What The Attack On Helen Haines Has Shown Us & The Russell Brand Strategy

0:03 Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia Out Loud. It's what women are actually talking about on Wednesday the 21st of October. I'm Holly Wainwright.

0:10 I'm Mia Friedman.

0:11 And I'm Jessie Stephens.

0:13 And here's what's made our agenda for today. The court case obsessing the UK and the celebrity and his wife who are definitely posting through it.

0:22 Plus, Prince Harry has given his first sit-down interview with GQ. And Holly's going to unpack it for us.

0:28 And the secret to happiness, it's your 10-minute radius. But first, it's the story that no one will have missed. At 3.30pm on Monday afternoon, 65-year-old Helen Haynes, the independent federal member for Indi, pulled up outside her electorate office in Wangaratta, regional Victoria. She's a former nurse, a former midwife and health researcher. She is married and she's a mother of three.

0:54 According to witnesses, she went to the boot of her car to unload. She was due for a 4pm interview with Patricia Carvellis for the ABC. Witnesses say a Land Cruiser then drove past on the other side of the road. It then did a U-turn and it struck Haynes in what the Prime Minister has said was a deliberate act.

1:14 The Land Cruiser is then said to have struck her a second time. A man named Ricky Jeffries, who is a local barber, ran out of his shop upon hearing a loud bang and screaming. He is said to have pulled the driver out of the car, allegedly removed a knife from the driver's pocket and threw it away. He then helped perform a citizen's arrest on the alleged attacker.

1:36 The Prime Minister has called him a hero. Here's a little bit of what Jeffries has said.

1:41 I don't think I'm a hero, I think that I just was a person who had an opportunity to intervene in a safe-ish sort of way. A lot of people got involved immediately and they didn't even check for danger, they just ran to help. The driver was still in the car, the car was still on and they sat in front of a rolling car.

2:04 Cody LaPoitevin is another name that has appeared in reports. Along with other bystanders, he applied tourniquets and cared for Haynes until the ambulance arrived. Her first words after the attack, according to reports, were,' Thank you, you lovely people. I appreciate your help.' She was flown to the Alfred in Melbourne for emergency surgery. She has lost one leg and doctors are working to save the other. She is, as we record, in a critical but stable condition. The driver has been identified as 43-year-old Brendan Nugent. We can't speculate about his motives. He has been charged and faced court for the first time today. This might have nothing to do with politics, but wholly female politicians have come out

2:47 to firstly express their condolences to say what an incredible person Haynes is by all accounts, but also to share the increase in threats that they've been facing.

2:58 Yeah, two things that really struck me in the reaction to this is one is that blanket praise of Haynes from all sides of politics. She's an independent, right? So she didn't belong to a major party. And everybody from Barnaby Joyce, you know, to her fellow independents, to Zali Stegall, to whoever, just saying what an amazing woman she is.

3:22 You know, the kind of politician we want, like somebody who's really embedded in her community as a health worker, someone who's committed to, you know, actually listening and changing things for people. So in some ways that's been really positive to hear that, that such, you know, goodwill for a politician even under such awful circumstances. But as you say, Jessie, the other thing is a lot of female politicians have said we've been talking about this raised threat level to us.

3:50 And also, as you said, we don't know why this happened and it may turn out to not be particularly political, but this, are we going to play you a little bit of what Tanya Plibersek said about what it's like being a female politician in the current climate?

4:05 I mean, I couldn't even count the number of death threats, rape threats that I've had over the years and, you know, including ones that have ended up in court. The thing that's changed most is the industrial scale of that abuse now.

4:19 And it.

4:21 Has always been abuse, but I am shocked by the tenor of it. Yesterday I posted something about Jackie Lambie saying that I thought that the cartoon mocking her vaginal prolapse was in extremely poor taste. And 24 hours after I posted that, this afternoon, after this attack on Helen Haynes, someone wrote under that post defending Jackie Lambie, she deserves to meet a land cruiser.

4:52 Oh, my God.

4:54 It's the same. Labor's Anna Ali, before the attack, had gone on record saying that she'd had 19 death threats in the past week alone. So this is clearly something that a lot of female politicians are living with. Tamzin Rose talked about it on The Quickie this morning. She said there's been a report by the Australian Women in Offices.

