You’re right to be angry about Russell Brand – and the establishments, old and new, that gave him his power | Gaby Hinsliff

The comedian moved effortlessly from mainstream fame to the embrace of the populist right. Both enabled an undisguised misogynist

Russell Brand has always invited outrage. It was what he did, his shtick and his selling point: a willingness to cross the line that - when sweetened by his undeniable charisma, and by enough long words to make the crude sex gags sound more intellectual - earned him a fortune over the years.

But could that willingness to shock, to transgress in plain sight, have functioned also as a kind of shield? What could he be accused of to which he hadn't already titillatingly half-confessed, in that gleeful way that meant you never knew if he was serious or not, but which somehow made the audience complicit anyway? When he described in his insufferably titled memoir My Booky Wook being asked to write a list in rehab of the women he'd wronged over the years, and feeling like Saddam Hussein trying to pick out individual Kurds", his candour somehow disarmed the obvious questions about what exactly he had done to all those nameless women.