Pinheiro told the jury he could specifically remember Russell Brand saying “things may have gone a little bit too far” a couple of months after their Bournemouth trip.

“I most definitely recall the words,” he said, when questioned about his memory of the conversation.

He said he could not be sure if Brand said “things got heated” or “things got out of hand”, but he insisted: “Definitely that’s the gist of what was said.”

Pinheiro repeatedly told Russell Brand’s defence barrister he would not have gone into “detail” in an initial phone call with police about the Bournemouth allegations.

Ian Winter KC said to the witness: “Let me be very clear, you do not recollect any of the things about Bournemouth in respect of what you have told us about Mr Brand?”

Pinheiro responded:

I have a fantastic memory of those events – I’m not sure why you think I haven’t.

He later added:

I probably would have spoken about it once allegations came to light but there is a good chance prior to that I would have been careful about what I said and not put myself in a situation where I could have been sued.

Mark Pinheiro came forward to police on 6 April 2025, two days after the rape allegation against Russell Brand during the party conference in Bournemouth was first publicised.

Asked by Brand’s counsel, Ian Winter KC, why he did not ask the Metropolitan police for the date of the alleged offence, Pinheiro said:

For me there would only have been one night where it could have occurred. It was the night where Russell didn’t return home.

Under questioning about the reliability of his account, Pinheiro told jurors:

I haven’t alleged Russell did anything. I have merely described Russell’s behaviour and what words are ascribed to him, and his behaviour the morning after the night we didn’t see him.

All I have volunteered is information, I haven’t accused Russell of rape.

Pinheiro told the court he deliberately did not tell the reporter about the alleged incident in Bournemouth because their questions were “general about my relationship with Russell”.

Challenged by the defence barrister Winter that he had made “specific” allegations about Brand, Pinheiro said he was being as “truthful as I possibly could”.

He added:

I have always remembered the situation that happened in Bournemouth.

Pinheiro said the alleged incident in the south coast town was “pivotal” in how his relationship with Brand formed.

Pinheiro said he has spoken out about Russell Brand “factually”, suggesting he had also told the Times reporter about “pleasant memories” of his friend.

“Because of the nature of the conversation, and the questions I would have been asked were about his sexual behaviour and the worst cases I would have witnessed, that would have been the nature of the kind of answers I gave,” he said.

“I spoke factually about events. If the behaviour was unpleasant, the result would have sounded like an unpleasant comment.

“I didn’t go out of my way to say specifically unpleasant things.”

Under cross-examination, Pinheiro said the events of 1999 were “quite memorable”, adding:

That was quite a big event that occurred, and not something you easily forget.

He told the court he spoke to the Sunday Times about Russell Brand in September 2023 for just under an hour, but did not talk about the alleged incident in Bournemouth.

“I don’t think that was the interest, and I was also quite careful about what things I did speak to the press about,” he said.

“They were talking more generally about the relationship with him, without specifically talking about these particular events.”

In his cross-examination of Mark Pinheiro, Russell Brand’s barrister Ian Winter KC probed the witness on whether he had “on many occasions” described the comedian as a friend.

Pinheiro responded:

I wouldn’t say so, I wouldn’t say there are many occasions on social media at all.

One of the things we talked about with Russell was he didn’t want private material making its way on social media outside of his professional persona.

Pinheiro recalled being invited to a preview of Russell Brand’s show Messiah Complex in 2013, and seeing women lined up against a wall in the theatre.

“Russell would be networking, schmoozing, talking with various people backstage,” he said.

“There would be a moment he would break away from the networking, walk along the queue of girls, and ask a girl to come out and join him.

“The girl would join him and go off to a quiet area of the theatre, usually the toilet, and we wouldn’t see them for about 10 minutes.

“When he returned, he returned back to the schmoozing, time passed, and he returned to the queue, walked along the queue, picked another girl from the queue and repeat the same thing, go off to somewhere quiet.”

Russell Brand would have around two women a week come back to his flat for sex, Pinheiro told the court.

He told the court he asked Brand to move out after they had lived together for around a year, but said they stayed in touch and met up on holidays.

“I had many situations and occasions where I saw Russell pick up women,” he said.

“Russell approached a girl with a huge amount of enthusiasm and interest in them, which was enough to stop them in their tracks and hear what he had to say.”

Pinheiro said Brand gave women compliments and cracked jokes, including ones aimed at himself. He added:

He had a self-deprecating side to himself. He was able to laugh at himself.

He would say all the terrible things he might be like, or what he might like to do to them.

Girls found that shocking and were very surprised to hear someone being so brutally open and honest about how they were sexually.

Pinheiro said he and Brand were performing at a cabaret show at the conference fringe. When their final show ended, Brand said he was “going to go and get laid”, Pinheiro told the court.

Pinheiro continued:

We didn’t see Russell until the following morning.

We all wondered where he was because he hadn’t returned home.

Close to midday, we got a knock on the door and Russell just arrived back home. We asked him where he was, what happened overnight and he was clearly ruffled, discombobulated, his manner was all over the place – really flustered.”

