Secret Celebrity Gossip #133

Says in the Mail that Freddie Flintoff has been quietly paid off by the BBC in the millions. He has no legal action pending against the BBC and bears them no ill will. And the TG production team has been dismantled. He will be doing one more tv series about his cricket team series because it is a passion for him, and that is him done with tv. It is cricket for him after this. I am sure he has been through the wringer but the big man has got guts and resilience, he has pivoted to something else and seemingly will not let his accident ruin his life.

Russell Brand has 3 more live dates on this tour and got a wellness festival planned for next year. I hope the festival will be cancelled in due course. Like I said he should not be allowed to organise anything.
Applaud the brave women who spoke of their experiences and sending to those who have experienced similar experiences on here.

Astonishing and depressing how many people (not here) are defending Brand and accusing all the women of lying.

House of Tea said:

Says in the Mail that Freddie Flintoff has been quietly paid off by the BBC in the millions. He has no legal action pending against the BBC and bears them no ill will. And the TG production team has been dismantled. He will be doing one more tv series about his cricket team series because it is a passion for him, and that is him done with tv. It is cricket for him after this. I am sure he has been through the wringer but the big man has got guts and resilience, he has pivoted to something else and seemingly will not let his accident ruin his life.

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hes bloody amazing. it clearly ruined his whole face. to come back not just in terms of injury but mentally. what a guy. with all his problems and illness in the past, ongoing struggle of the eating disorder, it must make this new "look" and health challenges eqaully hard to battle through. the media need to leave him alone now. they were almost salavating trying to look round corners for an image of his face.
the fact hes been going in back doors and keeping himself out of view shows how much he needs this to be slow,and on his terms. and for his recovery they need to allow him that.
if this as found him peace,and realisation of what he wants from life to be happy then thats brilliant for him.

I’m not sure that much will change for Brand. He already has his online echo chamber, many fans (and non fans) defending him and still attending his gig last night. He isn’t on tv anymore and has found his audience elsewhere so still gets the attention he craves. Nothing will happen with his comfy middle class lifestyle with wife and kids.

He has lots of well known ‘friends’ who actually off record agree with many of his views but hypocritically still get their cash and careers from the ‘mainstream’ so keep quiet.

Sadly I can’t see it changing unless any prosecutions actually occur. And we know how unlikely that is.

I watched the program last night & Russell brand is a despicable pig! Unfortunately he has set up shop in his new guru phase now, & as we know followed of cults can be quite obsessive. So I think he will still have his followers & platform. I would have thought given the lady who went to the rape crisis centre there would be evidence to charge, but maybe because that was in the us they can't access all the records. Still an uncomfortable program to watch, I feel for those who have experienced anything like those poor women.

artnouveau said:

That's awful, sorry that happened to you. I'm thinking that if anyone feels strong enough in the moment biting down might be the way to go? I realise this is irrelevant to you now but it could help anyone who's reading this? Jeez,

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If you bite down they could punch you in the head, strangle you, kill you. Also please look into fight/flight/freeze/fawn. When I was raped I froze, trauma responses are not optional. It felt as though I left my body and was watching it happen to me. It took me years to realise what had happened wasn’t my fault, that it was his fault for raping me, and my body was just responding to the terror I felt, trying to protect me from further harm by a) dissociating b) not moving to prevent antagonising him more. I just wanted it to be over. it’s not as simple as ‘just get away’ or ‘fight Back’.

Unfortunately I think he’ll come off relatively unscathed. I’ve just read quite a lot of comments in a Facebook group I’m in saying he’s being silenced for criticising tories, Biden, big pharma, etc

Some comments even saying the women continued to sleep with him. I stand with the women, when I was 18 I was in a relationship with a 25 year old. One night he got really drunk in the bar I was working in and wanted to have sex but he couldn’t get it up. He was forcing himself upon me by going down on me, probably in the hope of getting it up but I wasn’t wanting to. It took me some amount of fighting but I did get him to stop thankfully. It wasn’t until years later when the Me Too movement came about that I realised how serious it was even if I had a lucky escape. It still makes me feel horrible thinking about it. So yes, the women might have seen him again after but that doesn’t make it okay.

