Russell Brand performing at the MTV Music Awards in LA in 2011. Photo: AFP/ Kevin Winter
British comedian Russell Brand has posted a video denying "serious criminal allegations" set to be made against him in an upcoming television program.
Dispatches, a documentary series on the UK's Channel 4, is set to air a special 90-minute episode on Saturday night UK time (Sunday morning NZT) but no official information has been released about the episode's content.
UK tabloid newspaper The Daily Mirror had reported the show would document "bad behaviour by an A-list household name".
Brand, 48, released the video titled 'This is happening' on several social media platforms late on Friday night UK time and said he had received a letter and an email from a television company and a newspaper "listing a litany of extremely egregious and aggressive attacks".
"But amidst this litany of astonishing, rather baroque attacks, are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute," Brand said.
"These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies.
"And as I've written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous. Now, during that time of promiscuity, the relationships I had were absolutely always consensual.
"I was always transparent about that then, almost too transparent."
Brand, who also starred in several films, had a long history of activism and during the Covid-19 pandemic became increasingly involved in Covid denialism. Several of his videos were removed by YouTube due to violating the platform's policy over medical misinformation.
He was previously married to US singer Katy Perry, but the pair divorced in 2012 after one year together. He is currently married to his wife of six years Laura Gallacher, and the couple have two children.
In his latest video he suggested attempts were being made to try to silence him.
"What I seriously refute are these very, very serious criminal allegations," he said.
"Also, it's worth mentioning that there are witnesses whose evidence directly contradicts the narrative that these two mainstream media outlets are trying to construct, apparently, in what seems to me to be a coordinated attack.
"Now, I don't want to get into this any further because of the serious nature of the allegations, but I feel like I'm being attacked and plainly they're working very closely together."
Dispatches, which has won several British Academy Television Awards for its reporting, was first broadcast on Channel 4 in 1987.
- This story was first published byABC