It’s only a matter of time before Russell Brand, backed as he is by Elon Musk, releases his first show on X. I say that because YouTube has just announced that it has ‘suspended monetisation’ on Brand’s channel for ‘violating’ something it calls its ‘creator responsibility policy’.

Brand has 6.6 million followers on YouTube, which makes the content he pumps

out on the platform highly valuable. He posts videos on Rumble, too, where he has 1.4 million followers. But he has 11.6 million followers on X, which is now making ever bigger strides into the online streaming and video market. You do the math, as Americans like to say.

YouTube’s break with Brand is an opportunity for X which Elon Musk has no doubt already spotted

Brand is a perfect fit for the new age of digital broadcasting: a charismatic autodidact, a celebrity who likes controversy, a comedian who’s also deadly serious. The fact that he is facing multiple and worsening accusations of sexual assault may hamper him. We don’t know how that will play out.

Brand may come to be seen as the cockney Harvey Weinstein – certainly, that’s what many journalists now want to turn him into – but I doubt it. Brand is, for all his flaws, an online megastar. His fans aren’t about to abandon him because he’s being accused of heinous acts and ‘cancelled’ on YouTube or elsewhere. Their fondness for him will only intensify. In fact, people don’t even have to like Brand to watch him. He just excels at tapping into the still growing mistrust of governments and what’s now called ‘legacy media’. Accusations of sexual assault aren’t enough to stop someone like that. Just look at the story of Donald Trump.

YouTube’s break with Brand represents an opportunity for X, which Elon Musk, clever sausage that he is, has no doubt already spotted. Indeed, is it a stretch to think that Brand’s move to X may have been in the works for some time? Given that we are talking about a conspiracy theorist par excellence, a little speculation is justified. We’re only asking questions.

On Friday, Brand posted a pre-emptive video response, protesting his innocence against the Times/Channel 4 allegations. Musk was quick to reply: ‘Of course. They don’t like the competition.’

Musk wants X to be the competition. He’s clearly, even brazenly, making a big play for YouTube’s dominance in online video and it’s already working. In April, Tucker Carlson was fired by Fox News. Within days, he announced his move over to Musk’s platform, where his new show, ‘Tucker on X’ now generates absurdly large audiences.

‘For those considering putting their work on the X platform,’ tweeted Musk yesterday, ‘consider that Tucker Carlson’s show when he was on TV, had single digit million viewers. Strong by legacy news standards. Views for his episodes on X now exceed the population of the United States. Talk to Earth via X!’

Of course, there’s a debate about what a ‘view’ on X actually is – it can be someone just scrolling past. X has at least 350 million active users; YouTube has some 2 billion – but Musk spies opportunities to challenge its dominance in digital video. And X does have the opportunity to become the online place where people go to watch television: Carlson’s interview with Donald Trump, aired the night of the first Republican candidate debate, has been ‘viewed’ 265 million times. Even Russell Brand would kill for those kinds of numbers.

Carlson and Brand have struck up a friendship, ever since the former interviewed the latter on his daytime Fox show.  Carlson gave his first major post-Fox interview to Russell Brand last month (2.4 million views on YouTube so far).

As the allegations against Brand came tumbling out last week, Carlson posted the following on X: ‘Criticize the drug companies, question the war in Ukraine, and you can be pretty sure this is going to happen.’

See a tweet like that, and you can be pretty sure that ‘Russell on X’ is coming soon to a screen near you.