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Channel 4 has said “two new worrying allegations” were received about Russell Brand after a Dispatches investigation aired in September last year, while two people have reported that “serious concerns” about his behavior had been in “circulation” when he joined Celebrity Bake Off in 2018.
The network has in the past few minutes delivered its report into Brand probing whether anyone within Channel 4 was aware of his alleged behavior, which was reported in the bombshell Dispatches report. Brands denies all the allegations and says the incidents were consensual.
Channel 4’s report said that “two new worrying allegations were received” following the broadcast of the doc on September 16.
One of those reported anonymously that a staff member had alleged that a former Channel 4 employee said that they had witnessed inappropriate behaviour. Another made an allegations related to Brand’s conduct towards a Channel 4 staff member “while both parties were working on the production of ancillary content involving Channel 4 in 2009.”
Channel 4 said the investigation “found that the allegation was not passed up the management chain nor investigated as it ought to have been in accordance with procedures in place at the time.”
“C4’s commissioning department was not aware of the incident,” said the report.
The report, commissioned in the wake of the Dispatches saga at the same time as a BBC and Banijay review, also pointed to concerns around the time Brand was engaged to be in Celebrity Bake Off in 2018.
“Two of the people spoken to said they thought serious concerns about [Brand’s] behaviour involving sexual misconduct had been in circulation within commissioning in 2018, around the time [Brand] was engaged to appear in a Celebrity Bake Off Stand Up To Cancer special recorded in October 2018,” added the report.
“These concerns led them to take the view that [Brand] should not be engaged for shows for which they were responsible.”
Neither of the people had knowledge of the specific allegations, the review added, and multiple others failed to corroborate what they had said.
The report was forged by Channel 4 Controller of Legal & Compliance Amali de Silva along with two senior lawyers and spoke to around 60 interviewees, with 28 declining.
Channel 4 has delivered a number of recommendations in its report.
The BBC has already said that five complaints were made about the star, who presented radio shows for the UK broadcaster, and Brand is being investigated by two police forces, it is understood.
The investigations were launched after The Times, The Sunday Times and Channel 4 reported the allegations that Brand sexually assaulted four women at the height of his fame. Brand vehemently denies the claims and has said all of his relationships were consensual.
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