5:13 They found that 89% of women had suffered online abuse linked to their participation in politics. It makes you think, why would any woman go into politics or public life?

5:22 Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, in terms of, it's not a new observation that the discourse has become incredibly volatile. The temperature is just so high. And, you know, Tanya Plibersek was referring to the Jackie Lambie story. You may have also seen that in the news. That was about a speech that Jackie Lambie actually gave back in August in the Senate. And In her Senate speech, she spoke about how earlier this year she had to have surgery for a vaginal prolapse, which had also impacted her bladder. And she linked it to a back injury that she sustained from army service. And the speech was not just her oversharing.

6:08 She was talking about how the health system was failing female veterans. And how often women who've served will have things that need attention after they've finished serving or during.

6:22 And even for her to normalise something like that when so many women post childbirth, that is something that women have experienced for a long time and haven't until recently spoken about it.

6:32 A hundred percent. So on the 18th of October. One Nation published one of their Please Explain cartoons. And it depicted Jackie Lambie coughing and making, made a crude joke about her prolapsed vagina. And Jackie came out and said, it's nasty and said that people shouldn't treat women's reproductive health as a joke. And then Pauline Hanson came out and said, it's just satire. Get over it. Why can't you take a joke? So that obviously didn't go down very well. Pauline Hanson was widely condemned for that. And she has since said that she hadn't seen the cartoon in advance.

7:12 She initially defended it.

7:14 Yeah.

7:14 And I think that that may seem unrelated, but it is sort of indicative of the temperature. It's now, and this is across the internet, it's now just no longer, I disagree with you. It's, you should die. And I think that it's, you know, the threats against politicians have increased 63% last year compared to the four years prior.

7:44 And, of course, politicians have always experienced criticism.

7:48 It's different, though, on an industrial scale. That's what Tanya Plibersek was saying, and I think that's true of anybody in public life.

7:55 The unfettered expression of hate that is, you know, across... social media and every politician, every female politician in particular will attest to that and whether or not that's related. And this is the thing. We, of course, can't speculate about the motives.

8:11 We don't know. We just don't know.

8:12 We don't know and we can't draw a straight line.

8:14 But what it's been a conduit for is this conversation about the tone of public debate. It's a conduit for female MPs to come out and say how unsafe they feel.

8:26 Which I think is a fair point regardless of what they find about this case. It's just a really important moment to reflect on that.

8:32 How do you think we hold on to that? Because it's easy for us to be cynical about that because we see from all sides of politics this just lowering of what we would have once called standards, I guess, in terms of what was fair game and what wasn't. And I think that, you know, the outpouring of distress about what's happened to Haynes has a lot of people saying, we need to remember our humanity. We need to have respect in politics. We need to have all those things.

9:02 But that's not very cool or edgy or travels very well on social media. And I wonder, it's like, how do we hold on to it beyond this news story fading out of the 24-hour news cycle? Assuming that Haynes, of course, we all hope that, you know, her recovery... is good.

9:20 I genuinely don't know the answer to that because Tanya Plibersek talked about the industrial scale of abuse. There's also what the digital world has brought also is the performative nature of it. So that person who said about Jackie Lambie, she should get a land cruise or whatever it was. That was designed for claps as well as, you know, everyone's very much performing this. And people seem so shocked when how people behave online becomes how they behave in the world.

9:53 Bursts into the real world.

9:55 And, you know, I just think who you are online is who you are. And we've always tried to say this.

10:01 I've heard it said that to participate in sort of online life, you should have a licence and you should have demerit points. So it's like the fact that I bet that person didn't even have an account that could be traced. And so the Australian Federal Police, who are absolutely inundated with complaints to try and track down these people and work out where the line is, I mean, there needs to be obviously some sort of repercussions for people who are posting that level of hate.

10:27 How do you police it though? Like where would you even start? Without closing down the internet. I mean, Albo's come out and said that, You know, they've built a bunker under the prime ministerial residences in Canberra and in Sydney. And it's not just on that side of politics. All different politicians are having to have their security upgraded. It's costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Parliament House just recently...

10:54 underwent $ 150 million worth of security upgrades because there are so many real and present threats.

