Russell Brand treated me badly after Sachsgate... but he also helped save my life

Georgina Baillie had her fling with the comedian broadcast over the airwaves. But she doesn't bear a grudge, writes Robbie Griffiths

- Robbie Griffiths

GEORGINA Baillie has mixed feelings about Russell Brand. In 2008, the comic and his co-host Jonathan Ross joked about sleeping with her on a BBC Radio 2 show, leaving messages on the answerphone of her late grandfather Andrew Sachs, the actor who played Manuel in the comedy Fawlty Towers. Brand resigned, and the Beeb had to pay the regulator £150,000 in fines.

The fallout was painful for Baillie, as she thinks Brand treated her badly afterwards. The stand-up turned the episode into a routine in his next comedy special, while she was "vilified" by the media. "I had to put up with that s**t for years and he was making money out of it on tour, so I didn't like that," she says. But Baillie also credits Brand with saving her life some years later. In 2018, the comic paid for her to go to rehab, which ended up with her finally getting sober from alcohol and drugs issues that had plagued her life. "I might have been dead if he hadn't done that, because I was doing dangerous things to get drugs," she says. The comic then came to meet her during her recovery to apologise for his behaviour towards her. Now Brand is in the news again.

This time it's far more serious. He's been accused of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse between 2006 to 2013. One of the women claims that he would ferry her to his home from her school in a taxi when she was 16 and he was 31, while another claims he raped her in his Los Angeles home in 2012.