I strongly recommend Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey's latest Origin Story podcast, which covers the rise and rise of Russell Brand:
Dorian and Ian reassess Brand’s extraordinary rise to fame in the 2000s in light of recent allegations of sexual misconduct and explore how British culture gave him a free pass.
In 2013 Brand swapped sex and fame for a new compulsion, reinventing himself as a flamboyant agitator to great acclaim. In the void between Occupy and Corbynism, his verbose mishmash of self-help and socialism briefly made him a lion of the left.
During the pandemic Brand embraced a darker shade of politics, promoting conspiracy theories about Covid-19, Ukraine and much more besides. After the allegations broke last year he went full crank, aligning himself with Robert F Kennedy Jr, Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones in the paranoid space.
As they say, this is a bizarre story of celebrity and conspiracy, addiction and attention, which says a great deal about where we are now.
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