The conviction and sentencing of Russell Brand is an assertion of truth over fiction.

Brand, on his acerbic YouTube channel, became the talking head of his own trial, narrating the indignities of facing the paps as he emerged from his four-by-four Merc to enter the courthouse. Wide-eyed to camera, the accused expressed his Magdalen-sorrow that the mainstream media believed him guilty.

Mrs Brand was on-mic too, pandering to her husband and preaching to the converted. The channel has 6.8 million subscribers. The couple seemed unaware that the prosecution and judiciary also have access to this familial commentary on a family affair.

The remarks of the sentencing judge suggest their broadcast choices more favoured the prosecution than any putative defence. ‘As it turns out’, Mr Justice Bennathan summed up, characterising Brand’s arrogance and blithe disregard for societal norms, ‘you haven’t got away with it’.

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Russell Brand was a uniquely British confection: wide-boy accent, prep school intellect, camp affect and motor-mouth. His adult life has been a production, one-part British farce, one-part Lord of the Flies nihilism.

The dogs on the street could decode what was in play; a goodly minority what lay beneath. It was only the high cheek-boned cheeky boy who couldn’t. Or didn’t.

During the early 2000s he took his shenanigans as revealed truth, seeing his actions as the natural way of one who had liberated himself from the shackles of more traditional British bloke-ery.

The truth was more prosaic: he became an addict and a sexual predator.

He railroaded those who supported him, pissed on those who fawned over him, and set about inserting his tongue, dick and ego into whatever and whomever he damned well chose.

Russell’s rampage through the autonomy of others was calculated to stay ahead of the fray. In fictional terms, perhaps plausible; in reality, no one’s charisma can distract ad infinitum.

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Just as his debauchery grabbed headlines, so too has his comeuppance.

For four weeks, Russell Brand entered Southwark Crown Court with too many buttons undone, too long a hairstyle for his vintage, and too poncy an affect for the precarious circumstance he himself had created.

His stance presumed that bluster and Jesus might repair the potholes of testimony.

Twelve ordinary Londoners listened and did not believe him. The jury, unanimous in its deliberations, found him guilty of multiple sexual assaults, and of (anal) rape.

The stench of Brand’s criminality stands in direct opposition to his fairy-dust presentation. For all of the YouTube moralising, he is now the architect of his own absence as father to three children – the youngest a boy of three.

The clown is now stripped of his circus act, his audience and (one hopes) his nobbish, bullshit hair for seven years (accounting for the two-thirds custodial principle in British sentencing).

The comedian who pretended to offer a new mode of masculinity must now put in the graft of actually becoming a man.

It is plausible, alas, that Russell Brand’s son will get there first.