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Comedian and self-styled spiritual guru Russell Brand has been dropped from star billing at an Australian wellness festival in the wake of sexual assault allegations.
Brand, 48, was signed up as the headline act at the Wanderlust Festival in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, three dates scheduled for February next year, but those plans are now off.
"Due to circumstances that have recently come to light, Wanderlust and Russell Brand have agreed that Mr Brand will not be appearing at the Wanderlust Festival," Charlotte Hill, the chief executive of Wanderlust Australia, told 9news.com.au.
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In cutting Brand loose, Wanderlust joins a growing list of organisations distancing themselves from the performer, who denies all of the sexual assault allegations and has not been charged with any criminal offences.
"Take the comedic path to wellness with Russell Brand," a now-defunct promotional poster for the 2024 festival read.
One of Brand's alleged rape victims has condemned Brand's celebrated wellness persona, saying she knows "the demon underneath".
"He wants to help with meditation, he's all in this wellness world … it just makes me so mad that he has a platform for that," the woman, who was given the pseudonym Nadia, told British newspaper The Times.
The Wanderlust festival has links to Light Warrior, an investment group co-founded by rich lister Radek Sali and former Goldman Sachs investment banker Adam Gregory.
Targeting the highly lucrative health and wellbeing space, the festival is typically comprised of yoga and meditation sessions, talks from speakers and nutritional experts, and music.
Wanderlust also sells vitamins and supplements, a sector where Sali made his $250 million fortune after selling his company Swisse, a vitamin business, to Hong Kong's Biostime in 2015.
In recent years Brand has reinvented himself as a wellbeing and spiritual guru, as well as espousing conspiracy theories, and has amassed a huge, revenue-generating online following.
YouTube yesterday said Brand will no longer be able to make money from the video streaming site while the allegations of sexual assault are being investigated.
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All marketing promotions of Brand and the 2024 Wanderlust Festival appear to have been swiftly removed from the website, but the company is still hosting a biography page for Brand, where it pitches him as "a recognised spokesperson on the subject of addiction and recovery".
Brand denies allegations of sexual assault made by four women in a Channel 4 television documentary and The Times and Sunday Times newspapers.
The accusers, who have not been named, include one who said she was sexually assaulted during a relationship with him when she was 16.
Another woman alleges Brand raped her in Los Angeles in 2012.
Brand was in the middle of a comedy tour when the allegations were published, but that has now been suspended.
– Reported with Associated Press
