Russell Brand responded to allegations made by six women as he gave evidence at Southwark Crown Court on Wednesday.

Brand, who is on trial accused of rape and sexual assault, took the witness stand for more than four hours where he was cross-examined by the prosecution.

Alleged victims say Brand switched suddenly after appearing charming, forced them into sexual activity in a toilet, a hotel room, workplace corridors, and his bedroom and acted as if nothing had happened after the attacks.

Brand is facing seven criminal charges: three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of attempted indecent assault.

He denies all of the charges, and said in court that sexual consent is "fundamental" and “more important than sex itself”.

Here are the biggest revelations from the trial on Wednesday.

During the trial, Brand told jurors that he could not get any friends or former colleagues to give evidence in his defence, in the wake of being publicly accused of offences against women three years ago.

His barrister, Ian Winter KC, asked Brand to spell out the effects on his friends and colleagues of being accused of rape and sexual misconduct in reporting by the Sunday Times, The Times, and a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary in September 2023.

Brand replied: “It was devastating.”

Mr Winter asked: “Were you able to persuade a single person with relevant evidence to come to give evidence on your behalf?”

Brand replied: “I have not.”

The barrister continued: “Would they touch you with a barge pole?”, and Brand replied: “No.”

Brand was asked about an incident in the wake of the 2023 reporting when he was blocked from entering Great Ormond Street Hospital to be with his sick baby son.

“The reason given by Great Ormond Street Hospital when my son was receiving open heart surgery and subsequent treatment was due to the material published,” he said.

Brand said he was told “they had to bar my attendance and presence.

“They were unclear about what particular legal reason there was, but that was the reason they gave to my wife Laura and I.”

Brand told the court he had an obsession with sex as a younger man, but denied setting himself a “goal” to sleep with 5,000 women.

He insisted that he has never forced himself on a woman, telling jurors consent is “non-negotiable” and “more important than sex itself”.

Mark Pinheiro, a former friend of Brand, had told the trial about the comedian’s techniques for “pulling” women and allegedly revealed an ambition to sleep with 5,000 women.

Prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones KC asked: “Is it a goal you may have had?”

Brand replied: “I don’t agree, I don’t recall the conversation you are referring to.”

He admitted to being “obsessed” with sex in his younger years but denied the extent of the impact on his life.

Ms Karmy-Jones asked him: “Do you accept that you were desperate for it and sometimes couldn’t function without it?”

“No,” Brand said.

Turning to Mr Pinheiro’s suggestion he wanted to sleep with 5,000 women, he said: “While I don’t remember, it’s entirely possible it’s the kind of badinage I would have engaged in when I was 24.”

He added that it would have been a “joke” if he had told Mr Pinheiro he would not leave a situation with a woman without a conquest.

It was suggested Brand had pretended to be gay in order to convince the woman he is accused of raping to let him join her in her hotel room.

Mr Karmy-Jones produced a page from Brand’s book, My Booky Wook, which had a picture of him aged seven with the caption: “This is the exact moment when I decided to act gay to attract girls. It took 15 years to produce results.”

“Is that what you did Mr Brand? Pretend to be gay to attract women?,” asked the prosecutor.

“No,” Brand replied.

He then added: “It’s a joke. ‘Look at me, I’m a little boy in my garden and 15 years later… I was meeting women’. It was a joke.”

Ms Karmy-Jones read out other extracts from the book, in which Brand had said he “would never have relented until I received my birthright orgasm”.

In one passage he wrote: “My egotism and the single-mindedness with which I pursued potentially sexual conquests could often make me uneasy company”.

In another he set out: “Now if I want something – whether it’s a job or a woman – I will determinedly, resolutely, remove anything that’s in the way, until I possess the object of my desire.”

In the book, Brand referred to himself as a “fervid, febrile mass of sexual energy” towards the end of sex, adding: “I’ll do anything. I’m demonically sexy.”

And he said it ends up with him as a “guilty little berk in a sweaty tank top”.

Ms Karmy-Jones put to Brand that he is “guilty”, and he responded: “Actually not guilty is my plea in every single case.”

One of the allegations against Brand is that he raped a fan after meeting her at one of his Hammersmith Apollo stand-up performances in 2009.

He told the court he stored her name in his phone next to the letter T, which he said stood for “tart”.

Asked what he meant by the word he replied: “That was what I used to denote casual hook-ups.”

He also added the letters AP by her name, which he said stood for "anal play", meaning "fooling around with anal sex".

He put two asterisks next to the contact as well, which he told the jury meant: “Never, ever forget this individual, this is a memorable encounter.”