Comedian Daniel Sloss has been showered in praise for his contribution in the investigation into Russell Brand.
The St Trinian’s actor, 48, has been accused of rape, sexual assault and physical abuse, in a Channel 4 special episode of Dispatches airing in a joint investigation with The Times.
Brand, who has denied the ‘very serious allegations’ in a video shared on Friday night, has been accused by multiple women, including one who claimed she was 16 years old at the time.
The documentary saw Sloss as one of the only people who chose to not conceal his identity, as he spoke about how ‘for many, many years that women have been warning each other about Russell.’
‘I know there are comedians who have made references in jokes to Russell’s alleged crimes and have either been asked or told not to do those jokes any more,’ he claimed.
Speaking to The Times, Sloss alleges he first heard ‘rumours’ about Brand’s alleged predatory behaviour within the comedy industry more than a decade ago, but that these allegations did not affect his work.
‘I couldn’t not say something, from the second I started he was a big name, a big, big, big household name, everyone in the UK knows who he is.
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‘If you were a comedian and got to gig with him you’d be gigging with a celebrity.
‘I’m stood in bars with agents, promoters, channel commissioners and I’m hearing these allegations and rumours with Russell in the same room, and later on he would be on a movie, on a television show, he would be hosting something. He was still being employed.’
Sloss has been showered in praise for his contribution in the investigation, as an old routine about men and sexual assault has resurfaced following the documentary airing.
The segment, from his 2019 X show, is not a comedic routine, but a call to the men watching to ‘talk to your f**king boys’ as he recounted not doing anything about a man’s behaviour which, ultimately, led to him raping one of Sloss’s friends.
Speaking about there not being enough police or courtrooms available to deal with the problem should every woman who has ever experienced sexual assault come forward, in his monologue Sloss insisted he didn’t want to dissuade women from reporting such crimes, but instead wanted people to know ‘how big this f**king problem is’.
Sloss – who previously spoke with Metro.co.uk about the show’s content – asked how we can stop this from happening, and said that he is sure that the answer to that question is that it ‘has to involve us’, meaning men, and added that he was keen to add to the discussion around the safety of women.
Turning to the men in the audience, he said: ‘This isn’t an attack. I’m not accusing you of anything and more importantly, I’m not accusing your friends of anything.
‘I’m just trying to tell you my experience…I knew this man for eight years and he f**king did it.
‘There are monsters amongst us and they look like us.’
Sloss urged men to ‘get involved’ in the ongoing issue, despite them perhaps not thinking it is their problem and that, despite knowing that ‘most men are good’, it is not going to solve the issue.
‘If I’m being 100% honest with myself, were there signs in my friend’s behaviour over the years towards women that I ignored? The answer is yes. And then he raped my friend and that’s on me until the day I die.’
Saying that ‘women are trying their hardest to not get raped’, he implored men to talk to their friends and to become involved.
The video has been circulating on social media, with Sloss’ comments gaining more applause.
Another said: ‘It shouldn’t take a personal experience to make a man stand up for what is right. But I’m very glad he is. Daniel Sloss, I salute you!’
Derry Girls actress Siobhan McSweeney added: ‘Fair play Daniel Sloss.’
‘Incredibly brave of Daniel Sloss to appear on the doc. And the sole comedian. Protect him at all costs,’ another wrote.
Someone else penned: ‘Last year I watched this show from Daniel Sloss about sexual assault & how he wished he’d done something to stop his friend being raped. It’s incredibly powerful. This is what real feminism is. This is what a male role model should be. @Daniel_Sloss is my hero.’
The bombshell piece by The Times and Channel 4 investigation reveals four women making the allegations against Brand, with one saying he raped her up against a wall at his home in Los Angeles and he later allegedly apologised over text after she told him: ‘When a girl say[s] no it means no.’
A second woman alleges that Brand assaulted her when she was 16 and at school, and he was 31.
She says she had to punch him in the stomach to make him stop after he ‘forced his penis down her throat’.
Another woman claims Brand ‘forced a finger inside of her’ after becoming angry when he found out she had spoken to an ex-boyfriend, and says that he forced her to brush her teeth so hard and make her gums bleed so she would taste ‘anonymous’ to him.
On Friday night, Brand said he had been approached by a mainstream TV network and a mainstream newspaper with ‘extremely disturbing’ correspondence listing ‘a litany of extremely egregious and aggressive attacks.’
Amid some ‘stupid stuff’ in the correspondence, including, he said, that he ‘shouldn’t be able to attack mainstream media narratives,’ were ‘some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute.’
Brand said: ‘These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies.
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‘As I’ve written about extensively in my book, I was very, very promiscuous. Now during that time of promiscuity, the relationships that I had were absolutely always consensual. 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 metastasise into something criminal that I absolutely deny makes me question is there another agenda at play.’
He said there had been ‘coordinated media attacks’ in the past against people like controversial podcast host Joe Rogan, and that he himself had previously been labelled a conspiracy theorist.
Brand went on to claim media outlets had been trying to contact people he knows ‘for ages and ages,’ but ‘what I seriously refute are these very, very serious criminal allegations.’
He claimed he had ‘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.’
‘Now, I don’t want to get into this any further because of the serious nature of the allegations, but I feel like I’m being attacked and plainly they are working very closely together.
‘We are obviously going to look into this matter because it’s very, very serious.’
Russell Brand: In Plain Sight is available to watch on Channel 4.
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