Brand terms Sachs prank "larking around"

Rex Features

Russell Brand has reportedly laughed off the Andrew Sachs scandal on his UK stand-up tour.

The comic has apparently been joking about the Manuelgate controversy, claiming that the incident was blown out of proportion. He also said that it was a "statistical probability" that he would sleep with a sitcom hero's granddaughter one day.

"What stunned me about the whole thing was no-one mentioned how great my song was," he is quoted as saying. "I rhymed menstrual with consensual - it was f*****g brilliant."

He added: "‘When you're as narcissistic as me it makes my ego even bigger when you're all over the news... The thing was blown sky-high. People were shouting: 'Put them on the sex offenders register'. Huntley, Sutcliffe, Glitter, Brand."

Brand quit his BBC Radio 2 programme last October after the obscene messages he and Jonathan Ross left on the Fawlty Towers star's answering machine prompted more than 40,000 complaints.

Ross was removed from the BBC for three months without pay and will return to his Friday night spot this week. Brand's UK tour kicked off on Sunday in Reading.

"We crossed a line, we made a mistake," the comedian conceded. "I didn't mean to cause offence."