Brand: I felt too uncomfortable to report sex assault
JO BRAND, the comedian and TV presenter, has told of how she didn’t feel she could “make a fuss” over a businessman who sexually assaulted her at a charity event because they were “raising loads of money”.
Brand told an audience at the Hay Festival in Wales that she failed to report a man who “stuck his tongue in my mouth” because she didn’t want to ruin the “jolly” atmosphere.
The Bafta-winning comedy actress described the moment an intoxicated businessman offered her £200 for a kiss at a corporate fundraiser in Canary Wharf. The 61-year old said: “They were all p-----, it was about 9am and they were all sort of 35-year-olds thrusting. So this guy comes up to me and he says I’ll give you £200 for your charity if you give me a kiss. I went, ‘Oh God, all right then’.”
Brand then offered her cheek but the man in question “stuck his tongue in my mouth. It was disgusting”.
“The thing was, I thought to myself, this is a charity day everyone’s all jolly and we’re raising loads of money. Can I make a really massive fuss about that? To my shame, I didn’t. I just pretended it hadn’t happened and moved on.”
Brand said she was still unsure if she should have said something despite the man “exploiting” the situation.
She went on to attack the business world for sidelining women, saying that they attempt “to put you down” if you are “being gobby” or “appearing to be confident”.
She told host Stephanie Merritt it was good that women felt they had more permission to be angry but it still felt “not very angry and not for very long”.
Brand, also said people seemed to get “fed up” with the Me Too movement as soon as it started gaining momentum. She added: “I feel it’s something we need to keep pushing at. “It was going in the right direction until certain people said ‘they’ve had their say can they not be quiet now’?”
Brand, left, was at the literary festival to promote her memoir Born Bo Lippy: How to Do Female, Female a tongue-in-cheek advice adv book for teenagers er based on all the things t she wishes she had known at the age of 16. The former psychiatric nurse has two daughters Maisie, 18, and Eliza, 16, with her husband, Bernie Bourke.
The book includes advice such as what women can say if they encounter a man pleasuring himself on public transport and how to address young people watching porn.
Her witty answer to the blue movie problem is to just say to them “we’re all going to sit down and watch it as a family”.
Brand has been vocal about her support of women who have encountered sexual abuse in the past and once spoke out against an all-male panel on Have I Got News For You in 2017.
The episode of the BBC show, being WANT to live happily ever after? Then don’t have children, go to university or live near a lottery winner.
Professor Paul Dolan, a “happiness expert” from the London School of Economics, says our desire to keep up with the Joneses and have a family because that is expected of us can be detrimental to our well-being.
“It would be awful if anything happened to them, but the experiences we have with children are largely miserable,” he told the Hay Festival.
“For some people, having children is great. But for a lot of people it isn’t and the idea that we can’t talk openly about why that might be is a problem.”
He added that the happiest subgroup of the population is single women without children.
Society puts too much emphasis on going into higher education, becoming rich and getting married, when many people would be happier with a vocational course, an average income and the single life, said Prof Dolan.
“I’m not suggesting that people don’t strive for wealth, success and education. What I’m suggesting is, it’s not for everybody all of the time,” he insisted.
He cited a US study that found having a lottery winner in your neighbourhood increases your likelihood of going bankrupt, due to the “contagion effect” of conspicuous consumption.
Another study found that childless, single women are happiest, and men are happier when married. “If you’re a man, you should probably marry. If you’re a woman, don’t bother,” he said. presented by Brand, included journalist Quentin Letts, comic Miles Jupp, Private Eye editor Ian Hislop and comedian Paul Merton.
When Hislop said the allegations that had come out of the Westminster harassment scandal were no “highlevel crime” Brand interjected saying: “It doesn’t have to be high-level for women to feel under siege in somewhere like the House of Commons.
“Actually, for women if you’re constantly being harassed, even in a small way, that builds up and that wears you down.”
The episode received 234 complaints to Ofcom, the media regulator.