It was the best of trials, it was the worst of trials, but above all it was the strangest of criminal trials.

If you looked at Rex v Russell Edward Brand objectively there was a challenging prosecution case, there was barely a defence and, crucially, there was little in the way of actual evidence.

What were we all doing here in Southwark Crown Court, sifting through the remains of the days when, by his own admission, Brand was a wild-haired, promiscuous gadabout; a priapic gonk in guyliner who had ruthlessly used his celebrity to facilitate sex and 'dedicated a lot of my life to what seems now beyond-reckless philandering and idiocy'?

He faced three charges of rape, three of sexual assault and one of attempted indecent assault, all of which took place between 17 and 27 years ago.

One of the more serious charges left a victim bleeding and in pain; the most minor was an arm-pulling incident that lasted for 20 seconds.

Brand's defence barrister Ian Winter KC, a man who seemed perpetually on the brink of utter fury, barked that the time-lapse made the case almost impossible to litigate, and one could see his struggle. Effective chronology was lost in the churn of the decades.

Key details were forgotten by both the defendant and the complainants, who can only be referred to outside the court as anonymous numbers. Yet other particulars were unforgettable, indelible.

'He just changed suddenly from camp, friendly and effeminate to monster-like,' said Complainant One. 'You treated me like an animal,' wrote Complainant Five to Brand. 'I felt like my innocence had been taken,' said Complainant Three.

For the prosecution, Riel Karmy-Jones KC told of how the women had their peace of mind menaced by these events of yesteryear, of how they had been 'haunted' by what they alleged Brand did to them.

In a voice as crisp as a starched napkin, she said they had 'nothing to gain' by coming forward, except perhaps 'some closure'. Their testimony was convincing and persuasive but one wondered if it would really be enough to convict a powerful man of one of the most serious charges in British law.

And perhaps it says more than it should that the trial was expected to last for six to ten weeks but was over in just over three.

In the end it took the jury of eight men and four women two days of deliberations to find Brand guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault, and not guilty of two other rape charges and one count of attempted indecent assault. 

The pattern of behaviour had been established. The verdicts don't necessarily mean that some women were believed while others were not, more that their allegations could not be proved beyond reasonable doubt.

Justice is elusive, particularly in rape cases where the truth is often opaque, beyond our field of vision. It boils down to his word against theirs, memory versus lechery, salvation gained and reputation lost.

There were few witnesses to these grisly events that took place in a celebrity landscape of backstage areas, television stations and video studios, then onto bedrooms and bedsits, toilets and cars, all of them soundtracked by the wheedling exhortations of a man – a 'highly fanciable man', according to his KC – who believed that he had 'a birthright to an orgasm'.

Perhaps the most astonishing scenes in the trial came when Brand gave his evidence.

Under oath on the witness stand, he initially appeared to be in his element. For over two weeks the comedian slash actor turned guru cum preacher had been sitting in Court 3 behind the glass wall of the dock, as mute and helpless as a scientific specimen under a microscope slide.

Now here he was, stepping back into the warm embrace of the spotlight, ready for his close-up, keen to have his voice heard. He started off strong, with plenty of flourish and swagger.

Questioned by his own barrister, he bellowed back replies while my-lord-ing-it this and my-lord-ing-it that to the judge, Mr Justice Bennathan, sitting to his right. 

It wasn't long before Brand started tossing around his usual word salads – using terms such as 'vivacious', 'lithe', 'badinage' and so on – a tactic so loquacious that he even used the word 'loquacious'.

With his hands clasped behind his back or sometimes in his pockets, he had the air of a man on a roll, a man who thought things were looking pretty damned good.

Yet the second Ms Karmy-Jones stood up to cross examine him, everything changed.

Asked the first question, 'You blame the media, don't you?', Brand seemed to fall apart, to mentally collapse as some kind of inner panic engulfed him.

'Is that a difficult question?' she asked, as the tense silence continued.

'In some ways,' he replied, meek as a mouse.

Although Brand rallied, more excruciating silences followed, each one a cannonball through his carefully constructed ramparts.

Each one evidence of the cognitive dissonance of a man who is buckling under the pressure of lying; a man who cannot supply the answer and whose ego cannot accept his own failing.

It was oddly reminiscent of Brand's appearance on the Piers Morgan Uncensored television show this year, when the self-styled 'silver-tongued comedian' struggled for over 90 seconds to locate a specific Bible passage he claimed had comforted him at a previous hearing in this very courthouse. He didn't know where to look, in more ways than one.

Brand's ever-loyal wife Laura Gallacher came with him to the trial nearly every day, dutifully by his side, always as calm and bland as a pail of fresh milk.

She would smile, hold his hand, sometimes give him a reassuring pat on the back when they entered the court complex.

