It's time to get real - it was our culture which enabled Brand

RUSSELL BRAND did not create the lad culture of the Noughties. That was us. We nourished a culture 1of leaked sex tapes and upskirt pictures of female celebrities "falling out" of nightclubs, a world where women were asked to laugh along with rape jokes but still branded as sluts for having casual sex at all, a time, in short, of overt sexual permissiveness a permission which was only really granted to men.

- Martha Gill

When Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Amy Winehouse behaved "badly" getting drunk, taking drugs they were roundly condemned. "Poor Amy" became a gruesome public spectacle, as did Spears when she was driven to despair by pursuing paparazzi. Lohan's "promiscuity" was a joke against her. Male stars were meanwhile celebrated for the same behaviour.

After the Sunday Times revealed allegations this week that Brand has been accused of rape and sexual assault he has strongly denied all the claims against him - we have looked back on his public performances in horror. It was all there, right in front of us. In his stand-up he jokes about "choking" blow jobs (an act he has now been accused of perpetrating in a sexual assault, again which he denies), and on the radio he talks lasciviously about a female newsreader.