Pinheiro alleged that Brand had told him “all you need to do is tell the woman what they need to hear” for a “successful pull”.

Pinheiro told the court that Brand’s aim was to “never leave a situation without having some kind of conquest, always trying to score in every endeavour”.

Pinheiro told the court that Brand had “boasted” about wanting to sleep with 5,000 women as they made their way to the Labour party conference in Bournemouth in 1999, where they performed at a fringe event.

Pinheiro said they talked in the back of the car about “meeting girls, pulling girls, picking up girls”.

“He hoped that one day he would have been able to have slept with over 5,000 girls, that was his target,” Pinheiro told jurors.

“He began boasting about certain strategies he would employ in his endeavour to meet women and pull women.”

Concluding the prosecution’s opening statement, Karmy-Jones said:

Six women, separate women with different allegations, they don’t know each other and when you hear them I have no doubt you will find their evidence compelling.”

The court has now adjourned for a break until 2pm.

The prosecution outlined the allegations made by the final woman in the case, who said she met Brand while working on a project for Channel 4 in 2009.

The court heard Brand had demanded a massage, walked up to a chair the alleged victim was sitting on and placed his head directly into her groin area. Karmy-Jones told jurors that Brand had said “come on then, do it”, leaving the woman feeling “startled and incredibly uncomfortable”.

She said the alleged victim “was given no time to react – she ‘froze’”.

Karmy-Jones is now taking the jury through the next allegation, involving a woman who met Brand after seeing his show at the Hammersmith Apollo in London in 2009.

The alleged victim said she remembered Brand telling the audience at the end of his show: “If you see me out in the foyer and you think ‘I really fancy him and would like to have sex with him, but I can’t because it is Russell Brand’, you probably can have sex with me. My age range is from 16 to death.”

The woman, who attended the show with a friend, said Brand pointed at them and they were invited backstage for drinks, the court heard.

Karmy-Jones outlined what the prosecution says happened at the bar:

On the way she bumped into Mr Brand. He stopped, he looked at her. They had a very brief exchange and then he just kissed her, there and then, on the lips in the middle of the bar.”

The prosecutor said the woman felt “star struck” and agreed to perform a sex act on Brand, which the court was told was consensual.

Karmy-Jones said the complainant was in a relationship at the time and felt “regret”.

The prosecution outlined the second allegation against Brand, involving a woman who worked at MTV at the time of the alleged incident in 2001.

The court heard that the woman offered to show Brand where the toilets were, when he allegedly told her, “Come in, go on, come in,” and “grabbed her hard by her forearm”.

Karmy-Jones told jurors the alleged victim “resisted by struggling and pulling back”.

She continued to resist saying, ‘I’m not coming in there, don’t be silly. Are you mad? Get off,’ and she managed to pull herself away, and to release his grasp.

At that point he gave up and went into the toilet, and she left the area.”

The woman felt “bewildered and shocked” by the alleged assault, jurors were told.

Karmy-Jones turned to the first allegation against Brand, in which he is alleged to have raped a woman in a hotel room during a Labour party conference in Bournemouth in 1999.

She told the court a witness named Mark Pinheiro said he recalled that Brand was “desperate” to have sex before they left the conference.

As you will hear, the defendant did achieve his objective.

He found a victim, engaged with her, told her ‘exactly what she needed to hear’, and then manipulated the situation so as to have sex with her.”

The court heard Brand had burst into a flat the morning after the alleged rape in Bournemouth and told the group he was with to “pack up their stuff” and that they “had to leave town immediately”. Karmy-Jones said:

Once in the car, the defendant behaved oddly, shrinking down in the back seat to hide his head beneath the window.

When pressed about where he had been the night before, and why they had to leave so abruptly, he said he had forgotten he had an audition.”

Brand would later admit to Pinheiro that it was not an audition but that he had had sex with a woman in Bournemouth the night before their hasty departure, telling him that things “might have got a little out of hand”, Karmy-Jones told jurors.

The prosecution cited remarks made by Brand’s friends during the early years of his career, including one who described the comedian as someone who “was rampant in his desire to have sex”.

Another friend, speaking about Brand before he found fame, described him as “very impulsive. His impulsivity led him to be very single-minded, and women and sex were a goal and an obsession,” Karmy-Jones told the court.

She told jurors that these comments would provide an insight into what Brand was like in his former years.

She said: “This is important because what you must bear in mind in this case is that, although you’re sat as jurors in Southwark crown court on October 14 2026 listening to my opening address, you will be considering offences that took place between around 27 and 17 years ago, when the defendant was aged roughly between 24-33.

“So the man who you will be considering in this trial is not the Mr Brand who is sitting in the dock, who is now 51.”

She added that while Brand may have changed both physically and as a person in the years since that “his responsibility for wrongs done, crimes committed at a younger age remain the same”.

Brand was driven to the court in a black Mercedes-Benz van, which parked directly outside the court building, where crowds of reporters and photographers had gathered for his trial.

Brand waited inside the vehicle for around a minute before stepping out, wearing a dark suit, a black-and-white striped shirt, a long white tie and sunglasses. He reached out for his wife’s hand before the pair walked together towards the court.