage of alleged unlawful donations to Reform UK this year, as well as allegations in Private Eye magazine in the 1960s about the Kray twins, and said: “Sometimes those claimed revelations lead to convictions, sometimes they do not. It has never been suggested that that type of publication is unlawful.” 

The judge concluded the jury could be selected from members of the public who had not read the Times and Sunday Times reporting or seen the Dispatches programme.

He also suggested Brand’s complaints about the public being turned against him had been exaggerated, pointing to a 2,000-strong audience cheering Brand on stage after the allegations were first made.

He said: “The British public are not all meek and passive consumers of all that is claimed in the press.” 

During the trial, Mr Winter attacked reporters again during his closing speech when he accused them of “poisoning the well” of evidence in the case.

Brand, who is facing years behind bars after being found guilty of one rape and three sexual assaults, argued during his trial that his accusers had “reimagined” sexual encounters with him.

Asked in front of the jury by prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones whether he blamed the media for his downfall, Brand appeared stunned into silence before eventually replying: “In some ways.”