Russell Brand had ‘insane sexual appetite’ and bad behaviour on ‘another level’, trial told

Brand, charged with rape and sexual assault, was ‘sleeping with people day and night’, former assistant alleges

Russell Brand had an “insane sexual appetite” and his bad behaviour was “normalised and dismissed” by those around him, his former personal assistant has told a court.

Helen Berger told police she had seen Brand treat women badly and that she once had to stop his mother and girlfriend walking in on him having sex with someone in his dressing room.

She also alleged she witnessed the 51-year-old comedian receiving oral sex in a toilet cubicle and once found a celebrity leaving his bedroom in the morning.

Brand faces three charges of rape, three of sexual assault and one of indecent assault against six women, in allegations spanning 10 years from 1999. He denies all the charges.

Wearing a grey suit and white shirt, Brand sat still in the dock as statements from prosecution witnesses were read to Southwark crown court on Monday.

Berger worked for Brand from June 2006 to February 2007, when the TV personality was at the height of his fame. She said the job was one of the hardest she had had because Brand had “non-stop energy”, and she left because she was “sick of him” and burnt out.

“Though I’d worked with celebrities before and seen a lot of people normalising bad behaviour, this was on another level. I think everyone else normalising and dismissing Russell’s behaviour made me think, I guess, this is just the way it is,” Berger said in the May 2024 police statement.

Describing his behaviour, she added: “He was always in his underwear, he loved walking around in his underwear with no shirt on. I remember Sadie Frost came over to interview him. He did the whole interview in his underwear and no shirt and an open robe.”

At the time, Brand had filming commitments for Channel 4’s Big Brother as well as MTV and the BBC, a radio show, a national comedy tour, a weekly Guardian column, and was writing a book.

“In addition to his busy work, he had an insane sexual appetite and was sleeping with people day and night. He was very open about what his needs were,” Berger said in the statement, which was read out by the prosecutor, Riel Karmy-Jones KC.

“He never seemed happy after sex, more so depressed,” Berger alleged. “There were times when I was at his house and he would be on a deadline … and he would get antsy and joke with me: ‘May I go and have sex now?’”

She recalled Brand turning to the website Myspace to find random women to sleep with and how women, including an unnamed celebrity, would often be at his flat in Camden, north London, for sexual liaisons. “He was like a peacock, women always approached him,” she said.

When Brand was recording an MTV show, Berger alleged, he told her to ask women for their phone numbers, which she said made her feel uncomfortable.

She alleged that on other occasions she had to keep Brand’s mother and girlfriend away from his dressing room because he was having sex, and she overheard him receiving oral sex in a women’s toilet. Berger described overhearing Brand talking and recognising his trademark cowboy boots in the cubicle next door.

Berger recalled that when Brand was headlining the Edinburgh festival, he ended his show by asking that anyone with “a vagina and heartbeat” meet him at a pub afterwards. Many women showed up, Berger said, and she later found him having sex in the shower at the apartment he was renting.

“I never witnessed Russell doing anything against the law,” she said, before adding: “I did see Russell treat women poorly.”

She recalled how he was once “hitting on” a woman who revealed she had a boyfriend, before Brand “turned in a way” that startled his then PA. “He literally just switched off his charm and moved on to the next woman,” Berger said.

The court also heard a witness statement from the manager of a woman who said she was sexually assaulted by Brand when she worked at Channel 4 in 2009. The manager said she recalled the alleged victim telling her that Brand’s associates Jack Bayles and Gareth Roy had “told her she had to give Mr Brand a massage” or he would not continue with the day’s recording.

The manager recalled being told that Bayles and Roy “were both there the whole time and watched and laughed while Mr Brand sexually assaulted her right in front of them”.

The sister of a woman who alleges she was sexually assaulted and then orally raped by Brand at a Soho bar in 2004 told the court she was “upset and almost in shock” the next morning.

In 2023, the woman called her sister in tears and told the “full story” of what had happened, the court heard. “It sounded like she was struggling to catch her breath,” the witness recalled. “She said his [Brand’s] eyes had gone completely black and he was possessed or had been a completely different person.”