11:01 And that's really interesting because also part of this conversation has been about local members like, well, obviously she's a federal member, but Helen Hayne's in her community was a familiar figure. Because, you know, we, and this is particularly true in regional areas, but I think it's also true in cities, that you'll see your local member at the coffee shop, you'll see them at the park and at the beach, and you'll see them at the school fair, and you'll see them. And that's kind of how, I think that's a really good thing, you know, that they're not these mystical figures who are behind the barricades. They are people who've maybe worked in your community. And I've heard a lot of people saying this week it would

11:39 be a terrible thing in Australia if we lost that. Because to your point, Mia, about... about security. Obviously, particular politicians get baked in security at certain levels, but it's not practical for every local member to have it and it's probably not even desirable. But when do you admit that the temperature has changed to a point where it's necessary?

11:59 And in terms of threat to politicians, Helen Haynes was not in your top 10. She wasn't in your top 50 of politicians who you would think was going to be subject to this level of It's true.

12:09 You know, there's an official security ranking of who's at most risk and you would assume the prime minister would probably be at the top of that list. But then you've got, as you say, Jessie, she wasn't, the first thing I did when I heard about this was I went and tried to learn a little bit more about her. And, you know, she's a former nurse, a former midwife, very well loved, as you said, across the whole spectrum. And it's shaken everybody. Jessie, you mentioned that the horror of that scene. And I was watching the press conference this morning and the police said that they were on the scene within eight seconds of receiving a call. And they said the scene that they were confronted with, and remember

12:49 this was right outside her campaign office. So all the people that came out, there were this incredible barber and various people, but it was all also her campaign staff. So her friends, her colleagues, her co-workers, That's what they were confronted with. And she was still conscious. And the other thing that I found really interesting, this tiny detail, was that Ricky Jeffries, who we heard from just then, who was the barber that pulled the guy out of the car, he put him on the ground, but he didn't hit him. He didn't abuse him. And he said...

13:24 you know, a witness was saying, he was saying, it's going to be okay, mate. Don't, don't worry, mate. It's going to be okay. Even just showing that tiny kindness to someone in, in that level of, of, you know, volatility is is extraordinary. And I do believe that people are good. I really do. And you have to.

13:44 And I think that's the humanity to hold on to. Also, when people say, and they do say this about women in the public eye who get abuse, it's just a bit of criticism, can't you take it? Toughen up. This is terrifying for women who have opinions about all kinds of things. And I think the very idea that online abuse does not sometimes, as you said before, Mia, burst into real life. We just have to put it to bed and understand, as you say, that who you are online, it's who you are everywhere.

14:12 We send all our love to Helen Haynes and her family and are, of course, willing for a full recovery.

14:18 Shortly on the show, the Russell Brown trial and the Harry interview with GQ. What can you do within a 10-minute radius from where you live? Because that apparently matters a whole lot more than the big decision that you make about postcode and even which city you live in. That's according to design and psychology of place expert at Bobby in Space. We've looked for what actual Bobby's name actually is, but we'll just call him Bobby in Space.

14:46 He did a post about the five most important factors that impact people's quality of life based on where they live. And it's not what you think. He says the first one is this idea of the 10-minute radius. And he says it matters more than the city because it's about what you can do within 10 minutes of your house without it becoming a big thing. So he, for example, says he can get his groceries, he can go to the dog park, he can see friends, he can, you know, go to a cafe, get a good coffee. And he says...

15:21 All of those things matter a huge amount. I guess that speaks to community, right? What can you guys do within 10 minutes?

15:27 Yeah, I reckon that I think this is just so, so true and so insightful. And I reckon that the time that Australians in particular realised this the most was during COVID when we got given a radius of what we could and couldn't do.

15:41 Yeah, remember the LGA?

15:42 Yeah.

15:43 Triggered.

15:44 We all had to learn our LGA.

15:45 The inequality between someone who lived in a place where within five kilometres they didn't have a park, they didn't have any grass, they didn't have any outdoor communal space and the difference between someone who had a beach on their doorstep was like night and day. Like they were just completely different.

16:01 You also learned... about who you knew, which of your loved ones lived in that LGA. So for example, one of my kids didn't, the other two were living at home. And on my birthday, it was that time where you could see people within your LGA, which was a five kilometre radius. And I had three friends who lived within that LGA and I'll never forget it because suddenly those people took on, you know, outsized importance.

