ALISON BOSHOFF: Sachsgate was not an isolated incident… Russell Brand launched a humiliating tirade against me, calling me “Noshoff” and threatening to reveal my home address live on air because I had written a less-than-flattering profile about him

My encounter with Russell Brand was several years ago now. And to be clear, what happened to me was – although humiliating and yet distressing – just a trivial footnote in the story now unfolding.

In fact, I’d rather forget the Saturday night in November 2007 when Brand dedicated a decent chunk of his BBC Radio 2 show to me.

However, I am writing about this for the first time because it clearly shows that “Sachsgate,” which followed about a year later, was not an isolated incident. Everyone could and should have seen it coming.

You will remember Sachsgate. Andrew Sachs, who played Manuel in Fawlty Towers, was called at home three times by Brand and Jonathan Ross in October 2008 and the two men left a series of messages for him.

The aim was to uncover a brief affair that Brand had enjoyed with Sachs’ granddaughter Georgina Baillie. In one of them, Brand rhymed “menstrual” with “consensual.” He joked that he wanted to marry her. Ross blurted out, “He screwed your granddaughter!”

I’d rather forget the Saturday night in November 2007 when Brand (pictured leaving the Troubabour Wembley Park Theater on Saturday) dedicated a decent chunk of his BBC Radio 2 show to me

I am writing about this for the first time because it clearly shows that “Sachsgate,” which followed about a year later, was not an isolated incident. Pictured: Brand and Jonathan Ross

It was terrible harassment wrapped in misogyny. Sachs, who died in 2016, said in 2014 that the atrocity would haunt him forever. No thought was given to the impact the men’s humor might have on the lives of Sachs or his granddaughter; it caused great suffering.

Brand ended his show and the controller of Radio 2 also had to leave. Lesley Douglas had been told what he wanted to do and she had sent the word “yes” from her Blackberry, agreeing to the transfer.

Mark Thompson, then director general of the BBC, described the events as “a gross loss of taste by the cast and production team”.

Few would disagree with that. But 11 months earlier, Brand (who Douglas had touted as “the future of radio”) had carried out a series of vile, mostly sexually motivated attacks on me. They were not dissimilar.

My family name was rendered “Noshoff” – a grotesque reference to oral sex. He threatened to read my home address on TV. He falsely told listeners on this BBC show on Saturday night that I wanted to give him oral sex.

It was spiteful, it was juvenile, it was misogynistic. It was a vintage Russell Brand model. And his bosses at the Beeb gave him the nod.

Today we would call what he did an invitation to a “Pile On.” I hope I’m not considered fair game now.

It was a friend who worked for the BBC who brought this to my attention. She warned me not to answer calls on my cell phone because he was going to prank me in a pre-recording for the show (just like he later did with Andrew Sachs).

To this day, the name and cell phone number of his agent and best friend Nik Linnen are still written down in my contact book with a shaking hand. I think I remember him calling me and I didn’t answer but wrote down the numbers.

My transgression was to write a long and unflattering profile of Brand tied to the publication of his Booky Wook. This tome – the first of two autobiographies he wrote before the age of 35 – had just been serialized by the Guardian (where else?) for three days, and Brand was giving interviews everywhere to promote it.

Brand was particularly upset that we had knocked on the door of his mother’s house in Essex and asked about a passage in the book in which he said he had been abused by a neighbor who was tutoring him.

I had also described the book’s contents as “incredibly dirty,” which was hardly unfair given the anecdotes about prostitutes and orgies it contained.

I added, “His loveless sexual encounters are commonly described as ‘sexy adventures.'” His home is a “comfortable suburban barracks.” But these literary flourishes cannot disguise the fact that this behavior is terribly depressing and extremely misogynistic.”

Given the allegations of the last few days, I would say I did it right.

My family name was rendered by Brand as “Noshoff” – a grotesque allusion to oral sex. He threatened to read my home address on TV

What the listeners who enjoyed his segment about me—and kept the whole misogynistic “Noshoff” name floating around in chat rooms and on social media for years—didn’t know was, at the time, I was a newly grieving mother and a new mother.

My son Charlie died of leukemia in February 2006 at the age of 14 months. It’s probably impossible to explain to anyone except another grieving parent what those years felt like. The loss was and is immense. In January 2007, I was blessed with another son. In November 2007 I had problems.

A friend from Radio Two who worked with Brand intervened when she heard what he had planned for me. She told him that under the circumstances, perhaps he shouldn’t go quite that far. New mother, grieving mother and all.

Of course it didn’t deter him. Nobody in the Beeb thought to say a word. I had to endure the humiliation.

I don’t like people who whine and I generally have a thick skin. In fact, some of my favorite stories from my career are about the terrible things famous people have said to me. In general they are very funny.

Marco Pierre White calls me the “Grand High Witch”. Nigella said I was “a dingbat” after I mentioned that some segments of her cooking shows were filmed with actors posing as her friends. When I asked him about the breakdown of his marriage, Roger Moore called me something I can’t repeat in print – in his beautiful voice. Poor Noel Edmonds shrieked, “I can feel your hatchet in my back!”

But when I think about Russell Brand calling me “Noshoff” on Radio 2, I still cry to this day.

Ironically, there were several listener petitions at the time aimed at his boss Lesley Douglas, accusing her of hiring celebrities such as Brand and George Lamb and Dermot O’Leary to host radio shows. The serious music fans didn’t like it.

A BBC official said they would “not tolerate” listeners being “rude or abusive” towards our presenters.

But who was the target of their jokes? Well, we were always fair game.