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 BABY REINDEER
by Richard Gadd
Baby Reindeer premiered in Paines Plough’s ROUNDABOUT at Summerhall on 31 July 2019 as
part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, produced by Francesca Moody Productions in association with
the Bush Theatre and SEARED Productions. It then transferred to the Bush Theatre, opening on 9
October 2019.

Writer and Performer: Richard Gadd

Director: Jon Brittain

Producer: Francesca Moody

Designer: Cecilia Carey

Lighting Designer: Peter Small

Sound Designer: Keegan Curran

Video Designer: Ben Bull

Video Development: Stoph Demetriou

Dramaturg: Deidre O’Halloran

Production Manager: Ed Borgnis

Assistant Director: Nieta Irons

Stage Manager: Caitlin O’Reilly

Associate Producer: Harriet Bolwell

PR: SM Publicity

Special thanks to Thea Behbahni, Charlotte Bennett, Bush Theatre, Gail Carrodus, Julie Clare, Ed
Eales-White, Pauline Goldsmith, James Grieve, iD Audio, Imogen Kinchin, Lynette Linton, Ariel
Levy, Matthew Littleford, Giles Moody, Paines Plough, George Perrin, Michael Shelton, Sophia
Stephanou, Alex Waldmann, Olivia Wybraniec, Jessica Campbell and the team at the Bush Theatre.

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BIOGRAPHIES

Richard Gadd (Writer and Performer)

Richard is a multi-award-winning writer, comedian and actor.

His show Monkey See Monkey Do won the prestigious Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Comedy
Show at the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe Festival where it was also nominated for a Total Theatre Award
for Innovation. Later that year, Richard won a Chortle Comedian’s Comedian Award and was
nominated for an Off West End Theatre Award for Best Performer. The show was subsequently
broadcast on Comedy Central and had several sell-out runs at London’s Soho Theatre, toured the UK
and Europe, and had a run at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, where it was nominated
for the 2017 Barry Award.

His previous shows Waiting for Gaddot, Breaking Gadd and Cheese & Crack Whores were all
Edinburgh Fringe hits and went on to three-week runs or more at Soho Theatre. The former won an
Amused Moose Comedy Award in 2015 as well as a Scottish Comedy Award for Best Solo Show in
2016. It was also nominated for a Malcolm Hardee Award for Innovation.

Richard is a successful actor, starring opposite Daniel Mays in the BAFTA-nominated BBC2 single
drama Against the Law. Other key acting credits include lead roles in BBC3’s Clique, Sky Arts’ One
Normal Night and E4’s Tripped. He is currently filming alongside Stephen Graham and Daniel Mays
in Sky One’s new six-part comedy series Code 404.

Richard is also a screenwriter who has written episodes of Netflix smash hit Sex Education, as well
as Ultimate Worrier for Dave and The Last Leg for Channel 4 where he is also one of their
correspondents. He has had several written projects broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio
Scotland.

Jon Brittain (Director)

Jon is an Olivier Award-winning playwright, comedy writer and director.

His critically acclaimed play Rotterdam earned him a nomination for the Charles Wintour Award for
Most Promising Playwright at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards and won the Olivier Award for
Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre. The American production won the awards for Best
Writing and Best Production at the LA Drama Critics Circle Awards.

Other work includes the Scotsman Fringe First Award-winning A Super Happy Story (About Feeling
Super Sad), book and lyrics for the critically acclaimed musical adaptation of David Walliams’
Billionaire Boy, the one-man comedy monologue What Would Spock Do? and a new play, Lads,
which premiered at LAMDA last year.
With Matt Tedford he co-created and directed the cult hit Margaret Thatcher Queen of Soho, its
sequel Margaret Thatcher Queen of Game Shows, its audio spin-off Margaret Thatcher Queen of
Podcasts and the late-night smash Margaret Thatcher Queen of Club Nights.

As a comedy director he worked on John Kearns’ Fosters Award-winning shows Sight Gags for
Perverts and Shtick, and the follow-ups Don’t Bother, They’re Here and Double Take and Fade Away,
Tom Allen’s shows Both Worlds, Indeed and the Barry Award-nominated Absolutely, Adam Larter’s
Boogie Knights, James Wilson-Taylor’s Bat-Fan, Tom Rosenthal’s Manhood and Mat Ewins’
Actually Can I Have Eight Tickets Please?

