The absentee father who bought teenage Russell Brand a prostitute

Marianka SwainSat, November 7, 2026 at 12:00 PM UTC

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Ron Brand, Russell’s father, seemingly struggled to comprehend the verdict delivered at Southwark Crown Court this week.

The 82-year-old declared himself “bemused and shocked” after his only child was found guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault. “I just didn’t expect this,” he told the BBC. “It’s wrong. It’s devastating.”

It is the norm, of course, for a parent to defend their child – perhaps even in the face of such a decisive verdict.

But viewed against the backdrop of the pair’s knotty history, Ron’s response was curious. Indeed, there is a growing sense that Brand senior – a largely absentee father who hired prostitutes to take his son’s virginity – may have much to answer for yet.

Ronald “Ron” Henry Brand grew up on a council estate in Dagenham, Essex, and was a talented footballer in his youth. He married Barbara Elizabeth Nichols (now Brand) in 1969 and six years later she gave birth to Russell. Just months later, however, the couple were divorced.

In his 2007 autobiography My Booky Wook, Russell described his mother as “doting and protective”. In contrast, his father, who had lost his own father when he was seven, was “a sporadic presence, affording me cyclonic visits at the weekend”.

Russell has recalled being left, as a young boy, to watch TV in Ron’s flat in Brentwood while his father “read the papers or diddled birds in the room next door”. “I would mainly watch comedy videos, Elvis films and porn,” he wrote. “I think I always had a premature awareness of sexuality, but Ron Brand’s penchant for leaving me to occupy my infant mind with his cache of girlie magazines certainly did nothing to stem the erotic tide.”

Ron would turn up on Russell’s birthdays “in archetypal bad-parent fashion”, with his “cheap charisma”, to give his young son highly inappropriate gifts. One such present was a dog named Toby, which was far too large for his mother to house. His father would also take him to West Ham matches, an agony for young Russell who told The Guardian in 2008: “My dad was good at football and I wasn’t. For me it’s riddled with ideas about spirituality, masculinity, fatherhood.”

Ronald Brand leaving court on one of the final days of his son’s trial - Tayfun Salci

Russell has previously called attention to one particularly arresting incident during his early years. While still a young boy, on holiday at a Pontin’s resort, he discovered his father in bed with another child’s mother. He recalled seeing the woman completely naked, “all knockers and skin everywhere”, adding he “pressed record” on the “formative moment”.

If so, it was a moment that helped form an attitude to women that a jury has now found brutally criminal, and which will see Russell Brand sentenced to a lengthy stint in prison at a hearing on Monday. But perhaps only father and son will ever know exactly how much Brand senior shaped his son’s appetites and outlook.

Certainly, Russell saw his father as a man on the fringes of establishment acceptability, a Del Boy-like wheeler-dealer who made a living by plotting an array of capers. His exploits included selling laser prints on a market stall in Romford.

Eventually, Ron turned to photography – with mixed results. Russell has said that Ron took such shoddy wedding pictures that someone’s legs had to be drawn in with pencil.

Still, he found a way to make enough money to be able to send Russell to private school and arrange for him to have tutoring. But this led to the harrowing experience of Russell being sexually assaulted by his tutor when he was seven years old. According to Brand’s account, the tutor – who has not been publicly identified, charged or questioned – would reward correct answers by touching him sexually.

Russell has said his father told him he would deal with it, yet did not appear to take any action. Ron would later “drunkenly allude to parenting errors”, leaving the star wondering whether he was referring to that incident.

A year later, when he was eight, Russell’s mother fell ill with cancer, forcing him to move between his grandparents – both maternal and paternal – and occasional stays at his father’s bachelor pad. But Ron, his son alleged, was a wildly incapable parent who had no idea what time Russell went to bed, and who didn’t notice that he was consuming hardcore pornography.

That alleged carelessness, Russell has said, extended to maintenance payments.

Despite his father once turning up at the school gates in a Porsche, the disgraced star has said he failed to send his mother the £25-a-week she was due for their son, leaving her impoverished.

