Russell Brand’s Nazi jibe sparks huge slanging match at GQ Men of the Year awards

 
4 September 2013

The GQ Men of the Year awards descended into a slanging match last night as winners hurled insults at each other during their acceptance speeches.

Russell Brand, Charles Moore, Roger Daltrey of The Who and actor Jeremy Piven were among the stars who got involved in the verbal tit-for-tat at the Royal Opera House ceremony.

Brand kicked off the controversy by mocking the name of his “Oracle” award and drawing gasps from the audience as he reminded them that the event’s sponsor, Hugo Boss, had been responsible for designing SS uniforms.

He said: “If anyone knows a bit about history and fashion, you know it was Hugo Boss who made uniforms for the Nazis. But they looked f***ing amazing.”

Moore then used his time on stage to hit back at the comedian for his notorious mocking of FawltyTowers actor Andrew Sachs.

Collecting the writer of the year award, Moore said: “I was very interested when Russell Brand praised the stylishness of the Nazis, because of course that fits with the fact that they persecuted the Sachs in the 1930s when Andrew was a young man, and his family fled to this country.

“And then he was persecuted by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross in their disgusting telephone call.”

Next it was the turn of The Who singer Daltrey, who decided to attack London Mayor Boris Johnson, who had earlier been named politician of the year.

Daltrey said: “When I was listening to Boris’s speech I was reminded of the wonderful lyric that I sang when I was 19 years old, ‘I hope I die before I get old’.”

Jewish US actor Jeremy Piven, presenting the TV personality award to Piers Morgan, said: “This event is going on longer than my bar mitzvah, and I’ve been sitting in the corner sweating like a Hebrew slave.

“So thank you Russell, for pointing out the people that killed six million of my people.”

Read More

Icon award winner Noel Gallagher drew cheers when he turned to Foreign Secretary William Hague and said: “It’s nice to see the Foreign Secretary here when there’s shit going on abroad that needs to be sorted out.”

Evening Standard and Independent owner Evgeny Lebedev won the entrepreneur award for his success in running the papers and for winning the bid for a new TV station, London Live, which is due to go on air next year.

Lebedev said: “I’m very much looking forward to the London TV channel and I very much hope I can make you all proud of it.”

Actor Michael Douglas won the Legend award while Emma Watson was named woman of the year.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in