For TV he has worked as a staff writer on Cartoon Network’s The Amazing World of Gumball and on
Netflix’s The Crown.

Francesca Moody (Producer)

Francesca has produced theatre in London, Edinburgh, on tour in the UK and internationally. She is
the original producer of the multi-award-winning and Olivier-nominated Fleabag by Phoebe Waller-
Bridge, which she has presented in Edinburgh, at Soho Theatre, on UK tours, and in South Korea,
Australia and most recently New York for DryWrite.

Francesca is also the former Producer of British new writing theatre company Paines Plough, where
she worked on plays by leading UK playwrights including Dennis Kelly, Duncan Macmillan and
Kate Tempest.

Other selected freelance credits include Mydidae by Jack Thorne (Soho Theatre/Trafalgar Studios),
Spine by Clara Brennan (Underbelly/Soho Theatre/UK tour) and Gardening for the Unfulfilled and
Alienated by Brad Birch (Pleasance Theatre).

Francesca has received seven Fringe First Awards for her productions at the Edinburgh Festival and
her company Francesca Moody Productions was officially launched in 2018.

Cecilia Carey (Designer)

Cecilia trained at the Motley Theatre Design Course and previously in Graphic Design at
Camberwell College of Arts. Her commissioned work covers a broad spectrum, from site-specific
performances and traditional theatre to live events, installations and unique community
performances.

Recent work includes: Jekyll & Hyde (Birmingham Rep); Tidy Up (Peut-Être/Great Ormond Street
Hospital); Four Realms of Christmas (Westfield immersive for Disney); Consensual (Soho Theatre);
Crimp 1, 2, 3 & 4 (Guildhall); ‘Vicky’s Place’ (re-design of an oncology ward at St Bartholomew’s
Hospital); Vital Arts, ‘Beyond the Waterfall’ (Bompas & Parr, Westfield); Britten in Brooklyn
(Wilton’s Music Hall); National Youth Theatre repertory season (Ambassadors Theatre); Fourplay
(Theatre503); Brolly Project (Young Vic); The Late Henry Moss (Southwark Playhouse – nominated
for Off West End Award for Best Set Designer); The Surplus (Young Vic); About Her (London Film
Festival); Sense of an Ending (Theatre503); The Interventionists (Lyric Hammersmith); Pioneer
(Curious Directive, Fringe First Award); The Red Helicopter (Almeida Theatre); Haining Dreaming
(Haining Hall).
Peter Small (Lighting Designer)
Peter studied Lighting Design at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Since 2016 he has worked with
Paines Plough on several projects, lighting their Growth Tour, Out of Love, Black Mountain and How
To Be A Kid, all for ROUNDABOUT, their pop-up touring venue. He was nominated for two 2018
Off West End Best Lighting Awards for Black Mountain for Paines Plough at the Orange Tree
Theatre and A Girl In School Uniform (Walks In To A Bar) at the New Diorama Theatre, for which he
was also a finalist for the 2018 Theatre and Tech Award for Creative Innovation in Lighting.

Peter has lit musical productions throughout the UK and abroad, including All Or Nothing, which
toured nationally and had a run in London’s West End, and Tom & Jerry the Musical, staged in Egypt
at the pop up EventBox Theatre, seating 3,000 people. He has lit dance productions for Step Live
Festival for the Royal Academy of Dance at the Royal Festival Hall and Sadler’s Wells Theatre as
well as numerous theatre productions.

Other recent projects include lighting Orlando at the VAULT Festival; You Stupid Darkness! for
Paines Plough at Theatre Royal Plymouth, as well as three shows for Paines Plough’s
ROUNDABOUT tour 2018: How to Spot an Alien, Sticks and Stones and Island Town; Square Go for
Paines Plough’s ROUNDABOUT at the Edinburgh Fringe; All or Nothing, the mod musical which
transferred to the West End in 2018; Ad Libido at the VAULT Festival, Edinburgh Fringe and
currently touring; Out of Love and How to Be a Kid, which toured alongside Black Mountain in the
Paines Plough pop-up venue ROUNDABOUT in 2017 before transferring to the Orange Tree
Theatre; Old Fools for To The Moon at Southwark Playhouse; Plastic for Poleroid Theatre at the Old
Red Lion and Mercury Theatre, Colchester; and The Rape of Lucretia for Trinity Laban Opera.

