He used one to make him look 'cool'. The other dropped in for dinner all the time... as ALISON BOSHOFF asks just how close WAS Jonathan Ross to Brand and Walliams?

Detailed summary

Now 65 years old, he's said to be worth around £30million, with a primetime chat show on ITV, a mansion in London, holiday home in Florida and unparalleled collection of comic books.

Published: 01:00 GMT, 14 November 2026 | Updated: 09:37 GMT, 14 November 2026

Over the course of a long and blessedly successful career, life has been one long hoot for Jonathan Ross.

Now 65 years old, he’s said to be worth around £30million, with a primetime chat show on ITV, a mansion in London, holiday home in Florida and unparalleled collection of comic books for which he maintains a juvenile passion.

Despite brushes with disgrace and ratings which have never been more than middling, he has been the ‘godfather’ of the comedy scene for decades.

Or, as his friend Russell Brand put it with characteristic vulgarity in his 2010 memoir My Booky Wook 2: ‘Jonathan Ross for 20 years straddled British television and rode it like a horse prostitute.’

Now that Brand has been convicted of rape and sexual assaults, that joke isn’t really funny any more.

Indeed this week Ross has been at pains to dissociate himself from both Brand, 51, and David Walliams, 55, another friend of his who has been accused of grooming and sexually assaulting a teenage fan, which Walliams denies. Walliams has not been charged with any criminal offences and is not the subject of any civil claims, but the Metropolitan Police last night announced it has launched an investigation into separate alleged serious sexual offences by him.

Russell Brand said in his 2010 memoir My Booky Wook 2: ‘Jonathan Ross for 20 years straddled British television and rode it like a horse prostitute’

Ross has been at pains to dissociate himself from David Walliams, 55, a friend of his who has been accused of grooming and sexually assaulting a teenage fan, which Walliams denies

Opening of the article, excerpted from Daily Mail. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.