16:29 So apparently one of the longest studies on happiness that was done by Harvard found that the happiness levels of the friends that are in close proximity to you has the greatest bearing on your own happiness.

16:42 Which brings me to Holly Wainwright. Regional and rural Australians will be listening to this out loud as who live in those areas and laughing and saying... Some people can travel 10 minutes and not even get off their own property in this big country of ours.

16:55 That's true. It is interesting because until five years ago when I moved, any decision I made about where I wanted to live, because I grew up in a city, right? Because this is really about urban living, to be honest, what he's saying. He's like, live in a community, live in a village, even within a city.

17:10 Right.

17:12 Was if I needed a tin of tomatoes, would I have to get in my car? That was my filter, right? So would I have to get in my car to go and get something that I needed quickly? And I never wanted to live anywhere like that.

17:24 Do you currently need to get in your car to get a tin of tomatoes?

17:26 Well, that's the thing, right? So I lived in cities my whole life. I wanted to be able to walk to coffee. I wanted to be able to walk to a drink. I wanted to be able to walk to a park or a public place where I could congregate with friends. And then five years ago, I moved. I'm not in the country country. People will laugh if I said that, but I live outside a city. And so I experienced what it is like to live somewhere, even though, to be fair, where I lived when I first moved is more like suburbic because this is also true in suburbia.

17:55 If you're in deep suburbia, you can't walk to a shop. You can't walk to a pub. You can't walk to a cafe. And I never wanted to. To me, I thought that was death, right? So my, like... snobby urban instinct because I because I grew up in a big city where I didn't never drove I didn't drive a car till I was 25 or something because buses and you know like I and that was just it my snobby sort of instinct about suburbia being death was wrong obviously it was wrong like but that's I think so much of this is kind of cultural it's about where you're from what where you grew up what that was like if you're what your norms are you know And where I moved to first was kind of like a sort of a new housing estate place where, no, there

18:39 were no shops or cafes or anything within a 10-minute, like 10-minute walk, 15-minute walk, yes, but, like, not, like, quick. Where I live now, which is in a small town, yes, very limited. Tin of tomatoes, yes. You'd be pushing it if you wanted taram or cilantro.

18:58 I was going to say. Or a certain type of pasta. Yes, exactly.

19:03 If I wanted orecchiette, I.

19:05 Would probably be pushing it.

19:07 There is coffee, but only until 2 p.m. and then you're dreaming. And there are two places one can get an alcoholic beverage at certain times. And we obviously have parks and green space, so you have all that. But it's funny because when I read this, I thought I get exactly what he's saying, that I lived, even though I lived in a big city in Sydney, I did live in a village. Like I didn't leave my neighborhood very often at all. And we all congregated in that neighborhood.

19:34 My dream was if I didn't have to move the car on the weekend, mostly because you'd never get a car spot again. And we lived in a tiny flat for years and years as a family because we were making that trade-off. and I thought like he argues that space in a house would make you more insular. But you know what's interesting about it? And I remember Mia and I used to talk about this. Having now moved to somewhere where I have more space but less.

19:59 And a garden, for example.

20:00 Yeah, less immediately around me. Things that I just thought were part of my personality. Like, I used to think, I don't really like being home. I'm not a homebody person. I'm not a domestic person. I certainly don't garden. I'm not interested in any of those things. I kind of thought that's who I was. But moved to another space, that's not who I am.

20:20 It's funny you say that because some of the other things he says is that moving won't make you a new person, but it changes what feels normal. So he says, you know, if you don't like the outdoors, moving somewhere where there's lots of outdoors won't make you like it more, but it will just start to feel more normal. So for example, he moved recently somewhere where he can walk five minutes to the beach. So suddenly that feels like a normal thing to do. Whereas when he was in the city, that wasn't even an option. You said the thing about friends, obviously living near your friends makes a big difference. And he says the best amenity is other people outside. Back to what you said about more space,

21:01 he says more space can mean a smaller life. And Australians are obsessed with, you know, that was one of the reasons you moved, right? Quarter acre block. And he said that, do you know Australians are rivals with US in terms of building the biggest houses?

21:23 Yeah.

21:24 Really? Yeah.

21:24 Definitely. I guess because there's a lot of space in this country, right?