Keegan Curran (Sound Designer)

Keegan has worked in theatre and live events for many years, from production managing open-air
music festivals with The White Horse Project in East Lancashire to being an audio engineer and
production manager on an array of events, festivals and shows. Since graduating from the Bristol Old
Vic Theatre School as a Sound Designer in 2014, he has worked as an in-house tech for Tobacco
Factory Theatres, project managing for SFL Group internationally, and freelanced in the West End,
around London and nationally. Previous sound designs include: Olivier Award-winning Rotterdam
(Theatre503, Trafalgar Studios, Arts Theatre, 59E59 Theaters); Our Country’s Good (Tobacco
Factory Theatres); The Internet Was Made for Adults (VAULT Festival); Soho Young Playwrights
(Soho Theatre); Go Between (Young Vic); My World Has Exploded a Little Bit (Tristan Bates
Theatre/Edinburgh Fringe); Infinity Pool (South West tour, Plymouth Fringe/Edinburgh Fringe); The
Blues Brothers: Xmas Special (Arts Theatre, West End); Last Thursday (Prime Theatre); Trip the
Light Fantastic (Theatre West, Bristol Old Vic Basement); Living Quarters (Tobacco Factory
Theatres/SATTF); 140 Million Miles (Tobacco Factory Theatres/Traverse Theatre); Where We Are
(The Egg, Theatre Royal Bath); Blue Stockings and The Winter’s Tale (Tobacco Factory Theatres);
and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: A Musical (Redgrave Theatre, Bristol).

Ben Bull (Video Designer)

Ben Bull has been in theatre from a young age at the outset working at the Curve Theatre in Leicester
on a broad variety of shows as well as freelancing in theatre and live events. Originally studying
Lighting Design at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he has branched out into a career of theatre
Video Design on top of that. Having established as a designer, he frequently works as a content
assistant/animator for shows such as 9 to 5 The Musical at the Savoy Theatre and for P&O Headliner
Shows on board a variety of ships. Previous credits include: Summer Fest (The Bunker Theatre); The
Point of It (GBS Theatre); The Happy Prince (The Place); Woman and Scarecrow (GBS Theatre);
The Pirates of Penzance (Wilton’s Music Hall); Eden (Hampstead Theatre); An Enemy of the People
(Union Theatre); Philistines (Jerwood Vanbrugh Theatre); The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (Jerwood
Vanbrugh Theatre); Rotterdam (Gielgud Theatre); Fast (Edinburgh Fringe); Assassins the Musical
(Jerwood Vanbrugh Theatre); Henry IV (Gielgud Theatre).

Ed Borgnis (Production Manager)

Ed is a production manager working in the UK and worldwide. Recent projects include: Impossible
world tour for Jamie Hendry Productions; Mozart vs. Machine for Mahogany; Cathy for Cardboard
Citizens; Black and Gold, a Google Christmas Party at the Roundhouse; a series of Star Wars launch
events for HP; The Grand Journey European tour for Bombay Sapphire. Ed has worked for the sound
departments of the RSC, Royal Ballet, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe,
Tricycle Theatre and various concert venues. He also dabbles in video design and provides broadcast
engineering support for the BBC. Ed has a postgraduate Engineering degree from University of
Warwick, and grew up in London and Norfolk.

Nieta Irons (Assistant Director)

Nieta trained at Italia Conti and Kingston University, graduating with a First Class Honours from
Kingston University. As a director while studying; reworks of A Taste of Honey (Rose Theatre),
Antigone (Rose Theatre) and Journey to the Moon (Brighton Fringe). Nieta has also worked with
Southwark Playhouse Young Company and Lewisham Youth Theatre as an assistant director.

Caitlin O’Reilly (Stage Manager)

Caitlin is a freelance events/productions professional and has been working as a stage manager for
the past ten years. Credits include: Frogman (Curious Directive international tour); Keep on Walking
Federico (Actors Touring Company UK tour and Barcelona); Paines Plough ROUNDABOUT tour
2016 and 2018 (UK tour); Suppliant Women (Actors Touring Company at Hong Kong Arts Festival);
Romeo and Juliet (Orange Tree Theatre); Beauty and the Beast (Chichester Festival Theatre); Dry
Room (Eldarin Yeong Studio at World Stage Design Festival, Taiwan); Running Wild by Michael
Morpurgo (national tour); Goosebumps Alive by Tom Salamon (The Vaults); I Know All the Secrets in
My World (Tiata Fahodzi national tour); The 39 Steps by Patrick Barlow (Criterion Theatre); Ben Hur
by Patrick Barlow (Tricycle Theatre).

