Russell Brand is ‘a seriously unwell sex addict’, says the woman at the centre of his notorious ‘Sachsgate’ phone call.
Georgina Baillie – the granddaughter of famed Fawlty Towers Manuel actor Andrew Sachs – was a 21-year-old performer with a burlesque dance troupe called the ‘Satanic Sluts’ when she first encountered Brand – and he immediately began trying to seduce her.
The fallout from their subsequent affair led to a national media scandal that could – and it seems now should – have derailed Brand’s career forever.
But for Ms Baillie, now 41, it also took an immense personal toll: she descended into a spiral of alcohol, drugs and a corrupted attitude to sex which left her feeling ‘worthless’ and her relationship with her grandfather never recovered.
So she watched Brand’s trial with great interest.
And, in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail she told how she felt sickened that her former lover had put his victims through the ordeal of having to give evidence.
Georgina Baillie, 41, was drawn into Russell Brand’s sordid world when the fallen comic phoned her grandfather, the Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs, to boast of having sex with her
Ms Baillie was a 21-year-old performer in a four piece gothic burlesque dance group called the ‘Satanic sluts’ when she entered Brand’s orbit and they enjoyed a consensual relationship
But Ms Baillie’s world came crashing down in 2008 when Brand and Jonathan Ross phoned her grandfather to disclose details of her sex life – with the messages broadcast on BBC Radio 2
Brand, 51, is facing a lengthy custodial sentence after he was found guilty of rape and three counts of sexual assault at Southwark Crown Court on Thursday
She said today: ‘Justice has been served. Although he never raped or assaulted me as I have always said I didn’t know what happened in the privacy of the rooms that the victims and Russell were in and their evidence was compelling. He has been found guilty and I now want Russell to right the wrongs.’
And she said she felt let down to discover the dark reality of her one time boyfriend’s conduct, adding: ‘I feel very sad and disappointed in him.’
Brand, 51 now, faces being jailed next week after being convicted of rape and sexual assault following a three-week trial at Southwark Crown Court where the jury heard lurid accounts of his behaviour towards the women spanning a decade between 1999 and 2009.
During the same period Ms Baillie was one of the many women he had sexual relations with – for her an on-off consensual affair that lasted two years before it became public in the most humiliating way.
In one of the most ill-judged pranks in broadcasting history, Brand and his friend and BBC Radio 2 co-presenter Jonathan Ross phoned Sachs on air – to leave messages about Brand sleeping with his granddaughter.
The episode, which became known as ‘Sachsgate’, sparked national uproar.
But it also came at great personal cost for Georgina: it caused her relationship with her beloved grandfather to break down completely.
She did not see or speak with him for eight years – only finally seeing Sachs one final time, to apologise for the scandal, shortly before he died in 2016 aged 86.
And she developed chronic addiction issues – and it’s through the lens of that experience that she now sees Brand.
Ms Baillie said: ‘Russell Brand is a sex addict. It’s obvious to me. That boy is seriously unwell.
‘When I got into recovery from drugs and alcohol I learnt about this thing called cross-addiction, where you put the substance down and you pick up a behaviour.
‘Now if my drug of choice was available three times a day in different bodies [ie Brand’s sex addiction], I would go for it if I wasn’t well, if I wasn’t using the tools of recovery. Then I understand how that happens and yes, he is a sex addict.’
But she insisted that giving him this label cannot and does not condone his crimes.
She said: ‘I’m a survivor of sexual assault myself and it’s very disappointing to me that if he had his memory jogged, he couldn’t just be a big boy, make the amends like you did for me? I know that he’s capable of that.’
She is alluding here to the fact that after the scandal Brand – himself a recovering drug addict – paid tens of thousands of pounds for her therapy bills and other medical expenses because he felt guilty over what had happened.
Georgina remains grateful for his help in turning her life around, even if he was largely responsible for it being derailed in the first place. And she hopes he will show the same attitude to his victims now.
She said: ‘He’s been found guilty. He needs to make the amends. Owning up would be the first part of the amends and the second part would be whatever measures are necessary to put these girls back together.’
She added: ‘I want those victims to get some help. I really do. It’s possible to recover from this, it’s hard having experienced sexual assault myself- though not at the hands of Russell.
‘But it’s possible to recover, it’s a long road but they’ll get there, and I really want them to just heal and start to have the ability to improve their lives.’
There were only two complaints in the week after Brand’s radio show was broadcast, but after The Mail on Sunday reported the story the following weekend and media coverage exploded, this number rocketed a total of 44,790.
In total, Brand and Ross left four messages making repeated and graphic claims about Ms Baillie.
In one, Ross shouted: ‘He f***** your granddaughter.’ In another, Brand told Sachs: ‘But it was consensual, and she wasn’t menstrual, it was consensual lovely sex. It was full of respect I sent her a text. I’ve asked her to marry me, Andrew Sachs.’
Ms Baillie says that phone call to her grandfather Sachs (pictured here with his grandchildren) destroyed her relationship with him – they didn’t speak for eight years afterwards
Sachs, who was a national treasure for his role as the hapless waiter in the hit BBC show Fawlty Towers, held conservative views – and blamed Ms Baillie ‘entirely’ for the embarrassing episode
Ms Baillie said that her grandfather – pictured with John Cleese – was in a home and in the final stages of dementia in 2016 when she tried to reconcile with him and apologise for the incident
Sachs is seen here as Manuel and Cleese as Basil in BBC’s Fawlty Towers. The comedy is seen by many as the greatest British TV sitcom ever made and made the cast household names
Ms Baillie recalled: ‘Russell had this really famous Radio 2 show. He was on fire back then. And he made friends with Jonathan Ross. And they decided it would be really funny to call my grandfather Andrew Sachs and have an interview over the phone.
