I once spent a sweaty evening in a yoga studio with Russell Brand.  Since I signed an NDA, the most I can say is that he opened up at least two of my chakras.  But I hasten to add that it was all consensual – which is different from what four women are saying happened between 2006-2013.  They have come forward as part of the UK’s Channel 4 show Dispatches (part of a joint investigation with The Sunday Times and The Times).  The accusers are not pressing legal charges…yet.  The first one claims Brand raped her against the wall of a building.  She went to a rape crisis center and sent Brand a text message saying, “When a girl say NO it means no.”  His response?  “very sorry.”  A second gal claims she was emotionally and sexually assaulted during their three-month relationship – and adds that Russell once “forced his penis down her throat”.  A third says Brand sexually assaulted her when they were working together, and he threatened her with legal action.  The fourth woman doesn’t go into specific details.  Media sources have unearthed interviews from other women about Russell – such as Katy Perry calling him “very controlling” and Dannii Minogue saying, “He is completely crazy and a bit of a vile predator”.

Brand then went public with a statement of his own.  “These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies, and as I’ve written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous.  Now during that time of promiscuity, the relationships I had were absolutely always consensual.  I was always transparent about that then – almost too transparent – and I’m being transparent about it now as well.”  Intriguingly, while the show was airing on Channel 4, Brand was performing to a sold-out audience in London.  The next day, networks scrubbed all footage of Russell off their servers, and YouTube (where Russell makes roughly a million dollars a year) stopped monetizing his videos.  It isn’t all bad news – Channel 4 got a flurry of complaints from viewers who felt the show was “unfair”.  Stay tuned.