Harriet Bolwell (Associate Producer)

Harriet is a theatre producer. She is currently Producer at Coney, for whom she has produced
Companion: Moon (Natural History Museum), My Grandad the Spy (National Archives), 400
(Financial Times/Wellcome Trust) and The Accidental Revolutionist (Battersea Arts Centre). She was
formerly Assistant Producer at new writing theatre company Paines Plough, where highlights
included Pop Music by Anna Jordan, I Wanna Be Yours by Zia Ahmed and Come to Where I’m From.
Her other freelancing credits include activist arts night Taking Back Control, and Extinguished Things
by Molly Taylor and Vanity Bites Back by Helen Duff.

Stoph Demetriou (Video Development)

Stoph is a comedy writer, performer, filmmaker and animator from East London.

Stoph studied for his MA in Screenwriting for Film and TV under ex-BBC boss Jonathan Powell, as
well as poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, graduating with First Class Honours.

Stoph has been behind a number of viral web hits, gaining millions of views in the process, as well as
creating visual effects and motion graphics content for countless production companies around the
world.

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OceanofPDF.com
Artistic Director Lynette Linton
Executive Director Lauren Clancy
Marketing and Sales Officer Vanessa Anaman
Associate Director Daniel Bailey
Technician Francis Botu
Head of Marketing Beatrice Burrows
Producer Jessica Campbell
Technical Manager Amy Clarey
Development Officer Florence Collenette
Community Assistant Yasmin Hafesji
Head of Finance Neil Harris
Community Coordinator Izzy Hatton
Literary Assistant Ifrah Ismail
Events Manager Shaun Johnson
Theatre Administrator and PA to the Executive Jessica Pentney
Head of Development Sylvain Malburet
Finance Assistant Karla McKenzie-Johnson
Deputy Front of House Manager Tim McNiven
Digital Marketing Officer Tasha Msanide
Associate Dramaturg Deirdre O’Halloran
Assistant Producer Oscar Owen
Press Manager Martin Shippen
Community Producer Holly Smith
Development Assistant Eleanor Tindall
General Manager Angela Wachner
Front of House Manager Barbara Zemper

Duty Managers:
Rhonwen Cash, Ellie Fletcher, James Fletcher, Isabele Hernandez, and Ellen McGahey

Box Office, Bar & Front of House Team:

Kate Banks, Harry Butcher, Jack Byam-Shaw, Roxane Cabassut, Beth Church, Ilaria Ciardelli, Jack
Cook, Erika Finca, Simon Fraser, Kelsey Gordon, Matias Hailu, Holly Hall, Olivia Hanrahan-Barnes,
Rukyrah Harris-Haughton, Nieta Irons, Angel Isaac, Munaye Lichtenstein, Sara Malik, Emily Orme,
Kwame Owusu, Taxiarchis Pantazis, Rafael Pascarella, Charlie Phillips, Alex Prescot, Molly Skelton,
Melissa Stephen, Humaira Wadiwala and Rhea Withero-Taylor

Board of Trustees
Simon Johnson (Chair), Matthew Byam Shaw, Grace Chan, Mark Dakin, Simon Dowson-Collins,
Nia Janis, Nike Jonah, Khafi Kareem, Lynette Linton, Isabella Macpherson, Kathryn Marten,
Stephen Pidcock, Catherine Score

