There was never any doubt that Russell Brand’s wife Laura would be stoically by his side when he arrived at London’s Southwark Crown Court on Monday.
Clutching his hand both as the comedian entered and left the swearing in of the jury who will decide whether he is guilty of three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault, and one count of indecent assault, it showed the world she is standing by her husband of nine years.
Dressed in a chocolate brown trouser suit by American designer Veronica Beard, white trainers and a pair of sunglasses, Laura managed the slightest of smiles as she returned to the chauffeur-driven people carrier outside.
She is now expected to be back at the court, some 4,500 miles from the new Brand family home, a $2.5million (£1.89million) waterfront house on Florida’s Santa Rosa Beach, throughout her husband’s estimated ten-week trial.
For Laura, a woman never fully comfortable in the limelight, it is quite the defiant stand. But a long-term associate of the 38-year-old author and illustrator says the decision to support her husband was ‘the only one she would possibly ever make’ for the simple reason that she has never doubted his innocence.
Those who know her add that Laura’s unwavering loyalty to Brand, 51, has been ‘huge’ as he prepared for the trial which will hear a decade of allegations spanning from 1999 to 2009. Although the charges pre-date their marriage in 2017, the pair did date briefly in 2007.
Russell Brand leaves London's Southwark Crown court on the opening day of his trial with his wife of nine years Laura by his side
Brand arrives at court with a Bible in his hand to answer charges of rape, sexual assault and indecent assault
‘What Russell is being accused of was long before he and Laura got back together,’ says an associate. ‘It isn’t going to be easy, but they are determined to get through this.
‘Laura is absolutely besotted with Russell, she always has been. Being there for day one was a must for her.’
While Laura wasn’t with Brand yesterday – I’m reminded she has three children to care for – she is expected to make several more journeys to Southwark in the coming weeks.
It is understood the couple are staying in the Home Counties and will be spending time with her parents.
Laura, daughter of the Ryder Cup-winning golfer Bernard Gallacher and his wife Lesley, grew up with her elder sister, sports presenter Kirsty, and brother Jamie, an amateur golfer, in a six-bedroom mansion on the exclusive Wentworth Estate in Virginia Water, Surrey.
Her neighbours included the late Sir Bruce Forsyth and Sir Cliff Richard, while she was educated at the £45,000-a-year St George’s School in Ascot where Princess Beatrice was one of her contemporaries.
Laura went on to study art at university before entering the restaurant industry where she worked on the opening of Electric Diner, owned by the Soho House group, on Portobello Road in Notting Hill.
But that all changed in 2015 when Laura, then in her late 20s and heartbroken following a split from a boyfriend, was encouraged by a friend to go for a walk near the Grand Union canal in east London close to where she lived.
Brand with Laura, the daughter of a golf legend, as they go shopping in Hampstead in 2009
For Laura, it was a sliding doors moment. As she strolled along the towpath, she bumped into Brand who was also single and nursing a broken heart following his split from US pop singer Katy Perry.
Brand instantly recognised Laura – because it wasn’t the first time they’d met. Back in 2007, she’d briefly dated Brand while she was a 19-year-old art student. At the time Brand was hugely successful – hosting his own Radio 2 show, presenting reality show Big Brother’s Big Mouth plus its spin-off special Big Brother: According to Russell Brand and touring the UK with his stand-up show, Russell Brand: Only Joking.
At the time, Laura was one of many women to be romanced by Brand: he had also dated Rod Stewart’s daughter Kimberly, Big Brother star Imogen Thomas and Georgina Baillie, granddaughter of Fawlty Towers star Andrew Sachs, about whom Brand made lewd remarks in a prank phone call on his Radio 2 show with Jonathan Ross.
But their reunion came at a time when Brand, who was approaching 40, was yearning to settle down and marry again after splitting with Katy in 2011. ‘My ex had literally moved out of our flat that day, and I was heartbroken, with mascara running down my face,’ Laura told Grazia five years after their chance meeting.
‘As we came onto the footpath, Russell was standing there. It was like he’d organised it. I hadn’t seen him for years. He was so different. We both immediately knew it was going to be serious.’
