Polly Hudson says a brief relationship she had at 17 with a 36-year-old man now looks different to her after the revelations about Russell Brand and David Walliams. She says the change in view has left her looking back at a period that once seemed ordinary and glamorous with a far harder edge.
Polly Hudson and the DJ
Hudson wrote that the man was the DJ at the local high street nightclub she and her friends visited as often as they could sneak out. He had his own flat and a car, and she says she never questioned what a man approaching 40 wanted with a kid. The age gap was 20 years.
Russell Brand and David Walliams
Her reassessment comes after public scrutiny around Russell Brand and David Walliams. Hudson says that scrutiny made her look again at her own teenage relationship, which once felt glamorous and normal because the DJ had access, status, and the trappings of adult independence that seemed impressive to a 17-year-old.
Polly Hudson in the night club
Hudson also said it would have been illegal for the DJ to buy her an alcoholic drink in the club where they met, yet there was no issue with him taking her home to spend the night after he played his last record. She says she is now the person she is most angry with, and she was ashamed that she might have felt powerless to complain if she had been the woman Russell Brand was found guilty of raping. The story stops there, leaving the relationship itself described only in broad terms, while the sharper point is how public revelations can force a second reading of something that once seemed harmless.
