Russell Brand blamed Kylie Minogue for his MTV sacking. But he left out a key fact

November 10, 2026 — 10:30am

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The collective sense of relief that comes from Russell Brand being sentenced to 10 years and six months is palpable. Not just because a jury finding him guilty of rape and sexual assault offers a sliver of justice to a handful of his victims, but also because it decimates the credibility of the spin he spent years applying to his horrendous, and at times criminal, behaviour.

Long before the allegations aired in court were made public, as well as the countless others that have surfaced (some of which are now under investigation by the UK police), Brand was as much a one-man reputation rehabilitator intent on controlling the narrative as he was a comedian.

When recounting in his 2007 memoir why he was fired from MTV six years earlier, for example, Brand implied that the pop star Kylie Minogue was in part to blame. Brand, still an active drug user at the time, said he’d invited his dealer and his dealer’s eight-year-old child to the TV show’s set, where the trio crammed into a bathroom and the two adults smoked crack before taking a tour of the studio. According to Brand’s telling, it was here that Minogue – who was appearing on the show as a guest – endured an “awkward chat” with the dealer.

“I thought: ‘It don’t get any better than this.’ And it didn’t, cos they sacked me about two days later,” Brand wrote.

What he put far less emphasis on,........

© Brisbane Times