Callum Watkinson: Russell Brand Verdict
What’s next for Russell Brand now that a jury has found him guilty?
I sat down with Callum Watkinson of HUNT & GATHER TV on the day the jury came back.
On Thursday, November 5, 2026, at Southwark Crown Court, Russell Brand was convicted of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault. The jury cleared him on two rape counts and one count of attempted indecent assault — seven charges in all, involving six women who have lifelong anonymity under UK law. The Crown Prosecution Service says the offences for the guilty counts date from around 2004 to 2009 and involved four women. Brand was remanded in custody. Mr Justice Bennathan said a significant custodial sentence will follow. Sentencing is Monday, November 9, 2026. After the verdict it can also be reported that Brand is under investigation over further rape complaints from two more women.
Callum — a former ITV News field producer and reporter, and the author of The Framing of Rusty Rockets — came on to walk through what the jury did, what the CPS framed, and what he still wants answered about how this case reached police. You can watch the full interview here. Four days before the verdict he published that piece on the Hunt&GatherTV Substack; it was pre-verdict. Our conversation is not a re-litigation of the complainants. It is a process argument — Callum’s — sitting beside a jury sheet that is now final until any appeal.
The jury sheet
“Anyone guilty of rape should be punished for that,” I said on air. “And we’re not here to discredit the victims. I’m not. But the timing of it globally and everything else is curious.”
Callum agreed on the first half and pressed harder on the second. The CPS has described Brand as predatory and said he used his celebrity status — that is the prosecution’s framing. The jury bought four counts and rejected three. Callum’s take on that split is that the media branded Brand as a Savile-like “sex monster,” but “even the story that the jury has told today doesn’t say that.” “They’re fishing in a very, very big pond,” he said. “They came up with three alleged rapes, and two of them didn’t convince the jurors.”
Court jester, then turncoat
Callum’s article — and our open — starts with selective justice. If you were a victim of a grooming gang in places like Rotherham, he argues, some women are still waiting. When the defendant is “Rusty Rockets,” he says, the machinery moves faster. That is Callum’s framing of how Britain applies rape law, not a claim that the Brand complainants invented anything.
He argues Brand was once inside the tent: the establishment court jester. Channel 4, Radio 2, Endemol-era television, Murdoch papers, politicians. “Shagger of the Year” was a tabloid accolade — Callum notes Murdoch’s papers once cheered that brand, and The Times later chased the assault story hard. Then came recovery, a Christian turn, and pandemic-era dissent. YouTube exploded. Callum says Brand went from “inside the tent pissing out” to “outside the tent pissing in,” eating into the old revenue model while calling the regime a liar.
To show what the celebrated persona looked like before that turn, I played an old View appearance — roughly fifteen years ago, not a verdict-day reaction. Tight-trousers jokes. Socialist banter. Joy and the panel treating “Shagger of the Year” as comedy. The panel swooning. “He was definitely celebrated for this persona,” I said. “Once he changed his tone and started to espouse the COVID agenda, and what he perceived it to be, suddenly, he’s not so cool.” Callum: “He’d have been seen as a traitor.”
First account — Callum’s process question
Here is the heart of Callum’s article, kept separate from what the jury found. UK police guidance on Achieving Best Evidence (ABE) stresses keeping the evidentiary chain as contamination-proof as possible in sexual-offence cases — including who a complainant speaks to first. Callum’s argument: the first account should go to police; journalists approaching women first risks contaminating memory.
He says The Times / Dispatches sought women out; the Channel 4 end card pushed stories toward journalists ahead of the Met; and all six prosecution complainants came forward after the 2023 broadcast. Official language, he says, carefully uses words like “followed” and avoids stating the route — journalists first, or police first. “I’ve asked the CPS,” Callum said. “I’ve written to the press office… they haven’t replied to me.” If the sequence was journalists then police, he argues, “it would raise questions about the safety of the convictions.” That is Callum’s unanswered process question. The jury still convicted on four counts. We are stating both facts without collapsing them into each other.
Megyn Kelly, the defense close, and redemption
On air we also played Megyn Kelly reading Brand’s defense closing — Ian Winter KC’s points as Megyn summarized them: complainants did not resist, scream, or leave; the defense used Brand’s promiscuity numbers; “disgusting, distasteful, immoral” conduct can still be lawful if consensual; manipulative pursuit of consensual sex is still lawful; a book passage about acting gay to put women at ease.
Separately — not that same segment — Brand had earlier told Megyn about a legal-but-gross relationship with a 16-year-old when he was about 30. UK consent age is 16. Callum and I both called that gross. Callum then asked the redemption question: can someone change, and still be strung up decades later for the old life? “That’s a whole component of Christian faith,” I said — redemption, the prodigal son. “He did appear to have changed his ways in the last decade. Only he and God know if his heart is truly in the right place.”
Callum’s record-curation point from the article lands here too. There are competing true biographies — reckless philanderer versus recovery / dissident journalist — and a conviction fight is also a fight over which record history amplifies. He calls that curation fight a kind of digital book-burning of the second story: his metaphor for what gets erased, not a denial of the jury sheet.
Monday
Brand is remanded. Sentencing is Monday. Friends in the press float huge numbers; Callum said he’d be surprised by twenty years and walked through UK starting-point / aggravating-mitigating mechanics without locking a figure. “Whatever path Russell takes, I hope that he can do good works,” I said. Callum closed the same way he opened the selective-justice theme: if Britain is suddenly serious about rape prosecutions, “let’s hope that the alacrity is pursued in places like Rotherham.”
Read Callum’s pre-verdict piece: The Framing of Rusty Rockets. Find HUNT & GATHER TV on Substack or X at huntandgathertv. Watch the Broken Truth conversation on YouTube. We’ll know more Monday.
Thanks for reading!
John Davidson
MagicFeathers.org
Also on BrokenTruth.TV, where you can watch and subscribe by email.
TopicsCourts & LawsuitsFreedom Counsel
