How Russell Brand’s Father Influenced His Son’s Preoccupation With Sex

He was the womanising, deal-making ‘Del Boy’ who arranged for a prostitute to take his teenage son’s virginity during a disreputable trip to the Far East.

This week, Ronald Brand provoked outrage outside court after telling reporters that his son Russell — convicted of serious sexual offences — was the true ‘victim’, rather than the women he had abused.

Soon after Brand was sentenced to ten and a half years in prison for raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others, the 82-year-old claimed that his son’s accusers had ‘chased’ and ‘harassed’ the former comedian.

The extraordinary comments were consistent with the unconventional upbringing Brand, now 51 and behind bars, experienced — a childhood that might have supplied Sigmund Freud with material for an entire career.

In his two bestselling autobiographies, Russell wrote at length about Ron, a flamboyant Romford market trader and self-confessed womaniser. He portrayed his father as an ‘Essex Cavalier’, a man for whom ‘every week [brought] a different woman and a new scheme for riches’.

As a boy, Russell appeared eager to follow his father’s example, chasing sex and money while longing for the approval Ron offered only sporadically.

Ron, who was raised on a council estate in Dagenham, had experienced hardship of his own, losing his father when he was only seven. 

He married Russell’s mother, Barbara, in 1969, but the relationship ended when their son was just six months old. Barbara became a devoted single parent, while Ron remained an inconsistent presence, appearing for what Russell described in his typically elaborate style as ‘cyclonic visits’.

As a child, Russell was determined to mirror his father Ron’s pursuit of wealth, women and excitement

Brand attended the 2011 Academy Awards in Los Angeles alongside his mother Barbara

One of the opening stories in Brand’s 2007 memoir, My Booky Wook, describes Ron’s habit of arriving late for weekend contact. ‘A huge argument would ensue, which would generally end with both my mother and myself in tears,’ he recalled.

During visits to his father’s bachelor flat in Brentwood, Russell said he was left watching television while Ron read newspapers or pursued women in another room.

‘I would mainly watch comedy videos, Elvis films and porn,’ he wrote. Brand claimed that by the age of four he had become ‘a weary connoisseur’ of the pornography kept by his father.

‘I think I always had a premature awareness of sexuality, but Ron Brand’s penchant for leaving me to occupy my infant mind with his cache of girlie magazines certainly did nothing to stem the erotic tide,’ he wrote.

‘I adored the cartoons in Playboy. Either they’d be one page, or sometimes a story drifting toward a climax where someone got their boobs out. There was something quite eerie and perverted about them. I suppose because they were cartoons and porn at the same time, and these are not two things you expect to see together.’

Even a family break at a Pontins holiday camp became the setting for one of Ron’s affairs.

Brand recalled a young girl approaching him during the trip and announcing: ‘Your dad’s in bed with my mum – do you want to come and have a look?’

He followed her to the chalet and found Ron lying on the bed as the girl’s mother came out of the bathroom naked. The young Russell appeared unfazed, asking his father for 50p to spend in the amusement arcade.

In a 2002 interview, Brand and his father discussed visiting ‘prostitutes in Hong Kong’ when Brand was 17

Ron tried his hand at several businesses, including wedding photography, double glazing and water filters. His Only Fools-style wheeling and dealing briefly earned enough to send his son to the private Gidea Park primary school, although the arrangement quickly ended.

‘It only took my dad a term to squander his nouveaux riches [sic],’ Brand wrote. ‘So he didn’t pay the school fees, and so I had to leave and go back to the normal state primary school I’d been at 12 weeks previously.’

Russell remembered his father as a man almost permanently concealed behind a newspaper. Even so, the boy continued to seek his approval.

That may help explain why, after Ron’s third marriage broke down and he needed someone to accompany him on holiday, the teenage Russell eagerly agreed to travel through Asia with him.

At 17 and still a virgin, Brand was taken to a room at Hong Kong’s Mandarin Palace, where his father had hired three local sex workers and ordered champagne.

