Former European Ryder Cup captain Bernard Gallacher, one of the most recognizable figures in British golf, now finds his family connected to one of Britain's most notorious celebrity scandals.
Gallacher’s daughter, Laura Brand, is married to Russell Brand, the comedian, actor and political provocateur who on Thursday was found guilty at London’s Southwark Crown Court of one count of rape and three sexual assaults. Brand was acquitted of two other rape charges and one count of attempted indecent assault.
For golf fans, the connection is an unlikely one.
Gallacher played in eight Ryder Cups and was just 20 when he made his debut in 1969, at the time becoming the youngest man to represent Great Britain in the matches.
His Ryder Cup career ultimately
stretched well beyond his playing days. Gallacher captained Europe in three consecutive Ryder Cups, beginning with the famous “War by the Shore” at Kiawah Island in 1991. His European team lost narrowly there and again at The Belfry in 1993 before Gallacher finally broke through two years later.
At Oak Hill in 1995, Europe rallied on the final day for a 14½-13½ victory, giving Gallacher a Ryder Cup triumph in his third and final turn as captain.
Three decades later, Gallacher's daughter is at the center of Brand’s highly public legal troubles.
Laura, 39, and Brand, 51, have three children. She first dated Brand in 2006, when she was 19 and he was about 12 years older. The couple later rekindled their relationship in 2015 and married in 2017.
During Brand’s trial, Laura stood by her husband and described him as a changed man.
“Russell ... is caring, he's kind, he's a wonderful father to our children, he's an amazing attentive husband,” she told the court. “I love him very much.”
That description stands in stark contrast to the portrait prosecutors presented of Brand during his years as one of Britain’s biggest celebrities.
Long before he became Gallacher’s son-in-law, Brand had built an international career around an image that was deliberately outrageous and often overtly sexual.
Raised in Grays, Essex, about 20 miles east of London, Brand moved to London at 16 to attend the Italia Conti stage school but was expelled a year later. After years performing stand-up comedy in small venues, he landed a presenting job at MTV in 2000 and later broke through nationally as host of a spinoff of the reality show “Big Brother.”
With his rapid-fire delivery, flamboyant appearance and shaggy hair, Brand became a fixture on British television and radio. His comedy routinely drew from his own experiences with drugs and sex, and he openly described himself as a sex addict.
His fame only grew after one of the biggest scandals of his early career. In 2008, Brand and fellow presenter Jonathan Ross left lewd voicemail messages for actor Andrew Sachs during a BBC radio program, including comments about Brand having sex with Sachs’ granddaughter.
The episode prompted a major crisis at the BBC and cost Brand his job, but it did little to slow his celebrity.
Hollywood soon followed. In 2011, “Hop” and “Arthur,” two films featuring Brand, reached the top of the U.S. box office.
Brand’s personal life was equally high-profile. He married pop star Katy Perry in India in 2010, a marriage Brand later said brought him “staggering fame.” They divorced after 14 months.
Perry told Vogue in 2013 that Brand had been “very controlling” during their marriage and alluded to something she had learned after their breakup that she was unwilling to discuss publicly.
As his Hollywood career faded, Brand reinvented himself again.
He became an anti-establishment political commentator, publishing the bestselling book “Revolution” in 2014 and using YouTube and podcasts to build a massive online audience.
His reach became significant enough that Ed Miliband, then leader of Britain’s Labour Party, appeared on Brand’s YouTube channel ahead of the 2015 national election. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore later appeared on Brand’s “Under the Skin” podcast to discuss environmental issues.
Brand’s last major movie credit came in the 2022 adaptation of Agatha Christie’s “Death on the Nile.” In recent years, he has largely focused on his online audience, discussing U.S. politics, the media, governments and conspiracy theories.
Religion has also become increasingly prominent in his public life. Brand was baptized as a Christian in 2024 after allegations against him had become public, and Laura has appeared with him regularly in religious-themed social media posts.
Brand told jurors that the promiscuous lifestyle on which he once built much of his public persona belonged to his past. His 2007 memoir, “My Booky Wook,” opened with an account of his stay at a sexual addiction treatment center in Philadelphia.
“I was pursuing hanky-panky like it was a job, like there was a league table that I had to be at the summit,” he wrote.
At trial, Brand said he now viewed much of that period as “reckless philandering and idiocy.”
Prosecutors argued something far more serious had taken place, saying Brand had abused his celebrity and expected women to satisfy his sexual demands regardless of whether they consented.
A jury on Thursday convicted him on four of the seven charges he faced.
For Gallacher, whose public life has been defined mostly by a Ryder Cup career spanning more than a quarter-century, the conviction puts one of golf’s most prominent European families into a story far removed from the sport.
Golfweek managing editor Tim Schmitt contributed to this story.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: How is Russell Brand connected to a three-time Ryder Cup captain?
