Russell Brand’s big rebrand: conspiracy guru with 6 million followers

What ever happened to Russell Brand? A decade ago he was firmly on the A-list — as a comedian, film star and the recent ex- husband of the pop star Katy Perry. Since then, though, he has been reborn as something quite different: an internet guru.

Every weekday, the former drug and sex addict broadcasts live from his studio in Oxfordshire, pumping out videos asking if Covid restrictions are a tool of social control, wondering whether Nato can be blamed for the war in Ukraine, and interviewing Graham Hancock, the presenter of a recent pseudoscientific Netflix documentary about the ancient civilisation of Atlantis. In the last of these, after speculating that the world is a holographic illusion, the 47-year-old declares: “The prison of the mind,