Russell Brand’s money-spinning empire crumbles as YouTube suspends lucrative adverts and he is dumped by his book publisher and agent

Russell Brand’s financial empire was rapidly collapsing yesterday as the number of women filing abuse claims reached nine.

YouTube suspended lucrative ads on his 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.”

Mr 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 at sexual purposes.

Yesterday, YouTube, the Google-owned video streaming service, announced that it had suspended “monetization” – or ads – on the brand’s videos for “violating our Creator Responsibility Policy.”

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.

Sara McCorquodale, of social media analytics agency CORQ, estimates that “he probably makes between £2,000 and £4,000 per video”, and he films up to five each week. He may still make money through merchandising and sponsorships.

And he is likely to continue to earn fees through Rumble, a more right-wing version of YouTube, where his almost daily posts have the potential to earn up to £80,000 each.

Brand’s vapid humor was once hailed as edgy among his faithful, while his “youth” appeal and political ramblings saw him feted by the likes of former Labor leader Ed Miliband.

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.

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 that she was 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 vile 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.

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.