21:27 And when you see new builds, they tend to use the whole block. Correct. They do too.

21:33 And he said exactly what you said, Holly, which is it makes you more insular. So we're already pretty insular because of our phones. And in some ways that can kid us into thinking we're experiencing the outside world and socializing when we're just sitting in one place scrolling. And the other thing is that you are more likely to stay at home and potter and do those kinds of things.

21:52 And he's not judging any of these things because maybe that suits you. Maybe you don't want to be surrounded by people all the time. But he's saying that it does impact your life.

22:03 It determines your habits. I've moved lots in the last probably five years. I've moved three times. And it determines, you know, when I had Luna, I had a library on my street. And every day I was at the library with her. I'm no longer walking distance to a library. And it brings me a lot of, like, I feel really sad that I haven't had that same experience with the twins. So I've been thinking, you know, as we look around it, places. And I suppose a lot of people actually have less of a choice about where they live now than they ever have because of the cost of property, cost of living means that a lot of people are just going, all right, I got to move to this suburb if I'm going to live.

22:44 High density housing.

22:45 Exactly. And This kind of explained to me my instinct when we go and look at a place in a suburb I'm not familiar with, which is, can we just drive around for five minutes and see what the local, like, how close is the park? And is there a hill to the park? And I suppose that as well, when you have a pram, like walking distance is kind of everything, but it does determine your quality of life.

23:08 It does.

23:08 And our cities aren't necessarily, well, Melbourne's probably better than Sydney, but like not necessarily known for having excellent public transport. Because that's another thing, right?

23:16 Is that.

23:17 If you can jump on a bus really easily, it's fine. But if everything requires you to drive, whether you've got little kids or not, that's a different thing. I think it is really interesting, that argument about more space making you more insular, because obviously it's a privilege to have more space. But then often you are trading off financially.

23:36 You're going... living in an area that might feel more vibrant, in inverted commas, but in a little place, or moving to a new suburb or a new development where houses are more affordable, but there's not so much around. And that argument I was saying before about like, oh, things I thought were just me, I don't know that I would say better or worse. I reckon when the kids were little living where we did, walking distance to everything, lots of congregating with our friends and their little kids in parks was probably invaluable. But now I don't want to be around lots of people. To your point before me, maybe I've changed. Maybe that's life stage and age. Or maybe it was discovering things about myself I didn't know.

24:14 And I don't know whether I'm just lazy that I don't want to walk the distance that it would take me to get to a coffee shop, a grocery store, a park, and I just like to drive everywhere, or whether it's because I'm in a, you know, I'm in suburbia where there's just nothing very close to me. It's funny, when I look after Luna, she wants to go everywhere walking.

24:37 Yeah.

24:38 And I'm more, even the park, and it's like, even the park we have to drive to.

24:43 After the break, Russell and Laura Brand and the art of posting through a court case. Britain is obsessed with two things at the moment, Celebrity Traders UK, which is fun, and something much less fun, which is the court case of Russell Brand. Comedian turned movie star turned guru turned MAGA traditional Christian influencer. That is a lot of turns.

25:06 It's a lot of hyphens.

25:06 We're going to get to all that in a minute.

25:09 A bit of.

25:09 Background because the charges that he is up on are very serious. He is currently appearing in a UK court accused of three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault, and one count of indecent assault. These alleged offenses span from 1999 to 2009, so they're historic. And he is pleading not guilty to all. Now, it is an open case.

25:30 We are not going to talk about those charges. That is not what we are here for. They're very serious and it's also been a long time coming. Like this, as in people have been talking about these allegations, the rumblings led to allegations, led to an investigation, led to criminal charges. That has been years and years in the making.

25:47 But adding to the fascination of this case, and it has fascinated everyone, in Britain at the minute there are lots of standalone podcasts about it. There's just wall-to-wall reporting. But there's one person who also is not following the traditional route of shushing during a court case and that's Russell Brand himself. He is posting through this. He, with his wife, Laura Brand, by his side, is posting videos almost daily about what it was like in court, about his persecution as he sees it by the media. And most of them are really strange. Have you seen them?

26:20 I'm happy to say this isn't part of my algorithm.

26:22 Yeah, lucky you.

26:23 I sat and watched them and it. Reads like satire.

