The BBC led with the Russell Brand story on their main news bulletin just now.

Also the Foreign Secretary is weighing in for some reason:

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/sep/17/russell-brand-entertainment-industry-has-question-to-answer-says-james-cleverly

The foreign secretary has said the entertainment industry has questions to answer, after revelations that the comedian Russell Brand has been accused of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse.

James Cleverly became the most senior British politician to talk about the issue after the allegations about Brand’s behaviour were published by the Sunday Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches on Saturday night. Brand has strongly denied the allegations.

Several sources told the Sunday Times that the BBC had failed to act despite multiple complaints about Brand’s behaviour, including one incident in which he is alleged to have urinated into a bottle in a Radio 2 Studio.

String him up!

The two rape accusations are serious but they are at the moment just that; accusations, a long time after the fact. The more the media repeat any negative thing they can about him in great detail while providing a lot less detail about the actual alleged crimes, the less well it sits with me.

Judging from Twitter the usual response to "Why not report this at the time?" is to repeat the statistics for rape convictions as if to suggest the low rate of progression and conviction means there is no point going to the police and therefore anonymous/anonymised accusations via the media is an acceptable route. First talking about the event ten years later is certainly not a way to improve the chances of any criminal process.

The more they pile on with old incidents of bad, but not illegal, behaviour and nonsense like pissing in a bottle, the more it does feel like a coordinated attack rather than an attempt at a reckoning for lots of past crimes.