Russell Brand - Mail Plays Catch-Up

Having said nothing about what Russell Brand may or may not have got up to during his journey through media circles, the inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker are now pretending that only they have the real story. The problem they also have is that the rest of the press, and many of their readers, know that they don’t. And today’s best shot only goes to confirm that view.

Guy Adams in self-descriptive pose

The Dacre doggies have deemed the need to not only show that they knew all about Brand, but also use the exposé by the Times, Sunday Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches strand to kick the left. To this end, the Mail has taken out the long handle in the form of a hit piece from their specialist hit piece supremo Guy Adams, where he talks well, but lies badly.

“Why was self-confessed narcissist Russell Brand ever lauded by the Left? How the liberal media feted the comedian as a political messiah - and set him on his path to becoming a conspiracy-peddling crank” trumpets the headline, but sadly, Adams drops a mirth-inducing whopper in the first paragraph.

“A very special guest shambled his way into the Guardian newspaper's morning editorial conference and took a seat next to editor Alan Rusbridger on a striking yellow designer sofa”. Striking yellow designer sofa? As Billy Connolly once said, there’s going to be some swearing … FUCK OFF.

Full disclosure: I have seen the Rusbridger-era Guardian editorial conference room. And I’ll give Adams the Yellow part. The seating was indeed yellow. But the only striking thing about it was the lack of comfort. Not sure on “sofa”, and as for “designer” - there’s going to be an awful lot of involuntary hilarity among current and former Guardian staffers. This is the lowest form of tosh.

Worse, you don’t have to look far to see references to that furniture (Evening Standard, of all publications, recalls it HERE). And that’s the problem: having seen Adams lying at the top of his article, the reader is bound to suspect that the rest of his screed will be similarly afflicted. Like “The August 2013 meeting kicked off a series of high-profile and doubtless lucrative collaborations between Brand and various pillars of Britain's liberal media establishment”.

What the f***'s this got to do with me, c***?!?!?

DOUBTLESS? What Adams means is that he doesn’t know, and his bosses dare not let his article out without the necessary caveat. Because this isn’t someone from the general public who can’t afford to sue - Russell Brand is rich enough to hit the Mail with a lawsuit if he finds them not only lying, but defaming him. Adams’ piece had to include another of those tell-tale caveats when it came to former Labour leader, and Mail hate figure, Ed Miliband.

“Impressed by the audience Brand could generate, and again seemingly unfazed by the sometimes bonkers and occasionally sinister fringe views he'd expressed, Ed Miliband subsequently decided to seek an endorsement from [him]”. SEEMINGLY. Best include that, cos Mil the Younger’s wife’s a Judge.

Elsewhere, Adams tells his readers nothing of substance. Brand got invited on to Newsnight (so what?). Pax Jeremiah didn’t approve (so what?). He called former Brexit Party Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage “a pound shop Enoch Powell”. Which sort of negates the headline claim of “Liberal media” if it keeps giving airtime to Mr Thirsty.

We get a slice of guilt by association: “Last year, after being suspended from YouTube for promoting vaccine misinformation, he moved to Rumble, a video site also used by misogynistic social media star Andrew Tate”. There is the obligatory sneer at the alleged value of his house: “a £3.3million house in Henley, Oxfordshire, where Brand built a studio in a garden shed”.

Press Gazette has noted that “The Mail was ... criticised online for appearing to take credit for reporting the allegations against Brand ‘first’. In the Mail on Sunday, a headline claimed: ‘First with the news again… yesterday’s Daily Mail was the only paper with the story.’” But the Mail is, for the second day running, desperately playing catch-up, knowing that those who actually broke the story have follow-up content ready to go.

The Mail’s been caught doing opinion and no journalism. It may not recover.

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