26:27 Yeah, because there's like underneath.

26:29 It's outrageous.

26:30 There's kind of these AI, what's the word I'm looking for?

26:34 Recreations.

26:35 Recreations underneath their talking. They often depict like religious scenes. Here's a little bit of them talking about the media reaction to the case.

26:45 You could fall off track really easily. You could become wanting to just be absorbed in the excitement of whatever's going on around you, pretty vigilant about not engaging in the media around it. It's too evil, sorry to say, isn't it? Because you know that you hear the same things they hear, but you know that's not what they're reporting. So, for example, you could say that I didn't show up on a day which was written about.

27:09 We fight from victory, not for victory.

27:11 Everything the enemy does is ultimately, even including and perhaps especially personal suffering.

27:17 Yeah. In keeping with his perfect plan.

27:19 You could wear something or you could be not seen or seen. I'm talking on the very general stuff that everybody knows about how the media behave.

27:25 In the reporting, they reveal something.

27:28 Yeah, of course. They reveal a preference, prejudice, bias, a habit. Yeah.

27:33 I will also say that having watched an entire video, there was one point where Russell Brand corrects her on something that she'd said, but she was right and he was wrong. I could go back and tell. Oh, that's cooked. And then he will speak and she just stares at him and then she starts speaking and he is sitting there flicking through his Bible, like won't even give her the dignity of looking at her. It is unwatchable.

27:56 What's her story?

27:57 I don't know much about her.

27:59 Laura is his wife, obviously. They have been together for 10 years. And it's interesting because, although, as I said, we're not going to talk about the allegations of Russell Brandt, he denies them all, but he is absolutely on the record as saying that he was once what he would term a sex addict.

28:18 Formerly married to Katy Perry. Yes.

28:20 So he had, so.

28:21 That's a weird sort of part of pop culture that's compartmentalised in my brain.

28:25 As quickly as I can, the Russell Brand path. He, in the noughties in Britain, he was like an edgy, cool comedian, right? And then, and he was famous, like party boy is the euphemism, drug addict, right? Then he went through a recovery. He wrote a memoir that became massively successful and he kind of got into politics almost.

28:43 Then he had his Hollywood phase, forgetting Sarah Marshall.

28:46 Something about the Greek.

28:47 Yeah, he went and married Katy Perry. So that was like his L.A.

28:51 Moment.

28:52 Then he went back to Britain and reimagined himself as a guru. And around this time, he reconnected with his ex-girlfriend, Laura, who he'd first dated when she was 19. In the middle of that era. She worked in.

29:05 Let me guess, he's a lot older.

29:07 He's quite a lot older.

29:08 I'm so shocked, yep.

29:10 And they'd first dated then, and I've heard her talk about this on a podcast. It was all chaos and they were both in that nightlife scene in London and they broke up, but she always had this hint that maybe he was the love of her life. And then 10 years ago, she'd just broken up with another person. He'd got divorced from Katy Perry and they bumped into each other as if by accident and everything changed. She sat, the way she tells it, she says she sat down with him and she said, you know, I've been really unhappy.

29:35 I think what I just want to be is a wife and mum. And he was like, me too. I think it's time for a quiet.

29:40 Life.

29:40 I also think you should be a wife and mum.

29:43 He's on the record as saying he's never changed a nappy.

29:45 So they got together and this seems to have coincided with his reinvention as a kind of crunchy guru. They together... They've had three kids. They moved to the countryside. He obviously decided that was his 10-minute radius. They moved to the countryside and they started like putting on these big festivals of like family stuff. She's a children's book. One of the things she does is she writes children's books about like nature play. Very, very wholesome, like so wholesome.

30:15 Couldn't be further away from the first thing.

30:16 So before he became religious, my memory of it was that he was His entry point or his on-ramp to that was Manosphere slash MAGA.

30:27 Yes, well, MAGA and the religion seems to have coincided.

30:30 Okay.

30:31 But also what has coincided, and I don't want to be cynical, but these charges, as I say, have been a while coming.

30:37 That was end of 2023, that the allegations, and to be clear, not the allegations that are in court, they get made in 2023. In 2024, Bear Grylls baptises Russell Brand.

30:45 Ah.

30:50 And then they pack up and move to Florida.

