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Russell Brand’s pubic hair is no longer on display at a London museum of curiosities following the comedian’s conviction and sentencing for rape and sexual assault.
Viktor Wynd, the eccentric collector behind the Viktor Wynd Museum
of Curiosities, Fine Art & UnNatural History in Hackney, confirmed that he removed the unusual artifact from his collection in the wake of Brand’s legal troubles.
“I took them straight off display and have no desire to hear his name again – he has no place in my museum of horrors,” Wynd told Variety on Wednesday afternoon.
The removal comes just days after Brand, 51, was sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison at London’s Southwark Crown Court on Monday, Nov. 9. A jury found the former comedian and actor guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault involving four women, with the offenses taking place between 2004 and 2009, during his rise to fame in British television and Hollywood. He was acquitted of two additional rape charges and one count of attempted indecent assault.
The pubic hair had been among the more notorious items in Wynd’s collection for over a decade. According to a 2016 account of the museum, the hair was originally sent to Wynd by a woman who claimed to have shaved Brand at a Camden Town salon. The donation was accompanied by a handwritten letter explaining that she thought the collector would appreciate the unusual souvenir. The authenticity of the hair has not been independently verified.
Opened in 2014 on Hackney’s Mare Street, Wynd’s museum is modeled after the traditional Wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities, and houses an eclectic assortment of macabre artifacts, natural history specimens and celebrity memorabilia. Its collection includes shrunken heads, two-headed animals, dodo bones, occult objects and a lock of Elvis Presley’s hair. The museum also houses an absinthe parlour and cocktail bar operated by the Last Tuesday Society.
