Russell Brand’s hero status among a prominent section of the British left began on Friday 13 September 2013 and officially came to an end one week ago. On both occasions the medium was the Guardian.
The 2013 moment came when he wrote for the paper giving ‘his side of the story’ after being kicked out of a GQ awards event for making a joke about the Hugo Boss fashion label and its historic links with the Nazis. Just shy of ten years later, the paper’s columnist George Monbiot last week published a mea culpa for having once been an advocate for Brand. He had nominated the comedian as his ‘hero’ of 2014, saying he was ‘the best thing that has happened to the left in years’.
That was typical of Brand’s status in that quarter in the years following that column: he did celebrity cameos for Alan Rusbridger in Guardian news conferences, wrote further columns, guest-edited the New Statesman and was invited on to Newsnight – twice. Owen
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