Bush Theatre, 7 Uxbridge Road, London W12 8LJ

Box Office: 020 8743 5050 | Administration: 020 8743 3584
Email: [email protected]
bushtheatre.co.uk
Alternative Theatre Company Ltd
(The Bush Theatre) is a Registered Charity and a company limited by guarantee.
Registered in England no. 1221968 Charity no. 270080
OceanofPDF.com
With Special Thanks To . . .
Maimuna Memon – for the joy, the happiness, and the saweet, saweet, krezzle TAMS.
Julia, Geoff and Katie Gadd – for the love, support and never trying to make me what I’m not.
Jon Brittain – for being the most talented director on God’s green earth.
Francesca Moody – for dreaming big and being brilliant.
Keegan Curran, Cecilia Carey, Peter Small, Ben Bull, Harriet Bolwell, Caitlin O’Reilly, Ed Borgnis,
Nieta Irons and SM Publicity – for being the best team in the world.
Stoph Demetriou – for being my right-hand man and having a sexy dad.
Kitty Laing, Isaac Storm, Katya Balfour-Lynn, and Frances Greenfield, Maureen Vincent and Maria
Dawson – for an incredible four years.
Abby Singer, Emma Obank and Chris Quaile – for the years to come.
James Grieve and all the staff at Paines Plough – for backing this project from the start.
Christabel Homes – for booking us lots of rooms.
Lynette Linton, Daniel Bailey, Jess Campbell, Beatrice Burrows and all the staff at the Bush Theatre
(bar Pirate the Cat) – for taking a chance on a comedy guy.
Deirdre O’Halloran – for being a man of the law.
Charlotte Bennett – for all the help and support in the early years.
Battersea Arts Centre – for all their generosity.
Methuen Drama – for being insane enough to publish this.
Mat Ewins – for being worse than me at comedy.
Doug Riddler, Ruth Mottram, Craig Seymour and all the staff at the Hawley Arms – for putting up
with this mess.
Tom Letts, Ruth Kenley-Letts, Crispin Letts, Joe Letts, James Kirk, Michael Swatton, Tom
Anderson, Ashley Byam, Djordje Jovanovic, Andy Hayward, David Mitchell, Stuart Jamieson,
Martin Millers, Jonathan Cottrell, Stuart Mitchell, Matthew Winning, Sophie Malleson, Dawn Taylor,
Phil Javens, Zoe Rocha, Pete Jackson, Owen Donavon, Joe Scantlebury, Tessa Ross, Peter
Henderson, Seb Bance, Scott Montgomery, Dave Evans, Eamon Lloyd, Craig Moir, Daniella Isaacs
and Sam Melvin – for being there.
The Other Richard – for a beautiful poster.
The Auld Shillelagh FC – for all the banging headers.
Duncan Doherty-Craig, Gayna Williams and all the staff at Survivors
Manchester – for the love and phone calls.
All the friends in my life – for helping me through the darkest of times. You know who you are and I
will never forget it.
The Metropolitan Police – for sweet fuck-all.
Richard Gadd

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Baby Reindeer
For Maimuna

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Characters

Gadd, early to late twenties, male, Scottish

Martha, mid-forties to early fifties, female, Northern Irish
Teri, early thirties, transgender female, Mediterranean
Darren, mid-twenties, male, Scottish
Policeman, forties, male, English
Beattie, sixties, female, English
Customer, forties, male, English
Bartenders, periphery characters, any age, gender, or race

Notes

Baby Reindeer is a one-man play. All the characters should be inhabited by

Gadd with the exception of voiceovers.
The Policeman should be a disembodied voice, either pre-recorded or off-
stage.
Martha’s voicemails should be recorded by an actor and made to sound as
authentic as possible.
The interviews should similarly be made to sound as authentic as possible.
Voicemails, emails and any italicised parts should be pre-recorded and/or
projected within the space.
The sound should be overwhelming, tense and uncomfortable.
Additional footage, music and projection can be used that is not otherwise
specified in the text.
An ellipsis . . . between the lines indicates a new thought or change of
direction.
A dash – indicates that somebody’s speech has been interrupted, sometimes
by themselves.
Baby Reindeer is based on a true story and is a piece of autobiographical
writing spanning a number of years in the life of Richard Gadd, the writer.
Certain details have been changed to protect the identities of those
involved.

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Contents
Act One
Scene One
Scene Two
Scene Three
Scene Four
Scene Five
Scene Six
Scene Seven
Scene Eight
Scene Nine

Act Two
Scene One
Scene Two
Scene Three
Scene Four
Scene Five
Scene Six
Scene Seven
Scene Eight
Scene Nine
Scene Ten
Scene Eleven

Act Three
Scene One
Scene Two
Scene Three
Scene Four

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Act One

Scene One

EE Welcome to your EE voicemail. Your EE voicemail is full. This means

if someone calls you they’ll not be able to leave you a message. To free up
some space, you can delete some of your messages once you’ve listened to
them. You have fifty new messages.

...

Martha Voicemail 07840 475173 – This is a personal call, not work

stuff –

...

Martha Voicemail 07840 475173 – One thing else I was going to say is I
have eighteen phones –

...

