Channel 4 News Launches Daily Russell Brand On Trial Podcast

Channel 4 News is launching Four The Record: Russell Brand On Trial, a daily weekday podcast hosted by culture correspondent Minnie Stephenson that will report from inside the courtroom as Brand’s criminal trial unfolds, the Channel 4 press office announced Oct. 9. Advanced Television confirmed the same launch details the same day.

Episodes will publish every weekday afternoon for the duration of the trial, which is expected to begin Monday, Oct. 12 at Southwark Crown Court, both outlets reported. Stephenson and her team will attend court each day and record afterward, combining courtroom reporting with analysis from journalists, legal experts and contributors who have followed the story since a 2023 joint investigation by Channel 4’s Dispatches and The Times and Sunday Times. Brand has strongly denied all allegations of wrongdoing, the Channel 4 release and Advanced Television both noted.

“This will be one of the most anticipated and closely scrutinised trials in recent history,” Stephenson said in the Channel 4 statement. “I’ve been covering the Russell Brand story since the allegations first came to light, reporting on every major development and speaking to experts behind the scenes to make sense of it all. Now, I’m bringing some of those experts to the mic, and over the coming weeks, we’ll report on what happened inside the courtroom each day and explain the key developments.”

Channel 4 News editor Esme Wren said the specialist team is “uniquely placed to guide listeners through each day as the case unfolds in court,” promising to unpack media and legal jargon with the wider newsroom’s reporting power. “It’s exactly the kind of major story for which this new format was created,” Wren added, according to both the Channel 4 release and Advanced Television.

The Brand series marks the debut of Four The Record, a new investigative and true-crime podcast format from Channel 4 News designed for major developing stories. The show will be available on YouTube and all major podcast platforms, giving the broadcaster a daily audio lane alongside its television bulletins as global interest in the case continues.

For the podcast industry, the launch is a high-profile example of a broadcast newsroom converting ongoing courtroom coverage into a repeatable daily franchise rather than a one-off special, with a named correspondent and members of the same investigative desk that helped break the original story. That continuity is part of the pitch: listeners get same-day explainers from reporters who already know the timeline, the legal vocabulary and the key players.

iShook Daily is summarizing the media launch only; this article does not adjudicate the allegations or the trial outcome. Readers seeking updates should follow the podcast’s weekday releases and primary court reporting as the case proceeds.

Find more audio-industry coverage on our Podcast News page.

Verification: Podcast title and host, weekday cadence, Oct. 12 Southwark start, Dispatches/Times provenance, Brand denial, Stephenson and Wren quotes, Four The Record format debut and platform availability come from Channel 4 (Oct. 9, 2026) and Advanced Television (Oct. 9, 2026).