Vanessa Feltz has shared her feelings on the moment Russell Brand asked if he could “have it off” with her daughters during a TV appearance.
The TV presenter, 61, worked with the comedian — who is the subject of allegations of rape and assault — on his E4 chat show and recalled an incident in 2006 when he made lewd jokes about her then teenage daughters.
In a clip which she played during her TalkTV show, Brand, 48, can be heard asking her “Can I have it off with either you or your daughters?”, to which she replied: “No, you may not! “
She said: “Yuck, precisely, that’s what I thought then and that’s what I think now.
“It’s terribly awkward when you are a guest on somebody else’s show, particularly in a theatre, which is full of great fans of the presenter… I was in this unbelievably awkward position where you don’t quite know what to do.
“Are you meant to think it’s funny and play along? Are you meant to stand up and walk out in high dudgeon and look as if you are a spoil-sport and a party-pooper? What are you supposed to do?”
Feltz continued: “I know, I was deeply offended then, as I remain deeply offended now at the idea of him saying, ‘I want to have sex with you and both your daughters.”
She also went on to say that she had witnessed Brand on many occasions in a work environment, explaining: “I was literally there and I used to be there quite a lot because I used to be on Big Brother’s Big Mouth, EForum a lot. I mean not every week, but maybe every other week, frequently. I saw Russell in full flood and full flow. Actually admired him enormously, his phraseology, his passion, the kind of drama of it all. He seemed to bring a tremendous dollop of charisma to the programme, such as I hadn’t seen in any other presenter.
“He really was quite remarkable. So I was there, if he was in ‘plain sight’, I was looking at him. But I knew he was having sex with many women, but I just thought they were all willing.”
Brand was the subject of a joint investigation by the Sunday Times and Channel 4 Dispatches, which aired at the weekend and saw separate allegations of sexual assault and rape from four women between 2006 and 2013.
He has vehemently denies the allegations and said all of his relationships have been “consensual”.
