He is the womanising, wheeler-dealing 'Del Boy' who paid for a prostitute to take his teenage son's virginity during a sordid trip to the Far East.

And this week, Ronald Brand sparked fury outside court when he ranted to the media that his predator son Russell was the real 'victim', not the women the disgraced star had violated.

Shortly after Brand was jailed for ten and a half years for raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others, the 82-year-old even accused his son's victims of having 'chased' and 'harassed' the ex-comedian.

Yet Ron's bizarre outburst was typical for a man whose unconventional upbringing of his now-jailed son, 51, would have provided Sigmund Freud with enough material for a lifetime.

In his two best-selling autobiographies, Russell wrote extensively of Ron, a flamboyant Romford market trader and lothario, describing him as an 'Essex Cavalier' for whom 'every week [brought] a different woman and a new scheme for riches'.

The impressionable young Russell aspired to emulate his father by pursuing sex and money with gusto – along with only rarely bestowed paternal approval.

Ron, who grew up on a council estate in Dagenham, had himself endured a difficult childhood, losing his own father when he was just seven. 

He married Brand's mother Barbara in 1969 – but the marriage collapsed when their son was just six months old. And while Barbara became a 'doting' single mother, Ron was a 'sporadic presence', turning up for what Russell, in his characteristically woolly prose, called 'cyclonic visits'.

One of the first anecdotes in Brand's 2007 memoir My Booky Wook details how Ron 'would invariably arrive late' for weekend visits. 'A huge argument would ensue, which would generally end with both my mother and myself in tears,' he recalled.

At his father's bachelor flat in Brentwood, young Russell told how he was left in front of the television while his father read newspapers or 'diddled birds' in another room.

'I would mainly watch comedy videos, Elvis films and porn,' he admitted. By the age of four, Brand claimed, he was 'a weary connoisseur' of his father's 'reservoir of pornography'.

'I think I always had a premature awareness of sexuality, but Ron Brand's penchant for leaving me to occupy my infant mind with his cache of girlie magazines certainly did nothing to stem the erotic tide,' he wrote.

'I adored the cartoons in Playboy. Either they'd be one page, or sometimes a story drifting toward a climax where someone got their boobs out. There was something quite eerie and perverted about them. I suppose because they were cartoons and porn at the same time, and these are not two things you expect to see together.'

Even a family holiday to Pontins provided an opportunity for Ron to indulge his wandering eye.

Brand recalled how, during one stay at the holiday camp, a little girl approached him with the startling announcement: 'Your dad's in bed with my mum – do you want to come and have a look?'

Curious, Brand followed her to the chalet, where he discovered his father lounging in bed while the girl's mother emerged naked from the bathroom. Unfazed, the young Russell asked Ron for 50p to spend in the amusement arcade.

Ron, who dabbled in wedding photography and sold double glazing and water filters, amassed enough money through his Only Fools-style dealing to briefly send his son to the private Gidea Park primary school. The experiment in fee-paying education did not last long, however.

'It only took my dad a term to squander his nouveaux riches [sic],' wrote Brand. 'So he didn't pay the school fees, and so I had to leave and go back to the normal state primary school I'd been at 12 weeks previously.'

Ron was forever hidden behind a newspaper, Brand recalled. Yet the boy remained desperate to win the approval of his father.

Which perhaps explains why, when Ron's third marriage collapsed and he found himself in need of a holiday companion, the teenage Brand leapt at the chance to accompany him across Asia.

A 17-year-old virgin, Brand found himself in a shared room of the Mandarin Palace in Hong Kong where his father had hired three local sex workers and ordered a bottle of champagne.

It was an encounter, Brand would later write, that 'defined my relations with women – and myself'.

'My dad set about unwrapping his two prostitutes, like pass-the-parcel where the music never stopped, and I sat nervously on the edge of the bed with Mary-Lou, kissing her and thinking she was beautiful and falling in love,' Brand wrote.

'She was a good prostitute, Mary-Lou, she played her part very well. She didn't make me feel embarrassed, and was incredibly romantic really, given the context.

'I stroked Mary-Lou's hair and kissed her cheek and traced my finger down her perfect nose, scored by the cacophony from the adjacent bedlam, 'Yeah, come on!' and 'Phwooar, you're juicy!'

The next morning, Ron resumed his familiar position behind a newspaper – only lowering one corner to ask his son whether he had used a condom.

When Russell admitted that he had not, Ron merely remarked that he should have done – before disappearing behind the pages once more.

Ron was said to have declared of his son on the flight home: 'I went away with a boy and came back with a man.'

Brand meanwhile reflected how his sexuality had been transformed from 'bewildered innocence' into something 'more complex and rapacious'.

But as Brand's burgeoning showbiz career was taking off, his relationship with Ron began to sour.

In 2002, on his show RE:Brand on UK Play, Brand arranged to fight his own father in a boxing ring.

The low-brow programme saw Brand, who was still addicted to heroin at the time, tell his father: 'I don't think you've ever really given a f*** about me.'

Of the sparring match, Brand recalled: 'The first couple of rounds were a bit tentative, then I started to really go for it and hit my dad quite hard, and he fell to his knees; the programme just ends with us talking.

'Afterward, I just said: 'Shall we go down the pub and chat up some birds? Do something we're both good at.' And that's exactly what we did.'

The truce did not last and in 2008, Russell revealed to GQ magazine that he and his father were no longer speaking.

In the revealing interview, Brand reflected upon the life lessons his father had drilled into him.

Somewhat presciently, given his convictions, Brand recalls being told: 'If you want something, you can have it. In life, just don't take no for an answer.'

The estrangement became particularly apparent in 2010 when Ron was not invited to his son's lavish wedding to American pop star Katy Perry.

In his follow-up autobiography, Booky Wook 2: This Time It's Personal, published in 2010, Brand heaped praise upon his mother Barbara but barely mentioned his father.

He said: 'I was ever a devotee to Philip Larkin's sulky ode This Be The Verse, which begins with the lines: 'They f*** you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.'

'Now, though, as a man I see that my more admirable traits, my compassion, gentility and warmth, are all my mother's inculcations.'

When Ron faced bankruptcy in 2012 over £13,000 in unpaid rent for his north London flat, he refused to turn to his wealthy son. Following a court hearing, he agreed to clear the debt himself.

The pair however eventually began moving towards a reconciliation and Ron emerged as a steadfast defender as the comedian's reputation began to unravel.

He took to social media to denounce what he characterised as a 'vendetta' when a newspaper working alongside Channel 4's Dispatches exposed a catalogue of sexual misconduct in 2023.

Ron wrote on Facebook: 'Is this seriously the most important thing happening in this world? Immigrants? Cost of living? Tens of thousands killed in Ukraine?'

'Who is prioritising at BBC News [sic]. Who is really driving this vendetta? With many struggling to pay bills. The unproven accusations of 15 years ago [the] lead on BBC News?'

Even as further allegations emerged, Ron appeared unwilling to contemplate the possibility of his son's guilt.

So, when the jury at Southwark Crown Court found Russell guilty last Thursday after eight hours of deliberations, Ron reacted with disbelief.

He added that he did not care that Brand had been convicted of the crimes, and suggested it was 'possible' the jury had been corrupted.

Some 24 hours after this bizarre opinion was widely reported, Brand Snr had apparently thought better of wading in.

When the Daily Mail approached him last night, he refused to answer the door.

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