However, Ron did seem to instil a certain ambition in his child. As Russell explained to The Guardian in 2010, his father – who played motivational tapes in the car – transcended his working-class origins because he “wholeheartedly believes you can do what you want if you work hard enough. If you refuse to give up. So I got that. That message was loud for me”.

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He has said he was warned by people not to try to emulate Ron but that he viewed his father as “a kind of Essex Cavalier – every week a different woman and a new scheme for riches”.

Ron and Russell together in 2015 - PA Images / Alamy

Russell has recalled desperately craving his father’s approval – “I only wish I’d felt he liked me more” – and the joy when he occasionally captured Ron’s attention. “Sometimes he would turn the light of his attention on me and it would be brilliant. He’d tease me and wind me up and be very funny, but he’d get bored really quickly, and then I’d just be there again – all tubby and useless.”

One could draw a line between that and the kind of attention-seeking performer he later became.

Perhaps most pertinent, though, were the episodes with his father which Russell describes as having “defined my relations with women”.

One, above all, stands out. When Russell was 17 and still a virgin, his father – whose third marriage had just ended – took him to Hong Kong and arranged for three prostitutes to join them in their hotel room.

The following morning, Ron’s only question was whether his son had worn a condom. Russell then had sex with many more prostitutes during their trip, which also encompassed visits to Thailand and Singapore. On the flight home, a seemingly proud Ron said to Russell: “I went away with a boy and came back with a man.”

Russell would go on to explore his relationship with his father in 2002, early in his burgeoning TV career, when he presented the edgy documentary series RE:Brand on satellite channel UK Play. The programme purported to tackle cultural taboos, and the very first episode, titled “Dad Fight”, saw him examine Ron’s influence on his life – and challenge him to a boxing match.

While training for the bout, Russell said to the camera: “Some of the people think I’m a right b-----d for doing this. But… well, you know, it weren’t me that abandoned a small tiny baby all defenceless and that now, was it? Nor who lured him into a misogynistic lifestyle of womanisers and that, the only way I could win approval.”

During the episode, Russell also consulted a therapist. Their conversation saw him confess that Ron’s parenting had left him feeling “inadequate” and like he couldn’t “be a man until the man that made me lies defeated at my feet”. He also talked about having “unresolved issues” with his father – namely a lot of anger and unhappiness.

When questioned by his father during the show as to whether he was staging the fight to prove something, Russell unleashed. “I hate myself, Dad,” he said. “I hate being alive. And one day, mate, you’ll get a phone call, ‘Russell’s killed himself’. [And] that’s gonna kill my mum. You’ll take it on the chin because I don’t think you’ve ever really given a f--- […] about me.”

Though their bout ultimately ended on amicable terms, the pair’s relationship truly broke down afterwards. In 2008, Russell told GQ that he and his father were no longer speaking. He added that it was unfair to pillory Ron since “there’s a lot of him in me, and I recognise that”, including the determination not to take no for an answer.

As Russell put it, Ron “regarded life as a malevolent force that wants to destroy you”. Ron was not invited to Russell’s wedding to Katy Perry in 2010.

So it was with some irony in 2023, when Russell was faced with accusations of sexual assault, that Ron became a vocal defender of his son. In a tirade on Facebook, he wrote: “Is this seriously the most important thing happening in this world? […] Who is prioritising at BBC News. Who is really driving this vendetta?”

In another post, Ron added: “The Russell Brand Vendetta. Like a man who owns an orchard being accused of stealing an apple.”

Since then – and throughout his trial – Russell’s father has stalwartly supported his son.

But in some respects, his parenting was also on the stand this week – and the judgment has been damning.

“I thought Ron Brand was great and in lots of ways,” Russell Brand wrote in his autobiography. “He taught me that you can get what you want if you refuse to let circumstances defeat you, and perhaps there is no more valuable lesson.” Brand junior’s determination to get what he wanted, however, has proved his ultimate undoing.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”