Carol McGiffin has liked a Tweet calling Russell Brand a ‘hero’ (Picture: Rex/Getty)
Former Loose Women star Carol McGiffin has liked a Tweet calling Russell Brand a ‘hero’, sparking backlash.
On Saturday, the actor and comedian, 48, was accused of rape, sexual assault and physical abuse, in a Channel 4 special episode of Dispatches airing in a joint investigation with The Times.
Brand, who has denied the ‘very serious allegations’ in a video shared on Friday night, has been accused by multiple women, including one who claimed she was 16 years old at the time.
Since then, the BBC and Channel 4 have launched investigations, while a women’s charity have cut ties with the St Trinian’s actor.
Ahead of the allegations being revealed, a GB News presenter sparked outrage for saying Brand was being ‘attacked’ and that he was a ‘hero’.
Beverley Turner wrote: ‘You are being attacked @rustyrockets.
‘Establishment media don’t know what to do with the fact that you have 6million subscribers & generate autonomous, knowing and original content. You are welcome on my @GBNEWS show anytime.
‘We are mainstream media. But we are not Establishment media. There’s a difference. Keep going. This proves you are winning. You’re a hero.’
Carol liked the GB News presenter’s Tweet (Picture: X)
It has now been seen that Carol, who recently quit Loose Women, has liked the Tweet.
Twitter users have also reported that the 63-year-old liked several other Tweets, including one saying: ‘Never trust women who break their silence to the media instead of the Police, accusing men of rape. Russell Brand is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. And I bet that’s never going to happen so they’re trying to prosecute his case in the court of public opinion.’
Another Tweet that Carol is said to have liked reads: ‘They find and pay women to accuse anyone who speaks the truth. The timing is curious. When Russell Brand was a mindless minion of the system on drugs, he was loved by Hollywood and the establishment. Now that he is clean, married and speaking the truth, he has become an enemy.’
Sharing the screenshots of Carol appearing to like the latter two comments (which she now appears to have unliked), one person wrote: ‘Someone tell Carol McGiffin she can hide her likes if she buys a blue tick.’
‘Oh she’s vile,’ another slammed, while someone else said: ‘She’s rotten.’
GB News presenter Beverley’s comments, which were made before the allegations broke via The Times, have sparked outrage.
Brand has been ‘welcomed’ onto GB News (Picture: John Lamparski/Getty Images)
One person wrote: ‘This has aged well. Maybe read the investigation before throwing support behind this man, in a fruitless attempt to get a ratings bump. Rank amateurs, you lot.’
Another said: ‘Good God. You would do well to reflect on the seriousness of the situation.’
Someone else said: ‘I’m embarrassed for you.’
A fourth wrote: ‘Imagine coming to his defence before even hearing the evidence for yourself. That says a lot about you, Beverley, and it says nothing about anyone else. Disgusting.’
The bombshell piece by The Times and Channel 4 investigation reveals four women making the allegations against Brand, with one saying he raped her up against a wall at his home in Los Angeles and he later allegedly apologised over text after she told him: ‘When a girl say[s] no it means no.’
A second woman alleges that Brand assaulted her when she was 16 and at school, and he was 31.
She says she had to punch him in the stomach to make him stop after he ‘forced his penis down her throat’.
Another woman claims Brand ‘forced a finger inside of her’ after becoming angry when he found out she had spoken to an ex-boyfriend, and says that he forced her to brush her teeth so hard and make her gums bleed so she would taste ‘anonymous’ to him.
On Friday night, Brand said he had been approached by a mainstream TV network and a mainstream newspaper with ‘extremely disturbing’ correspondence listing ‘a litany of extremely egregious and aggressive attacks.’
Amid some ‘stupid stuff’ in the correspondence, including, he said, that he ‘shouldn’t be able to attack mainstream media narratives,’ were ‘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.
‘As I’ve written about extensively in my book, I was very, very promiscuous. Now during that time of promiscuity, the relationships that I had were absolutely always consensual. I was always transparent about that then, almost too transparent, and I’m being transparent about it now as well.
‘And to see that transparency metastasise into something criminal that I absolutely deny makes me question is there another agenda at play.’
He said there had been ‘coordinated media attacks’ in the past against people like controversial podcast host Joe Rogan, and that he himself had previously been labelled a conspiracy theorist.
Brand went on to claim media outlets had been trying to contact people he knows ‘for ages and ages,’ but ‘what I seriously refute are these very, very serious criminal allegations.’
He claimed he had ‘witnesses whose evidence directly contradicts the narratives that these two mainstream media outlets are trying to construct, apparently in what seems to me to be a coordinated attack.’
Brand has denied the ‘very serious allegations’ (Picture: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images)
‘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 are working very closely together.
‘We are obviously going to look into this matter because it’s very, very serious.’
The Metropolitan Police force has encouraged anyone who ‘believes they have been the victim’ of sexual assault following the accusations against Brand to come forward.
The force has said it will speak to the Sunday Times and Channel 4 after their investigation about Brand.
They said in a statement: ‘We are aware of media reporting of a series of allegations of sexual assault.
‘At this time, we have not received any reports in relation to this.
‘If anyone believes they have been the victim of a sexual assault, no matter how long ago it happened, we would encourage them to contact police.
‘We spoke with the Sunday Times on Saturday, September 16. We will be making further approaches to the Sunday Times and Channel 4 to ensure that any victims of crime who they have spoken with are aware of how they may report any criminal allegations to police.’
Metro.co.uk has approached Carol’s reps for comment.
Russell Brand: In Plain Sight is available to watch on Channel 4.