Russell hits back at tabloid kiss-and-tell

Russell Brand has hit back at a tabloid journalist who targeted him in a typical‘honey trap’ sting.

Undercover Sunday Mirror journalist Nikhita Mahajan approached Brand after a London comedy gig last week, and persuaded him to take her back to his flat.

But once there she refused to even kiss him – but instead took note of his increasingly desperate seduction lines, which she published in today’s newspaper under the headline ‘Night I Was Branded’.

On his 6 Music show today, Brand, who was targeted because of his dalliances with Kate Moss, said: ‘Entrapment is what it is.

‘She was this journalist coming back to my flat offering, err, fun to say the least, but she turned out to be tiresome. Turns out it was all a big trick to write about me.

‘She should be ashamed. She has told needless, senseless lies about old Russ.’

‘Remember I’m single, with no kids. So if after a gig a girl swans up to me, I think “nice”. It’s a bit of a hobby.’

Calling the story ‘a kiss and tell tale without any kiss’, Brand claimed the quotes attributed to him were ‘odd and untrue’.

Mahajan claimed he begged her: ‘I am a sexy wild man and you're nice and soft...let me hold you. Oh hot love, hot lips’ and  ‘If you let me kiss you, you'll feel better. Look into my eyes... Please let me see your sexy body. Please let me touch you and stuff. How can you resist?’

He is also reported to have told her: ‘I'm sure you're great at conversation but right now all I'm really interested in is getting you into be’ and ‘just forget Kate, she's irrelevant. I prefer women with a bit of meat on them anyway’.

‘I don’t say stuff like that,’ said Brand, who turns 31 today. ‘I never said any of them things. I’d be so embarrassed to say that.’

Mahajan approached Brand after a show at Lowdown At The Albany last week, where she said he was ‘beating off adoring fans, signing autographs and posing for pictures’.

‘You, my dear, look very interesting,’ the now teetotal ex-heroin addict reportedly said. ‘I'm Russell. Barman - make that two mineral waters.’

‘Who says, “Barman”? it’s not a Western,’ he told listeners on his BBC Radio show. He also denied having a Jacuzzi and a giant-screen TV, like the ‘bachelor pad’ described in the paper.

Brand tried to eke his revenge by putting on an effeminate voice and calling the Sunday Mirror newsdesk with a phoney kiss-and-tell story about himself and his bizarre ‘Robin Hood’ fetish.

But the reporter quickly rumbled him, saying: ‘This is probably a wind-up’ before hanging up.

Published: 4 Jun 2006