They rekindled their romance, moving in together almost immediately.
Brand with his ex, US pop singer Katy Perry, who he dated for two years before the couple spilt in 2011
‘Laura was besotted with Russell,’ a friend told me. ‘She wanted to mend him. She had known him all of those years back when he was the man to date, but by the time she met him again he had been through the mill with Katy Perry.’ Laura is the woman who, sources claim, tamed him after years as a drug-taking, hell-raising lothario who boasted of having bedded 1,000 women.
‘He was over that by the time he met Laura, way past it all,’ says a former friend. ‘There were never any rumours about his love life after they began their relationship.’
Brand and Laura wasted little time setting up their life together. Their first child, Mabel, now nine, came along a year after they met.
Then, in 2017, they married at Remenham Church near their home in Henley-on-Thames, joined by famous guests such Jonathan Ross, Noel Gallagher and David Baddiel.
The newlyweds welcomed daughter Peggy a year later and their son Herb in 2023.
Meanwhile, Laura gave up her career in hospitality and began writing books. In 2020, she published The Joy Journal for Magical Everyday Play for children. Next, came The Joy Journal for Grown-ups and then Slow Down And Be Here Now.
Life was idyllic for the Brands as they enjoyed a quiet life in rural Oxfordshire. Married life consisted of dogs, chickens and lots of cats.
The couple also bought a narrowboat for weekend cruises and started working as wellness gurus, hosting a festival called Community with Laura + Russell Brand in Hay-on-Wye in the summer of 2023.
The three-day vegan, alcohol-free event included holistic therapies, a practical life workshop, canoeing and comedy. It was quite the contrast to the Brand I used to see hanging out in the hippest of haunts in north London. ‘Russell didn’t want to be in the limelight any more,’ says a former friend of the star. ‘He wanted to escape and Laura was the perfect person to escape with.’
Before that, Brand’s love life was barely out of the headlines – hardly a surprise when you look at his romantic back catalogue which features the likes of Kate Moss, Jemima Khan and even Peaches Geldof.
Once hanging off Brand’s arm was the finest status symbol in showbusiness. Today, few women would want to be in Laura’s shoes.
Back in 2023, in an investigation carried out by The Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches, five women publicly accused Brand of sexual assault, as well as sexual and emotional abuse. Brand denied all allegations, saying in response that he had been ‘very, very promiscuous’, but that his relationships had been ‘absolutely, always consensual’.
Those claims led to the Metropolitan Police opening an investigation, which saw Brand charged in April last year with two counts of rape, one count of indecent assault and two counts of sexual assault, in relation to alleged offences involving four women between 1999 and 2005.
New charges were brought in December last year, alleging one count of rape and one of sexual assault against two women, said to have taken place in London in 2009.
Today, there is no sign of Laura on social media. She deleted her Instagram in 2023 following the investigation into Brand. She has also not published any books recently and she appears to have ditched her plans to become a wellness guru.
In April last year, Brand announced they had moved to the US – but not before he was baptised in the River Thames by Bear Grylls.
‘Seemingly, they wanted a new start,’ an associate of the pair tells me. ‘Russell has maintained his innocence from the word go but the noise around it all is a lot.’
In America, they live on the trendy Scenic Highway 30A, the winding coastal corridor along Florida’s Emerald Coast, which locals call the Hamptons of the South. Laura’s move to the US, leaving behind her own beloved family, begs the question of just what her father Bernard makes of his son-in-law?
While it’s unknown what he says about the allegations, one showbiz source says he was always ‘very fond’ of Brand. Meanwhile, Lesley, whom Bernard married in 1973, is said to be an ‘extremely supportive’ mother.
As for Kirsty, 12 years her sister’s senior, she too has been very public in sharing her support for her brother-in-law. Back in 2023, she shared a video Brand posted on Instagram protesting his innocence alongside a red heart emoji. Her sympathetic post prompted much backlash and she later removed it.
Kirsty is said to ‘always be loyal’ to Laura. That sisterly bond, say those who know Laura, is going to be crucial in helping her get through the coming weeks as she’s forced to hear those allegations levelled at her husband.