‘And his agent didn’t probably pass the message on, so they got the answer phone and left the most vile message in the world.’
At the time of the scandal there was widespread astonishment when it emerged that the show had been prerecorded but that no one within the production team had thought to flag it. And no senior BBC editor had even listened to the show before it was broadcast.
Ms Baillie says the fact that it was allowed to be aired by the BBC showed an astonishing lack of judgement – and it would have devastating and irrevocable consequences for her.
She said: ‘No girl wants her grandparents to hear that, let alone the world. Who wants their grandparents to know what they’re getting up to in the sack?
‘It was a split second that changed everybody’s life that was involved in it.’
Following the national furore, Brand resigned along with Radio 2 controller Lesley Douglas and head of compliance Dave Barber. Ross was suspended without pay for three months.
The BBC was fined £150,000 by media regulator Ofcom who described the broadcast of the messages as ‘gratuitously offensive, humiliating and demeaning.’
Recalling how Sachsgate contributed to her addiction to drugs and alcohol Ms Baillie said: ‘They [Brand and Ross] were slut shaming.
‘It was bullying towards my grandfather. Regardless of if I’m the biggest whore in the whole world, it doesn’t matter. It’s still bullying.
‘It was an in joke between the two of them little idiots.’
She added: ‘I was a really lost little girl and then I just said yes to everything. I thought I’m already a whore in your eyes so let’s give you whore then. It made me feel like, it doesn’t matter what I do now.
‘The drink and drugs were always a part of my life, but it wasn’t until many years later that it peaked. I numbed out for years with booze and drugs and boys, whatever.’
Ms Baillie revealed how Brand apologised to her for his conduct and even paid for her to attend a rehab in 2018 in Staffordshire, where she spent six months. But she relapsed again on alcohol and drugs after leaving.
But with the support of her family and friends, she is now six years clean and works as an artist and also hosts her own podcast focused on addiction issues.
Despite Brand’s apology, Ms Baillie insisted that one thing she has battled to come to terms with is the impact Sachsgate had on her relationship with Sachs and her grandmother, Adelaide.
Family members revealed how the couple, who came from a different generation, blamed Ms Baillie entirely for the incident.
She said: ‘I didn’t speak to my grandparents after that Sachsgate episode for eight years. I tried and I tried, and I called them, I wrote them letters, so I just decided to mourn them while they were alive.
‘I felt it was all a little bit unfair.’
Emotionally describing how she went to see Sachs in December 2016, following the long absence she said: ‘I eventually saw my granddad again. I don’t know if he knew who I was, he had very late stages of dementia. He was living in a beautiful care home for actors in retirement.
Ms Baillie says the notorious phone call was the catalyst for her life unravelling and she descended into drink and drug addiction for which spent six months living in a rehab facility
She has spent years putting her life back together and her family believe that Brand only paid for her time in rehab himself because he was driven by guilt at causing her to go off the rails
‘I remember it perfectly. I went to the home, and I sat opposite him. That was the last time I ever saw him. He looked me dead in the eyes and I looked him dead in the eyes. There was my grandad again – lucid moment.
‘I said ‘I’m really whole heartedly sorry about what happened and my part in it.’ I can’t control what other people do, only me. So, I cleaned up my side of the street as much as I could. And then he died.’
But she is haunted by the idea that Sachs may no longer have been able to register what was said.
Ms Baillie added: ‘I choose to believe that we sorted it but there’s no way of knowing really is there with someone with dementia?’
Ms Baillie revealed that she also apologised to her grandmother, who died a year later in 2017 but did not share any details about it, only saying: ‘I made amends to everyone.’
The Mail can also reveal that Ms Baillie provided a statement for Brand’s defence to be used at the trial – at their request, even though it was never used.
It’s thought they had taken it to have a riposte if any witnesses dwelt on the Sachsgate affair but as that didn’t happen it was never made public.
Ms Baillie says has no regrets about doing this as she simply told the truth – and wasn’t attempting to contradict the experiences of other women.
She said: ‘I answered their questions about like, did he ever do anything to me that could be considered not consensual? I had to tell the truth, which was no. Then they asked the more nuanced questions, like, could you see Russell doing this to any other women; was he ever aggressive? And again, all I’ve got is my experience.
‘I said no because that’s true, for me.’
And despite Brand’s conviction and her empathy for his victims, Ms Baillie insists that she has no regrets herself about having been involved with him.
Reflecting on the nature of their ‘relationship’ she said: ‘We were pretty much seeing each other just for sex. It was a very casual relationship. But over the one and a half or two years, I think we did start to quite like each other. Though I probably liked him more than he liked me.
Ms Baillie can now only reflect on her time with Brand and has concluded that he is an unwell sex addict and should spend the rest of his life trying to make amends to his victims
‘He was seeing loads of women, and I knew that. I was never in any doubt whatsoever that I was one of many but I didn’t really care at the time. He had his drug of choice on tap all day. I was just a piece of that, I was only one line out of many.’
Asked what might have attracted Brand to her she is frank: ‘I was an attractive twentysomething, available and willing to have sex. That’s the only qualification I needed.’
It’s only now she has learned that others Brand turned his attention to didn’t consent so freely.
She is adamant he should now use his media fortune to help those victims in the way he once helped her.