If it is harrowing to sit in a public gallery and listen to accusations of your husband's penis being forced into mouths and down throats, of anal and oral rape, of torn rectums and genital exposure, then she did not show it.

On day 11, giving her own evidence as a character witness for the father of her three children, Ms Gallacher said that Brand was 'caring, kind and a wonderful father'.

Asked by Mr Winter if her husband respected her when she didn't want to be sexual with him, she replied: 'Yes, absolutely.'

Laura Gallacher is 12 years younger than Brand, likes to wear her hair in a bun like Brand, has become a devoted Christian like Brand and chirrups happily at his elbow during their inane scripture reading Sunday podcasts, which sometimes reach over 1.5 million views.

When she gave evidence in court, Brand was at his most animated, mouthing words at her, smiling and encouraging from his seat in the dock. 

Last Monday, Mrs Brand even came to court dressed exactly like Mr Brand; the couple were mirror images of each other in white shirts, flowing scarves, grey trousers, navy jackets and matching sunglasses – a disquieting sight for those who worry that Laura is less a loyal marriage partner and more of a surrendered wife and chief member of the Russell Brand holy cult than is strictly comfortable to witness.

To Ian Winter KC, however, was she not fragrant? Was she not the jewel in the crown of his defence? He even alluded to Ms Gallacher's testimony in his summing-up.

'She fell in love with that man in full knowledge of what he was doing. She married him, she bore him three children,' he said, concluding that she would not have done so if Brand was 'guilty as charged'.

Can that possibly be true? How could he know for sure? Indeed, sometimes it was difficult to know where the defence was heading and occasionally it was straight back to the Republic of Gilead, where a woman – gasp – invited a total stranger back to her bedsit in the middle of the night.

Other women were seemingly a little bit 'tipsy looking', outfits were questionable and apparently 'a man would have to be a psychopath to rape someone and ask if they were enjoying it'.

Well, quite. Mr Winter also wanted to know why, if Brand was so promiscuous, had only six women come forward to complain? It can now be revealed that many more have, while the Crown Prosecution Service wanted to limit the number of complainants in this trial to only six.

So how did he get away with it for so long? The corrupting influence of celebrity ripples through this case from beginning to end, warping all those it touches, including Brand himself. 

Complainant Five was disparagingly described by the defence as an obsessive Russell Brand superfan who met him backstage at a concert in London and willingly took part in a threesome.

A few days later, Brand invited the 21-year-old to his London home, and she turned up smelling of alcohol.

Surely this made her more, not less, vulnerable? Perhaps Brand should have exhibited a duty of care towards this starstruck, fragile creature instead of using her to reclaim his orgiastic birthright and forcing her to have anal sex against her will.

Yet according to his own defence barrister, the jury was not there to morally judge Brand's actions.

'Disgusting, distasteful, immoral, who cares?' concluded Mr Winter, telling the jury that Brand did have a lot of sex, but that none of it was unlawful. In the end, they begged to differ.

I can't pretend that the trial was comfortable to sit through or even easy to call. Guilty or innocent? Maligned or malign? Despite a natural aversion to Russell Brand, a thoroughly bad person and conspiracy theorist who blames the media for everything, there were aspects of the case that were troubling.

Allegations of sexual misconduct against Brand were first made in a Channel 4 documentary and a newspaper investigation, broadcast and published in 2023. They featured anonymous women making claims that were never brought to the attention of the authorities, a development which Brand said 'devastated' his life.

Independently of each other, the six women in this trial went to the police after watching the documentary. Good for them. That is entirely their right – and they were right to do so.

For some of these victims, the sex with Brand was initially consensual before events took a darker turn. For others, he just seemed to spontaneously attack or grab them when the opportunity arose.

And while one can believe these victims deserve to be respected and have their day in court, to finally find closure and justice, it still leaves an ethical difficulty. Which is that if you have sex with a stranger whom you know to be hypersexualised, then it turns into the kind of sex you don't want to have, but you don't scream and you don't accuse him of rape until 25 years later – is that entirely reasonable?

The jury thought it was – and that is all that matters here.

In the three and a bit weeks it took the case to conclude, Russell Brand seemed to age a thousand years. Yesterday, he looked hollowed out, his wattage dimmed, his dandy highwayman swagger but a distant memory.

He came to court forced to do battle with the ghosts of who he claims was his former 'idiotic, promiscuous' self. Listen. He is a different man now, a late-life, God-fearing Christian who has found comfort in the devout.

He frequently carried a Bible into court, sometimes he held a silver cross in his hands as he sat in the dock.

Brand now faces the prospect of years behind bars, meaning that his convenient religious conversion seven months after the first allegations were made public might prove to be very prudent indeed.

For only Jesus can save him now.