I hope anyone who has been through this themselves is okay this morning.

When Daniel Sloss said it was intimidating and scary for him (as a man who hadn’t been in any way attacked/hurt/assaulted by Brand) to come on and speak about the allegations and rumours through the years, you can only imagine e how frightened and intimidated the victims felt discussing these matters.
However Brand won’t be cancelled - we live in a society where we worship these ‘celebrities’ look at Jonathan Ross after the Andrew Sachs episode - moved to itv for a bumper pay check!!

MitziAdele said:

I know exactly what you mean. The 'separate yourself from the situation thing.' I do that too. I still to it to this day when something happens that is too much for me to take. I'm much older now but
the threat of 'you will be taken away from your family..or your family won't believe you.' is the worst thing you can hear when you are a child

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Also, sometimes you don't realise it's happening until after the fact. Especially when the perpetrator is someone you know or a spouse. It's such a complex issue. You hear r**e and think of being dragged down a dark alley but often times its far more insidious and the gaslighting that comes along with it convinces you that you're over reacting or you were willing. This has brought up a lot of hurt for so many women. I stand by and with you all x

Thank you to everyone for sharing and continuing to share. The onus shouldn’t be on you to educate and illuminate but I’ll be forever grateful for the courage and grace you’ve shown.

I wanted to include a few words from Megan Nolan’s Acts of Desperation as she wrote it better than I ever could. For those who can’t relate or understand these sentiments, then you should be appreciative rather than argumentative. It’s been a reality for far too many of us, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

“He kept touching me and eventually I did what I had to do to stop him from wanting to have sex with me, which was to have sex with him.

I thought, not for the first time, that wheedling of the sort he had employed should be forbidden in men. It was already so near to impossible to say no to a man, so difficult to accept the possibility of being hurt or disliked or shouted at. It takes so much out of you to make yourself say no when you have been taught to say yes, to be accommodating, to make men happy.

Once you’ve said no, a man wheedling feels unbearable. Even if he does it politely, or gently, it overrides the clearly expressed intention. It says: Your choice does not really matter. What I desire matters, and I don’t want to feel bad for forcing you into it. So perhaps you ought to reconsider? Wheedling is cowardly, and violent. When you change someone’s no to yes by wheedling, you have stolen from them what does not belong to you. It was the last thing I wanted to do, and I did it.”

Dr.CM said:

I'm not defending it but having researched, there's no recent reports. He talks about changing his ways. Maybe he has. If he hasn't then bring on some criminal charges.

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So would it be OK for a murderer to say that he's changed his ways and hasn't killed recently so shouldn't be charged for murders in the past? That's the same argument. The killer of Renee and Andrew MacRae was finally jailed last year after killing them in 1976; he died in prison earlier this year at the age of 81. He hadn't killed anyone for fifty years so should he have argued that he changed his ways? That he should only have been charged if he had carried on murdering?

Old men are being sent to prison for historical sex offences decades old; a crime doesn't stop being a crime because time passes and the perpetrator changes their ways - they are still liable for punishment. Some prisons are verging on care homes for elderly perverts who have finally had the law catch up on them and justice served

Fannydevito said:

I am so sad that I went to one of his gigs & met him afterwards at a M&G. He was most definitely scanning the room to see who would be his most likely victim. Had friends that worked at the venue, he took someone from the crowd to the disabled toilets to seal the deal so to speak. For many years I saw it as a badge of honour that Russell Brand told me that I was a beautiful woman, needless to say I feel awful about it now.

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And this is the outdated, fairy story nonsense that women need to get past. We don't need to see it as a badge of honour that a man has called us beautiful. Just like these very young girls who felt like they were special because some celebrity chose them to sleep with. We don't need validating by men. By all means have a consensual encounter or a consensual relationship with somebody who treats you respectfully but validation is not necessary. We validate ourselves.

