Lucy Beaumont claims there are 10 male predators in the comedy circuit

19 September 2023 , 06:49

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Lucy Beaumont hit out at predators in the comedy industry weeks before allegations against Russell Brand were made public (Image: © Ashley Maile)

A female comedian hit out at male predators within her industry weeks before allegations against Russell Brand were publicised by Channel 4's Dispatches and The Times and The Sunday Times. Brand, 48, was accused of raping and sexually abusing women on Saturday (September 16), something he later strenuously denied in a lengthy statement on his YouTube channel.

Speaking on The Comedian's Comedian Podcast with Stuart Goldsmith in July, writer and comic Lucy Beaumont slammed predatory men when asked by host Goldsmith what has "held her back" on the comedy circuit. The 40-year old said names would be out there "soon".

"Predatory male behaviour," she began. "I've had quite a few incidences where if you're in any other workforce you would go to HR [Human Resources], but there isn't one. I think it's just everywhere and it's not talked about enough. It upsets me when I hear about young female comics having the same experiences. I thought for a while it was the same five or six people - and now it's not - I could name you 10 or 15 because of course people talk."

In July comedian Lucy Beaumont said the names of accused predators within the industry would "soon" be publicised (Channel 4)

Lucy, who is married to fellow comedian Jon Richardson, continued: "Comedy has the biggest gossips ever so everybody knows - or if you don't know the ones I know yet then you will do soon. It [comedy] attracts such interesting, passionate, raw, edgy, wounded people - but it also attracts predatory men who are really messed up and sexually have been repressed for years. And they get a bit of fame and display these behaviours.

"It just gets covered up. Their agents know and the channels know and nobody seems to be doing anything about it. There's been times when I've just wanted to go on Twitter and just let people know everyone that we talk about, but not allowed to say."

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The pair went on to discuss the legal implications of naming and shaming offenders on social media with Goldsmith explaining why its not a case of simply putting names out there in the public domain. "You're sort of legally prevented, you're legally responsible and you can be done for slander if something isn't proven," he said.

Lucy concurred: "There's been times that I've just wanted to go on Twitter and let people know about everyone we talk about that we're not allowed to say. There's this guy, this guy, this guy and this guy that your young girls are not safe around these men. And they're patrons of charities, and they're paid the biggest sums of money and you can't trust them. It needs ridding. How long are we going to in private say 'Did you hear about so and so that's doing that again?'. We know who they are - they're not that good anyway."

Concluding, she affirmed: "I don't want this to be a problem for anyone else. I want this stopping."

In a statement on Friday, meanwhile, Russell said: "Now, this isn't the usual type of video we make on this channel where we critique, attack and undermine the news in all its corruption because in this story, I am the news. I've received two extremely disturbing letters or a letter and an email.

"One from a mainstream media TV company, one from a newspaper listing a litany of extremely egregious and aggressive attacks, as well as some pretty stupid stuff like community festival should be stopped, that I shouldn't be able to attack mainstream media narratives on this channel. But amidst this litany of astonishing rather baroque attacks, often very serious allegations that I absolutely refute.

"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. And to see that transparency metastasized into something criminal that I absolutely deny makes me question, is there another agenda at play? Particularly when we've seen coordinated media attacks before, like with Joe Rogan, when he dared to take a medicine that the mainstream media didn't approve of, and we saw a spate of headlines from media outlets across the world using the same language."

*If you've been the victim of sexual assault, you can access help and resources via www.rapecrisis.org.uk or calling the national telephone helpline on 0808 802 9999.

Alan Johnson