Russell Brand Gets 10 Years: Looks Like Sarah Marshall Never Forgot

On Monday a London judge sentenced Russell Brand to ten and a half years in prison. Last week a jury found him guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault, for offences between 2004 and 2009, and not guilty of two other rape counts and one count of attempted indecent assault. Justice Joel Bennathan called him a sexual predator and praised the women who came forward for their determination and bravery, which, as these things go, is the only part of the story that needs no joke and gets none here.

Brand, for those who've been lucky, was a British comedian who moved to Hollywood, played the rock star Aldous Snow in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, was briefly married to Katy Perry, and then spent the last several years on his own internet channels talking about Christian faith, politics and conspiracies in the voice of a man who's just discovered breathing. He maintained his innocence the whole way, said every encounter was consensual, and conceded his memory of some events might be flawed. I'll grant him that last one. It's the first thing he's said in years that a jury agreed with.

There's an old idea in Hollywood that the role you're remembered for is the one that tells the truth about you. Brand spent the second half of his career trying to outrun Aldous Snow, the leather-trousered lunatic who believed rules were for other people. He grew a beard, found God, sold supplements, gave long speeches about the corrupt system to a camera in a nice house. And it turned out the system he'd been warning everyone about was the Crown Court, and it was every bit as unbending as he'd said, just not in the direction he'd hoped.

Think of the content he'll miss. A whole decade of mornings without a single eight-minute video about awakening. His audience will have to awaken on their own, which most of them have never tried. Prison in England, I'm told, offers a good deal of time for reflection, and if anyone was ever built to reflect, out loud, for hours, to people who can't leave, it's Russell Brand. For once the room will be truly captive. They'll know how we felt.

His supporters online have already decided the verdict was a conspiracy, which is touching. A man spends years teaching you not to trust anything, and the one lesson that sticks is the one that protects him. That's not a following. That's a customer base with a loyalty card.

He must serve at least two thirds of the sentence before he can be released on licence, so he'll be out somewhere around sixty. Still young enough to start a podcast, and old enough to finally sound like the wise man he always played. Sarah Marshall, it seems, never forgot. Neither did six women, and neither will anyone else.