Purplestar22 said:

So like a lot of other, this has made me feel a lot of emotions. But can we agree that Katy Perry was either lied to (like a lot of people) or wanted to believe it wasn’t true because she sadly was controlled by him, she has a looooot to lose by sticking by him?
Please educate me if you think I’m wrong!

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She met him at the height of his PR offensive in America. Were people warning about him publicly back then, that's not clear.

I was reading an interview about how he dumped her by text and she just commented that wasn't the real reason. What would she have gained by defaming him at that time though?

It goes to show how strong PR and coverup is: I googled the blind items about their split in 2011/2012 and they were all about HER having a drinking issue and him being mistreated. The lengths gone to cover up this man's behaviour is one of the main themes here.

Blurp said:

So would it be OK for a murderer to say that he's changed his ways and hasn't killed recently so shouldn't be charged for murders in the past? That's the same argument. The killer of Renee and Andrew MacRae was finally jailed last year after killing them in 1976; he died in prison earlier this year at the age of 81. He hadn't killed anyone for fifty years so should he have argued that he changed his ways? That he should only have been charged if he had carried on murdering?

Old men are being sent to prison for historical sex offences decades old; a crime doesn't stop being a crime because time passes and the perpetrator changes their ways - they are still liable for punishment. Some prisons are verging on care homes for elderly perverts who have finally had the law catch up on them and justice served

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Exactly, if you’ve raped someone you are a rapist and always will be a rapist. The label doesn’t expire after 10 years FFS.

@PeteM the day has come xx

House of Tea said:

Says in the Mail that Freddie Flintoff has been quietly paid off by the BBC in the millions. He has no legal action pending against the BBC and bears them no ill will. And the TG production team has been dismantled. He will be doing one more tv series about his cricket team series because it is a passion for him, and that is him done with tv. It is cricket for him after this. I am sure he has been through the wringer but the big man has got guts and resilience, he has pivoted to something else and seemingly will not let his accident ruin his life.

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I'm glad he's getting himself back out there. I think he will be good coaching cricket, he is a bloody fantastic bowler. I was so shocked at the pics when they were released, can't imagine what his face was like at the beginning.

Morning - am glad to see there's a call out in the press this morning re Brand from the police for victims to come forward.

Bobbleowl90 said:

I’m a little perplexed as to why you’d walk into someone’s dressing room with their dick out and feel shocked and upset, but then go out with them and shag them anyway.

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They are normalising 'not normal' to be offended is to be a prude/ not cool.

MrsPiggleWiggle said:

I have no doubt he's a sleazy, rapist bastard but I also think the doc had some parts to it that his supporters can latch onto and defend.

He did have a reputation as a lothario and was known for sex, drugs and rock and roll during an era which also had Winehouse, Doherty, Moss etc tearing it up.

He obviously had a lot of consensual sex during this time and while he treated the women badly, not calling someone after sex isn't a crime. Nor is someone feeling like a child after being given a lift.

Just to be clear: I'm NOT defending him and the part about the spitting made me feel ill. But I'm not sure they did themselves any favours by focussing on some of these things.

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I would have respected the documentary less if certain material were edited out. Those things were not 'focused on' imo It's the brutal honesty of that documentary, warts and all that paint a very true picture of real women and a very disturbed man.

House of Tea said:

Says in the Mail that Freddie Flintoff has been quietly paid off by the BBC in the millions. He has no legal action pending against the BBC and bears them no ill will. And the TG production team has been dismantled. He will be doing one more tv series about his cricket team series because it is a passion for him, and that is him done with tv. It is cricket for him after this. I am sure he has been through the wringer but the big man has got guts and resilience, he has pivoted to something else and seemingly will not let his accident ruin his life.

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I hope this is true and that we will see him back for the cricket team because I love Freddie. He just seems so genuine and lovely