Brand later wrote that the experience ‘defined my relations with women – and myself’.

‘My dad set about unwrapping his two prostitutes, like pass-the-parcel where the music never stopped, and I sat nervously on the edge of the bed with Mary-Lou, kissing her and thinking she was beautiful and falling in love,’ Brand wrote.

‘She was a good prostitute, Mary-Lou, she played her part very well. She didn’t make me feel embarrassed, and was incredibly romantic really, given the context.

‘I stroked Mary-Lou’s hair and kissed her cheek and traced my finger down her perfect nose, scored by the cacophony from the adjacent bedlam, “Yeah, come on!” and “Phwooar, you’re juicy!”’

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The following morning, Ron returned to his customary place behind a newspaper. He briefly lowered it to ask whether his son had used a condom.

When Russell said he had not, Ron simply told him that he should have done so, then vanished behind the newspaper again.

Ron reportedly summed up the trip by telling his son: ‘I went away with a boy and came back with a man.’

Brand later said the experience had shifted his sexuality from ‘bewildered innocence’ to something ‘more complex and rapacious’.

As Russell’s entertainment career gathered pace, however, his relationship with Ron became increasingly strained.

In 2002, while presenting RE:Brand on UK Play, Russell arranged to face his father in a boxing ring.

The deliberately provocative programme featured Brand, who was still addicted to heroin, telling Ron: ‘I don’t think you’ve ever really given a f*** about me.’

Reflecting on the bout, Brand said: ‘The first couple of rounds were a bit tentative, then I started to really go for it and hit my dad quite hard, and he fell to his knees; the programme just ends with us talking.

‘Afterward, I just said: “Shall we go down the pub and chat up some birds? Do something we’re both good at.” And that’s exactly what we did.’

The temporary peace did not endure. In 2008, Russell told GQ magazine that he and his father had stopped speaking.

During that interview, Brand considered the principles Ron had instilled in him.

In hindsight, one piece of advice sounded especially troubling: ‘If you want something, you can have it. In life, just don’t take no for an answer.’

Russell Brand married pop star Katy Perry in 2010, but his father was not invited to the ceremony

Ron arrives at Southwark Crown Court for his son’s sentencing on November 9

The distance between father and son was clear in 2010, when Ron was excluded from Russell’s lavish wedding to American singer Katy Perry.

In his second autobiography, Booky Wook 2: This Time It’s Personal, published that same year, Brand praised Barbara extensively while making only passing references to his father.

He wrote: ‘I was ever a devotee to Philip Larkin’s sulky ode This Be The Verse, which begins with the lines: “They f*** you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.”

‘Now, though, as a man I see that my more admirable traits, my compassion, gentility and warmth, are all my mother’s inculcations.’

Ron later faced bankruptcy after building up £13,000 in unpaid rent on his north London flat. Even then, in 2012, he declined to seek financial help from his wealthy son and told a court he would settle the debt himself.

The pair eventually began to repair their relationship, with Ron becoming a vocal supporter as allegations against the comedian mounted.

After a newspaper investigation carried out with Channel 4’s Dispatches detailed multiple allegations of sexual misconduct in 2023, Ron used social media to describe the coverage as a ‘vendetta’.

Writing on Facebook, Ron asked: ‘Is this seriously the most important thing happening in this world? Immigrants? Cost of living? Tens of thousands killed in Ukraine?’

He continued: ‘Who is prioritising at BBC News [sic]. Who is really driving this vendetta? With many struggling to pay bills. The unproven accusations of 15 years ago [the] lead on BBC News?’

As more allegations surfaced, Ron appeared unwilling to accept that his son could be guilty.

When a jury at Southwark Crown Court convicted Russell last Thursday following eight hours of deliberation, his father reportedly reacted with disbelief.

Ron said he did not care that his son had been found guilty and suggested it was ‘possible’ the jury had been corrupted.

About 24 hours after those comments were widely reported, Brand Snr appeared to reconsider his decision to speak publicly.

When approached by the Daily Mail last night, he declined to open the door.