This 2007 comedy quiz clip of Russell Brand making rape jokes as co-panellist Lily Allen squirms makes for particularly grim viewing after this week’s conviction

With Russell Brand’s conviction this week for rape and three counts of sexual assault, one clip from the 2007 edition of Channel 4’s Big Fat Quiz of the Year has gone viral for its shocking “hiding in plain sight” prescience.

In the segment, Jonathan Ross is paired with Lily Allen against Rob Brydon and David Mitchell, and Russell Brand and Noel Fielding.

Ross makes a joke about Lily Allen being the only female panellist being so close to “two of the best-known cocksmen in the business”. Ross then switches places with Allen so she’s sitting next to the “sexless zone” of Brydon and Mitchell. “Then Lily might go home with her dress still on,” Ross says.

Russell Brand and Noel Fielding on Big Fat Quiz of the Year (2007) https://t.co/NB9cAUYfgs

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It then cuts to Brand and Fielding.

“How dare you, we’re not rapists,” Fielding says.

“Why are you wearing a cape if you’re not a rapist?” host Jimmy Carr asks.

Fielding responds: “Jack the Ripper wore a cape and he wasn’t a rapist, just a…”

“…a serial murderer,” Brand chimes in, before continuing: “There is no direct corollary between capes and rape, just the rhyme. Leave him alone. What if, horror of horrors, he hasn’t even done a rape? You’d ruin his reputation!”

Brand then asks Fielding: “Have you done a rape?”

To which Fielding answers: “Well, if I have, I’ll be leaving the scene of the crime like this”, and he makes a motion of skulking away hidden behind his cape.

Grim viewing all round.

Lily Allen, who was just 21 at the time, later said of the episode: “In retrospect, that’s really horrendous. It makes me uncomfortable, but I don’t think I felt that at the time, because it was the culture.”

And people online today cannot believe what they just watched.