Paramount+ has removed Russell Brand’s 2009 comedy show “Live in New York City” – following in the footsteps of YouTube and the BBC in cutting ties.
Brand, 48, was accused over the weekend by four women of rape and sexual assault, as well as extreme emotional abuse and manipulation.
He denies the allegations, insisting all of his relationships were consensual and claiming he is the victim of a “mainstream media conspiracy” to derail his YouTube career as a wellness guru. On Tuesday, however, Paramount+ pulled the plug on the show.
The broadcast was deleted and an error message in its place
Russell Brand’s 2009 comedy special was available on Paramount+ until Tuesday morning
YouTube, the video streaming service owned by Google, announced that it has suspended “monetization” – or advertisements – on the brand’s videos for “violating our creator responsibility policy”.
His most recent stand-up special, “Russell Brand Re:Birth,” remains available on Netflix. Netflix has not commented.
Paramount+’s decision came after YouTube suspended lucrative ads on its channel. He was dumped by his publisher and book agent and shunned by charities.
Tour dates for his one-man show have been scrapped, he faces a police investigation and a Charity Commission investigation.
Its catalog of comedy shows was scrubbed from Channel 4’s streaming service and iPlayer after BBC director-general Tim Davie called them “completely unacceptable”, with the BBC saying material from its former star “falls short of public expectations.”
Davie has promised a full review of Brand’s time with the company from 2006 to 2008, including the presenter’s alleged use of a BBC driver to pick up a 16-year-old schoolgirl from lessons for purposes sexual.
Brand is seen leaving a concert in London on Saturday – the last time he was seen in public
The BBC, where Brand was a presenter on Radio 2 and a guest on other channels, said the “limited content featuring Russell Brand on iPlayer and BBC Sounds” had been removed “after assessing that it was now inferior to public expectations.
Channel 4, where Brand made his name shine in mainstream media by presenting a Big Brother spin-off show in the 2000s, also erased his shows, including an episode of Celebrity Bake Off, from its streaming service “during that we are looking into this matter.”
Brand’s book publisher, Bluebird, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, has “suspended all future publication” with him, while Comic Relief, where he has appeared on BBC telethons, said “he would not appropriate for us to work with Russell Brand.”
The Charity Commission is examining Brand’s role at his addiction foundation, the Stay Free Foundation, following the revelations.
Brand denies any criminal wrongdoing. More and more women are now accusing Brand of sexual misconduct.
Among the latest accusations, a woman claimed Brand taunted her about her appearance and sang about Soham killer Ian Huntley during sex.
“Lisa” told the Times of London that she had been invited to the actor’s house in 2008, when she was in her twenties, with one of her friends for a threesome, and because the real names of the two women vaguely resembled ‘Holly and Jessica’,
Brand began making nasty jokes about the ten-year-old girls murdered by Huntley in 2002.
Esme, another woman who spoke to the Times, said she told the comedian “no” when he asked her for a ride back to his house about 15 years ago, and was shocked when his driver took them there anyway.
YouTube suspended lucrative ads on his channel, he was dumped by his publisher and book agent and shunned by charities. Pictured: on Comic Relief in 2017
Considered one of his main sources of income, he has 6.6 million subscribers to his YouTube channel, earning around £1 million a year from adverts shown every time someone watch one of his videos.
Considered one of his main sources of income, he has 6.6 million subscribers to his YouTube channel, which allows him to earn around $1.2 million per year from the advertisements shown every time someone one watches one of his videos.
Sara McCorquodale of social media analytics agency CORQ estimates that “he probably makes between $2,400 and $4,400 per video,” and he films up to five each week. He may still make money through merchandising and sponsorships.
And he’s likely to continue earning fees through Rumble, a more right-wing version of YouTube, where his almost daily posts have the potential to earn up to $99,000 each.
But since the weekend when he was accused of rape and a series of sexual assaults as part of a Sunday Times and Channel 4 Dispatches investigation, followed by a 2003 allegation that was the subject of A Metropolitan Police investigation yesterday found his profile in free fall.
The 48-year-old comedian and ‘wellness’ guru categorically denies all of these claims and calls them a wild conspiracy by the ‘mainstream media’, claiming that all of his relationships during his ‘promiscuous period’ were fully consensual.