30:53 Yes.

30:53 That's a crucial point and go full MAGA.

30:56 And the other thing.

30:57 I thought they were still in the UK. Oh, okay. That's MAGA heartland.

31:02 Interesting is that he's been with Laura Brandt for more than 10 years. Yep. But her appearance in his content appears to have really skyrocketed after late 2023 and She never appeared. She's on the record as saying, I don't want to be in the public eye. It's not really my thing.

31:20 Unless my man needs a bit of rehabilitation.

31:23 Yeah, and I think that's an important thing to say is that we don't want to be... Like, I think that the partners of, and this is such a euphemistic use of this word, problematic men, often cop a lot of shit that they shouldn't. But the reason why this is interesting is because Laura is front and centre in the court.

31:45 And that's relatively new.

31:47 She's appearing in most of his videos. And the thing is about this is even though we're like, you know, this is a bit batshit.

31:55 He has a huge following.

31:57 He has 5 million on Instagram, 10 million on X.

32:00 But why does that surprise you?

32:02 Well, it doesn't surprise me.

32:03 But what it tells me is that Russell Brand is one of those guys, and I think we talked about this at the time when the first allegations came out and he was like, I'm leaving mainstream media. Because he once upon a time, he was a guy you'd see on the BBC. He's a guy you'd see on all the.

32:18 Panel shows there. Interviewed by magazines.

32:19 Like very mainstream. Suddenly he was turning his back on mainstream media and going it alone to build this empire. And his content now is very conservative, very religious, very maga, maga, maga. And it's obviously really working for him. So he goes where the money is, clearly.

32:37 Well, the two, as you say, it's not a coincidence. And that's why in defense of mainstream media, it's... When you go do what he's doing, you throw your hat in with the algorithm and you work the algorithm. So the reason that he has 5 million, 10 million is because it's not a how come. It's like that's the reason.

32:59 It's because his views are more extreme. Reasonable people don't have 5 and 10 million views. us, for example. We've got, I don't know, a few thousand subscribers on YouTube. We're fairly big, but we're not Joe Rogan and we're not millions and millions of followers because we are not extreme. So it becomes this reinforcement loop of the more extreme he is, the more people he reaches, the more people become radicalized by the crap that he's saying, and those people get fed more of that content.

33:30 There's no way that he can keep posting like this through a trial.

33:35 Yeah, what do you think about that?

33:36 Well, if we're not allowed to talk about it.

33:38 The judge, a contempt of court. It is his, to be clear, he is sitting there. Firstly, him and Laura are in dressing gowns, which when you're talking about, you're on trial for rape. And him sitting there, like he's literally in court all week in a dressing gown, making jokes about what he was wearing, saying to Laura, you've looked absolutely beautiful and spectacular. Talking about their outfits that they've worn to court, making their court appearance into content.

34:05 There's speculation that he will be told that he has to stop posting for legal reasons because he's undermining the entire system and it is So most of all, I was trying to work out what offended me the most about this. It is so disrespectful to the alleged victims that are going to court recounting their version of what happened.

34:24 That's a court's going to decide his guilt or innocence. But to then go home and make a mockery of the whole system.

34:31 With your AI cartoons.

34:32 With your AI cartoons and your wife and have a little giggle is so disrespectful.

34:37 The religious part of it is very interesting because not in any way to disrespect, you know, Christianity, but it's become very much part of his thing. So on his YouTube channel and stuff, the pull quote, whatever you want to call it, is, if one as sick, wretched and broken as I can be rescued by him, I know you can be too. So his whole thing is, yeah, I was a bad person. I wasn't a criminal because he's denying the charges, but I was a bad person who did bad things and took drugs and had sex outside of, you know, serious relationships and all those things.

35:10 But now I am a different person and now I live by the Lord. And now me and Laura are posting about this relentlessly. It's Kind of a defense.

35:22 Members of my family are deeply, deeply religious and are so offended by this because he is, even on his highlights, it's a picture of Russell Brand, probably AI generated, with a halo around his head.

35:33 Oh my God.

35:33 He's picturing himself as the Messiah, which is like the number one tenant of Christianity.

35:38 He's always come across like that.

