It has been a grimly fascinating few days following the stories about Russell Brand, which prompted this brain dump.
Supposedly, his behaviour was an open secret but it was news to me. With Savile, I can't remember when I didn't know of various horrible rumours about him. But that was all they were. I didn't really know what, if anything, he had been up to.
Nor did I know about the cheeky radio phone conversation between the two, who are now bonded forever in the public's mind. It does seem rather apt as they now represent a queasy attitude towards women that was prevalent in Sir Jim's Sixties and Seventies heyday, and came roaring back revamped in the Nineties and Noughties.
Maybe we can blame it all on the Loaded era but a lot of us were complicit. I remember buying the first issue of that mag - the Liz Hurley cover. It felt like a breath of fresh air at the time - witty, irreverent, immature, and sexy... or should that be sexist? No-one was quite sure even then. Things got a lot clearer with the pornification of magazines for morons like Nuts and Zoo - single entendres all round.
But the Nineties did feel a bit more relaxed than the previous decade. After the long slog of the Eighties, things did look like they could only get better. The economy was on the up, the Tories were on their way out, the music was fun, and everyone (of my age) wanted to party.
Meanwhile, the new Ladette culture was touted as letting women be more open about their sexuality. Inevitably that ended up benefitting men more than women.
There is some great observation of this and the Britpop scene in Miki Berenyi's book Fingers Crossed. She writes about a fair bit of shitty behaviour by men at the time, and it's apparent that the breath of fresh air went stale fairly quickly.
The likes of Brand arrived and thrived in that confused not quite post-Lad culture where bad behaviour was still seen as colourful rather than a pain in the arse.
It's ironic given his ranty takes on the evils of MSM and the establishment, they are what made his career. The Sun made him its regular Shagger of the Year. Saggy old Jonathan Ross clung to this damaged individual for relevance on his awful Radio 2 show. His big break was mouthing off on a glorified gameshow. His battalions of keyboard cranks would have not a clue who he was without the mainstream stamp of approval that he now disavows.
Brand's own heyday now looks terribly dated and his attempt at reinvention seems both calculated and desperate - like a creepy Hoxton David Icke.
Whatever he did - at the very least he has a creepy (that word again) attitude to women - he was enabled and celebrated by the prevailing culture at the time, which saw his Seventies throwback act as the new entertainment. A bit of a laugh.
That culture has shifted now and while the playing field is still not level, there is a recognition that certain behaviours don't pass the sniff test.
The BBC and Channel 4 are currently scouring him from their archives. Coming a day after the Metropolitan Police announced it had received a report of an assault by Brand, and on the day when it says it has 1,000 officers suspended or on restricted duties, it looks like it won't be so easy to erase the mark of sexism in our society.