Martha Voicemail 07840 –

...

Martha Voicemail That is an Aids-ridden little tart with lips that could
suck ten men – fucking hate her!

...

Martha Voicemail You’ve got psychiatric problems, darling, and they’re

all down to one thing. Drugs. Yeah? And booze. Yeah? And probably
unprotected sex. Yeah? And whatnot.
...

Martha Voicemail 07840 475173 – you give that number out to anyone
and I’ll injunct –

...

Martha Voicemail 07840 475173 –

...

Martha Voicemail How dare you say those things to me and take them
away – like that. You don’t say those things to me and then take them away.
Okay? Yeah?

...

Martha Voicemail You’ve got a great jaw-line – a lovely smile. You

know, I’m not going to skirt around it. I find you very attractive.

...

Martha Voicemail And now I’ve got the police on my case, this way and
that, and you could have just kept your fucking mouth, shut –

...

Martha Voicemail And he’s comes in wearing one of those Noddy hats,
and he bounded in all, ‘What’s this hubbub, what’s this hubbub?’ – with this
big fucking Noddy hat on –

...

Martha Voicemail *Laugh.*

...

EE Next new message, received Monday 12 September at 9.58 a.m.

...

Martha Voicemail I’m fucking furious with you, Richard, I’m fucking
furious. But I don’t know why I’m surprised. You come from a long line of
liars. Like – your mum. Found out all about her. Problems with the council
perchance? And your father? Some crackpot that nobody gets on with?
You’re a mess, Richard Gadd. All of you. I know all about you and your
little lives and I know a lot worse so keep your traps shut. Yeah? You’re all
on your final warning. I fucking mean it this time.

Scene Two

Gadd The emails would arrive up to eighty times a day. They would
cover every aspect of her life. From her battles with Labour, her hatred for
London and the English, where she got her haircut, and what she had for
lunch.

...

Gadd She would leap from sentence to sentence, each thought bounding
onto the next, never pausing, never hesitating to unburden her mind – from
complimenting me on my chest, or my ass, my deep voice, my manly hands
– to vitriol and spite about there being too many Muslims on television –
my flawed comedy shows – the fact I’m ugly, stupid, nefarious.

...

Gadd Sometimes she told me she loved me.

...

Gadd She wrote without editing herself – driving forward like a burst
dam, ignoring typos and hitting enter every time a new thought came to her.
It was wild, unchained brilliance. Pure poetry leaking onto the screen.

...
Gadd I felt many things whilst reading them; I felt scared, humbled,
humiliated – on occasion complimented – at times frustrated, insulted,
overwhelmed, confused. Mostly, I felt compelled. Unfiltered consciousness
in my inbox twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

...

Gadd The date was 24 January 2013. I had received over a thousand
emails from her in the space of ten days.

...

Gadd And I had only met her twice.

...

Martha Email Beutiful boy come save me. He who looks like the baby
reindeer.

Scene Three

Gadd I felt sorry for her. That’s the first feeling I felt. It’s a patronising,
arrogant feeling, feeling sorry for someone you’ve only just met. But I did.
I felt sorry for her.

...

Gadd Maybe it’s the fact she’s shaking. Maybe it’s the fact she’s clearly
just been crying. Whatever it is – whatever irrational sense of heroism I feel
right now makes me sit her on the bar stool and calm her down like I’ve got
it all figured out.

...

Gadd She keeps thanking me over and over in a thick Northern Irish
accent. Not once does she hold my eye.

...
Gadd Can I get you something?

Martha No thanks.

...

Gadd Are you sure? Cup of tea?

Martha No thanks.

...

Gadd You have to buy something.

Martha Can’t afford something.

Gadd Right. Not even a cup of tea?

Martha No.

...

Gadd Well, how about I give you a cup of tea on the house?

...

Gadd She sits up. Eyes on me now. Then, almost like a concession, she
nods. And smiles. She had a beautiful smile. It changed everything about
her.

...

Gadd I’m not giving you another one.

Martha What?

Gadd A tea.

Martha What?
Gadd It’s going to go cold.

Martha What do you mean?

Gadd I’m saying you’d better drink, because your tea’s going to go cold
–

...

Gadd She takes one sip then tells me –

...

Martha It’s cold.

...

Gadd I’ll get you another one.

...

Gadd As I make her the tea, I can feel her gaze burning into me. Every
now and then I look up at her, and as I turn, I expect her to look away. To
feel that unmistakable British shame of staring at someone, but as I turn, I
meet her gaze and she just stays staring. Unbroken. At me.

...

Gadd So what do you do?

Martha I’m a lawyer.

...

Gadd Oh really? What’s that like then?

...
Gadd She bursts into life like I had just pressed her factory restore
button. One-hundred-mile-an-hour conversation.

...

Martha I trained in criminal law, moved to England – retrained – opened

up my own practice – got promoted to the bar – won several awards – now
I’m an in-house advisor to the government.

...

Gadd She spoke without hesitation, never pausing – poetically leaping

from point to point like her autobiography only allowed for a few sentences
per chapter before she needed to move on to the next.

...

Martha I own various properties around town – a flat in Pimlico

overlooking a private park – another in Shoreditch – one in Bexleyheath –
two in Belsize Park – I have my own firm up in Hampstead where I advise
our country’s political leaders – David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Alex
Salmond –’

...

Gadd She even showed me their names on her phone.

...

Gadd Wow. You must have amazing dinner parties.

...

Gadd She laughed. She had an incredible laugh – an infectious, giddy,

slightly disconcerting, laugh.

...

Martha Voicemail *Laugh.*

...

Gadd I was transfixed.

...

Gadd Her name was Martha.

...

Gadd But all I could think was – if all of this is true, then why can’t you
afford a cup of tea?

Scene Four

Martha Email omg you crak me up, that moitsuriser stuff. Incribde.
Heard some lines in my times, but that one isd the bees, went straghtgg
home after had to write it down, relaly enjoyed, hadn’t blushed in a while
but I was betrroot, fg great!!!! Sent from my iPhone

...

Gadd Martha always ordered a soft drink – Diet Coke, usually, or tea –
and I continue to give her it on the house. She would be there five minutes
before every single shift I worked and perch herself on the bar until I was
done.

...

Gadd She always opened the conversation by telling me – ‘I’ve gotta go’
– but then would stick around for the entire shift despite saying this.

...

Gadd I always thought it was strange that she painted herself as a busy
person. Like, if she made out she was busy, she could trick me into thinking
that she is not spending all of her time hanging around.
...

Gadd She would talk endlessly about people in her life without ever
explaining who they are – ‘I was talking to Steve today – I was chatting to
Joan – Alan was just on the phone.’ Like I knew them already. Like I was
already a part of her life. And I would respond by saying –

...

Gadd ‘How’s Steve by the way? I forgot to ask!’

– and she would howl with laughter, suddenly aware of the irony, or just
engrossed in the fact I’m giving her attention.

...

Martha Voicemail *Laugh.*

...

Gadd She was about forty-five, quite rotund, and she dressed in ill-fitting
clothes, mostly pink, or purple, a good few sizes too small for her. She often
wore a puce berry on her head which never sat at the right angle and she
always seemed to be sweating. She would have a fierce sweat on her
forehead almost all the time.

...

Gadd So I don’t know what it was in me – but I start to pay her little
compliments here and there –

...

Gadd Your birthday’s coming up?! Your twenty-first, is it?!

...

Martha Voicemail *Laugh.*

...

Gadd You’re forty-five?! Well, I’ll be damned! You had better give Peter
Pan his moisturiser back!

...

Martha Voicemail *Laugh.*

...

Gadd I began to love her laugh. Obsess with it. Do everything I could to
eke it out of her. It was flirtatious, fun. Surface level. I genuinely thought I
was doing a nice thing. You don’t need to fancy someone to flirt with them,
right? It’s casual, it’s harmless, it’s –

...

Gadd Becoming a joke around the bar –

Bartender 1 Alright, Gadd, your girlfriend’s back!

Bartender 2 Oi, Martha! I think Gadd has feelings for you!

Bartender 3 When are you two going to fuck?!

Bartender 4 Wayyyyyy!!

...

Gadd She sat in the middle of it all – soaking up each comment like it
fuelled her, the walls of the pub dropping away and its prom night – her in
the middle of the dance floor, us watching on spellbound.

...

Gadd Martha is talking about her Belsize Park penthouse when a joke
presents itself. She says she is decorating her bedroom at the moment, and
she needs her curtains hung.
...

Gadd The comment hangs in the air.

...

