Russell Brand Trial: 'Maniacal Grin' Claim as Jurors Hear Third Accuser's 2004 Soho Account

There is a particular silence that falls over a courtroom when a jury hears a complainant's own voice played back at them. On Monday at Southwark Crown Court, jurors heard the third of six women accusing Russell Brand of sexual offences describe what she says happened within a minute of meeting him at a birthday party in Soho in 2004.

Her words, recorded in a police interview in 2023, were blunt. “He literally just grabbed my boobs, out of nowhere, just in the middle of a conversation and I just remember this weird maniacal grin, looming in front of me as he just grabbed my boobs,” she said, according to reports of the hearing. Brand, 51, denies all the charges against him and says the encounters were consensual.

What the jury heard on Monday

The woman, who was in her twenties at the time and working for MTV, told police she had been excited to meet Brand at the party, held at the Nordic Bar in Soho. Brand's fame was rising then — he was presenting Big Brother spin-off shows on Channel 4, and she had watched him on television and thought he was funny. She said she asked a friend to introduce them.

Then, she said, everything happened with sickening speed. “I was completely in shock and was like ‘what the hell are you doing? I've literally just met you',” she told police. “Then literally he grabbed my arm and dragged me into the toilets.” She described him as looking “like a clown” with a strange look in his eye.

According to the account played to the jury, Brand then jumped onto the closed lid of a toilet and forced her to perform oral sex on him, saying “You want to do this” and “Come on, come on, don't be a spoilsport” while, she said, holding her forcibly by her head and hair. “It happened so fast,” she said. “I just froze. I didn't know what to do.” She added that while his words were not threatening, the force of the encounter and the look in his eye had frightened her.

“I was not charmed in the slightest”

The defence challenged her account head-on. According to courtroom reports, Brand's barrister, Ian Winter KC, suggested to her that she had happily accompanied the comedian to the toilets and had been excited and charmed at meeting a rising celebrity.

Her answer was unflinching: “I was not charmed in the slightest. I'd met this person for a minute before I was sexually assaulted.”

She also told police about what happened later that night. As the party moved on to a nightclub, she said she found herself in a car with Brand, who again exposed himself and demanded oral sex — but this time, she said, he accepted it when she refused. Reuters, reporting from the court, noted that Brand told police after his arrest that he had never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity and that the accusers might have “re-imagined” events.

That exchange — the defence's suggestion of a willing encounter versus a woman saying she froze within sixty seconds of shaking a famous man's hand — is now at the heart of how this jury will decide the case.

The charges Brand denies

Brand is on trial accused of three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one allegation of indecent assault against six women, covering alleged incidents between 1999 and 2009. He has pleaded not guilty to all seven charges.

When the prosecution opened the case, jurors were told Brand was “obsessed” with sex and treated women as a “means to an end”, with prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones KC describing him as a “ruthless, calculated and manipulative” predator — characterisations Brand's lawyers will contest as the defence case unfolds.

It is worth saying plainly: nothing has been decided. Brand is presumed innocent, the trial is expected to run for several more weeks, and the jury has so far heard only the prosecution's presentation of the evidence. What Monday's hearing showed, though, is how this trial will be won or lost — not in grand rhetoric, but in the credibility contest between a recorded police interview and a defence barrister asking a woman why she did not behave the way he thinks an assault victim should.

Video: ITV News — “What happened on the first day of Russell Brand's rape trial?” (prosecution opening, Southwark Crown Court).

Video: BBC News Entertainment — day five of the trial, reported by Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty.

Photo: Russell Brand performing on stage in 2008. appolinar, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sources

• AAP News — Brand had 'maniacal grin' during alleged sexual assault (19 Oct 2026)
• PA via Clacton and Frinton Gazette — Russell Brand 'had maniacal grin during Soho bar sexual assault' (19 Oct 2026)
• Reuters — Woman tells UK court that comedian Russell Brand raped her (19 Oct 2026)
• Devdiscourse / Reuters syndication — Woman tells UK court that comedian Russell Brand raped her (19 Oct 2026)