35:41 It's so true, Mia. The Messiah complex is literal with him. Even when he was just like, we're a crunchy hippies living in a teepee. He had his topknot and his robes and his beads, and he has always spoken, because he's a very good speaker, which is part of his appeal. He's always spoken in a way that he's delivering literal sermons. Anyway, it's very interesting, and it will be very interesting to see what happens next. One more thing. I can't go without talking about Harry's interview with GQ. I have missed this completely. I'm going to play you a little bit of it because most interesting to me. So he's done a sit down with GQ. Most of it is on socials like Clip Top. It's an interview with Zach Barron,

36:21 who has been getting some good interviews lately.

36:23 He did Tom Cruise.

36:24 Most interesting to me is that this is the first time I've ever heard him explicitly say that he wants to reconcile with his brother and his dad. He is being a relatable king, and as we know, freelance royal, and he was asked explicitly.

36:37 Relatable prince.

36:38 About the family drama. This is what he said.

36:42 You have talked about, at times, having a complicated relationship with your brother, your father.

36:48 Is that something that you grieve?

36:52 Uh....

36:54 Yes, of course.

36:55 I think from a family perspective, again, another massively relatable issue for so many people. There's sibling disagreements. There's broken relationships between kids and their parents, kids and one parent. That continues to come up with me the whole time by people that I speak to. So I know how relatable it is. That's probably why there's so much fascination in the Everybody's family. Everyone's family. And then people maybe look at us and go, how are you going to work it out? And then maybe how I see you're going to work it out. Maybe that will help me work my stuff out. And some people don't want it.

37:33 How are you going to work it out?

37:34 Well, some people don't want it to work out. I want it to work out.

37:36 You do?

37:37 Of course I do.

37:38 Yeah. There's no, again, with everything else that's going on in the world, the most important thing is to, you know, is to reconcile.

37:45 Oh. Why can't we all just get along?

37:50 Some people don't want it to work out. I wonder who those some people are.

37:53 I do, though. I really want it to work out.

37:56 I wonder, when I heard that, because you know I love to give my Harry the benefit of the doubt.

38:00 Oh, I loved it. I wonder if.

38:02 He's saying some people, as in when he's talking about general estrangement as a thing, as a phenomenon that we know is occurring in families all the time. He's clearly saying... I'm trying to extend an olive branch and he's talking about William. There's an element of that. But I also think he's trying to say that there are some of us who want to reconcile and some of us who don't.

38:19 So I don't think it's just a jab at William.

38:21 I think it's also a jab at the men in grey coats, as Diana and he called them, that there are people who it's not, you know, he might be talking about Camilla. Who knows who he's talking about? I mean, clearly the only person who really wants to reconcile is Charles, it would seem. Yes.

38:36 And Harry, obviously.

38:37 But it's, well, does he though? Yeah. Because they keep leaking to the media. They keep briefing. I mean, I'm quite loving the whole situation in terms of them just being chaos agents.

38:48 Yeah, I love it. I mean, I think this interview gave me, it's the first time he's really spoken explicitly about moving back. The interview was done in September and it's specifically to promote the grief masterclass that we spoke about last week. And he says, I wanted to be close to family. He says it several times. I think he is putting on the record, I want to be back in. They don't want me back in. That's what I think. I don't.

39:13 I think he's putting it on the record. It's part of everything he's doing is counter to what he's saying. So he says he wants reconciliation, but then he's doing everything that completely undermines that.

39:29 No, it's the radius theory.

39:31 I feel like I'm being gaslit.

39:32 He read about the radius theory and he went, maybe if I just live within 10 minutes of my brother, William, then maybe we will reconcile. So he's just edging closer and closer until he's just in his spare bedroom being like, William, do you want to have sleepovers again?

39:44 When are we doing our predictions edition for 2027?

39:46 I reckon 2027.

39:48 He's back in.

39:49 I agree.

39:49 I agree. They've reconciled. It is going to be so lovely.

39:53 Oh, I don't think so.

39:56 Please put this in a vault so that we can replay.

39:58 It in six months. I want to manifest it. I'm going to put pictures of like the happy family Christmas card for 2027.

40:04 I want dignity for William and Kate.

40:08 That's all we have time for today, as I always say, even though in theory we could go on and on and on. We'll be back in the news tomorrow.

40:16 Bye.

40:17 Bye.

40:18 Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast.