Russell Brand has denied unspecified “very, very serious criminal allegations” he said had been put to him by a television company and newspaper.

The former actor and broadcaster, 48, posted a video to his YouTube channel on Friday night addressing claims he said had been made about him in private letters by journalists.

Mr Brand said he had received “two extremely disturbing letters” detailing “a litany of extremely egregious and aggressive attacks” from a “mainstream media TV company and a newspaper”.

He denied what he said were “astonishing” and “rather baroque” claims of a “serious nature”.

“These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies,” he said.

“As I’ve written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous. Now, during that time of promiscuity, the relationships I had were absolutely always consensual.”

The exact allegations that had been put to him by the unnamed broadcaster and newspaper were not clear from the video, which was also uploaded to his Twitter account.