Having to watch the gruesomely joyous capering over the downfall of Russell Brand has been quite disgusting. There was opportunity aplenty to criticise Brand over the years when he was in his prime, but quite clearly, the lynch-mob members that are now exulting over his fate chose to be silent back then. However, this is what I wrote eighteen years ago, almost to the day, in late October 2008 in The Irish Independent .
The grubby affair of Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand is truly a parable – not so much of the corruption of the BBC (though it is that too) but of the general abasement of powerful media organisations to alpha-males. These are the creatures that feminists tend to sneer at for their “blokishness” as if mere convivial and cheerful manliness were the enemy of the feminist agenda and of public decency. In fact, it’s neither. These men are not being blokish, or convivial or cheerful. Quite the reverse. What is at work here is one of the most toxic forces in human society; untrammelled alpha-male power. . .