Sophie Heawood on Russell Brand, David Walliams and celebrity fame

David Walliams has sold books worth £156m worth of books in the UK, Sophie Heawood writes, and she suggests that scale explains why his industry protected him for so long. Her latest reflection opens inside Southwark Crown Court, where she heard the final day of Russell Brand's trial and later his sentencing.

What was on trial at Southwark Crown Court?

Heawood, a feature writer and commentator, has covered celebrities for more than 20 years, as long as Brand has been one. She attended as a member of the public who wanted to see justice done, on behalf of the women Brand had hurt and those who could not get as far as the courtroom.

Fame, she says, ran through the case as a subject in its own right, invoked as often by the defence as by the prosecution. Every victim impact statement returned to it, and the celebrity came close to standing trial himself.

At sentencing, she listened to the statements from the women Brand was found guilty of attacking. Each stressed that recovery had been rendered almost impossible by seeing him joke about his sex drive every time they turned on the television or picked up a paper.

Heawood adds that she had no idea what darkness he was capable of.

The 2011 interview with Brand and Helen Mirren

In 2011, Heawood interviewed Brand for a glossy magazine as he promoted his remake of Arthur with Helen Mirren. Her editor said that accepting the freelance commission meant she would need to "muck about a bit and basically be into Russell Brand's humour".

The plan was to interview Brand and Mirren together. Heawood replayed the tape in the week before she wrote the piece and heard herself and Brand press Mirren on whether she had read his book Booky Wook 2.

Mirren said she had not. Brand insisted: "You have, I read it to you, the chapter's called 'Mummy Helen'". He and Heawood laughed while Mirren did not. She had told them she was not sure about joining the film project "because Russell is intimidating".

Heawood now calls her own behaviour mortifying and inappropriate, while noting that at the time it was what the job entailed.

She places the case inside the media culture she believes encouraged Brand, one in which sex felt cheapened in lads' mags and women ended up paying for it. By 2014, when Brand turned to politics, she wrote that he had "grabbed a thousand women as if they were lifeboats made of tits" and was trying to overthrow democracy "with a revolution fashioned from leftover bits of the internet and some string".

Jared Leto and David Walliams

In 2007, Heawood spent the day with Jared Leto, who was then playing with his emo-rock band 30 Seconds to Mars. She joined him, his bandmates and young women who had flown into London from across Europe to see him play live, some of them teenagers.

Heawood found the fans "unworldly, wildly overexcited and close to fainting" and Leto's manner "intense to the point of weirdness". She never imagined he would have any interest in "these geeky fans".

In 2026, four women accused Leto of criminal sexual conduct. The alleged offences took place when the women were teenagers. He vigorously denies the allegations.

The spotlight has now moved to David Walliams, after accounts from women who had relationships with him as teenagers and now consider it grooming. He denies any wrongdoing beyond hurting their feelings.

Heawood links that denial to what she calls the industry's protection of him, an industry she says profited from £156m worth of his UK book sales.

How does access to a celebrity work?

Celebrities stand, Heawood notes, at the centre of layers of people. A publicist, an agent, a manager and an assistant arrange the meeting. A photoshoot callsheet lists hair and makeup artists, the styling department and even drivers.

The talent's own number stays private every time. She says this is why impressionable young fans were made to feel special when stars such as Walliams got in touch directly from their own number. The direct approach arrives without the machinery behind it visible.

One interview at a home in West Hollywood shows how quickly rapport can turn. The celebrity, whom Heawood describes as deeply charming, shared jokes with her about their mutual enthusiasm for chocolate.

As soon as Heawood left, the woman called her agent to say the journalist should be fired. Her editor later reminded her that the interviewee was "a trained actress".

Heawood's standing rule is blunt: "Why is this lying bastard lying to me?" The star is never your friend. The journalist is a conduit, and sometimes cover.

What does this change for young fans?

What does this change for the young people who now receive messages from famous names? According to Heawood, the sense of being chosen is produced by an industry that manages access and profits from fame. The same structures, she argues, explain why the men she describes faced so little scrutiny for years.

Support and information

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from:

• Rape Crisis: 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland.
• RAINN: 800-656-4673 in the US.
• 1800Respect: 1800 737 732 in Australia.
• Other international helplines: ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

The publication invites responses of up to 300 words by email for consideration in its letters section.

The test now facing the industry is whether the access arrangements that made stars appear untouchable will change while the women who met them as teenagers keep speaking. Heawood's own tape from 2011 has already placed one reporter's complicity on the record.