Gadd She needs her curtains hung. Someone? Anyone? Is nobody taking
it? Curtains hung? As in, the curtains you get in a house? Vaginal curtains
–?!

...

Gadd ‘I’ll hang your curtains?!’

...

Gadd Everyone pisses themselves laughing.

...

Gadd Bar her.

...

Gadd She just sits in the middle of it all, her lips stationary, her big
brown eyes widening. I am looking at her, wanting her to laugh. Wanting
her to share in the joke. But she doesn’t. She just stares. I knew then, in that
moment –

...

Gadd That she has taken it literally.

...

Bartender Interview You know from the first moment I met her, there
was like a – like a kind of warning sign, you know, that rang out, like a bell
– ‘stay away from this woman’ – and I used to watch you and you would be
bantering away with her, serving her and stuff like that, and I’d be thinking,
don’t get too close to her. She’s clearly, you know, dangerous, do you know
what I mean?

Scene Five

Martha Email Baby reindeer. Roses are tooclich, thhhink outside the box
for me, orchids or Lllies if tulip wasn’t slang id ask youfor Them. Ever been
called a tulip? I can cum several times in one sitting, wil teach you well, all
in th efingers. You got a Bird? Hope nogt. Get rid ifo so. I’ll be more
worthWhile. I’ve gotta go. M. Sent from my iPhone

...

Gadd I knew instantly, it was her. Her email address a random series of
numbers and letters – like spam – but the writing exactly like she spoke.
Unhesitating. Unfiltered. Unapologetically raw.

...

Gadd I had put my address on my website. That’s the only way I figured
she could have got it. My currency as a comedian so low at this point that
the dangers of putting any personal details online were small.

...

Gadd There was a confidence to the writing that I couldn’t tell belied or
exacerbated my placing of her as some kind of victim. The spelling errors
on words that were much simpler to spell than other words she has spelled
perfectly. The fact she has an iPhone. Even though she doesn’t when I see
her texting at the bar.

...

Gadd It all compounded her growing mystery. I imagined what a world

comprising solely of people like her might be like. Primitive directness. All
fucking and madness. It was exciting in its own weird way.

...
Gadd Eighty-four emails, starting off at ten in the morning, expiring at
half-past eleven at night – proof, perhaps, of something more than a
lingering fascination? An unhinged mind, an unhinged obsession, perhaps?

...

Gadd But overriding that –

...

Gadd Check this shit out!

Bartender 1 No way! Who is this person?!

Gadd This woman, she’s been following me around, everywhere.

Bartender 2 Oh man, you need to print that off and frame it.

Gadd Some of them are really fucking funny!

Teri She seems unwell.

...

Gadd Yeah, yeah, she probably is.

...

Gadd I have brought Martha up six weeks into my relationship with Teri.
I had always kept it from her because I wasn’t entirely sure how she would
react.

...

Gadd I adored Teri but our relationship was anything but simple. She – a
Mediterranean, gender non-conformist, sexually fluid, politically active,
trans woman – and I, a sexually repressed white male comedian. Got to love
that tension!
...

Gadd I met Teri by signing up to a website called

mytranssexualdate.com. I knew I wanted to explore myself, but I had no
idea how – by twenty-three, my sexuality was like opening a door to carol
singers in June. Highly confusing.

...

Gadd Teri was a lethal intellectual. An anthropologist with a PhD,

hugely politically engaged, even a modicum of fame on a reality TV show
at one point, and now devoting her spare time to working for a company
which helps young people deal with their transition.

...

Gadd She also had a brilliantly ironic sense of humour. She would
tangent wildly about a politician’s backwards thinking only to call them a
‘trapped poof’ two moments later. It would get me every time.

...

Gadd You know something’s right when you get a tingly feeling behind
your eyes when you talk to them? Like somebody is filling up your head
with fizzy juice?

...

Gadd I felt scared by how much I liked her. Terrified, in fact.

...

Gadd When we started dating, I did everything to keep her hidden.

Walks in the countryside. Sopranos on DVD. Anything to stop us being
seen in public, by people I might know. I just needed to take things slowly.
Figure it out at my own pace. Nothing made sense anymore.

...
Gadd I didn’t feel this way a year ago.

...

Gadd I would do my best to intellectualise the shame I felt with her.

Come on! Focus! She’s incredible. Clever. Attractive. Funny. Finds me
funny. Has a good job. A sexy accent. Beautiful skin. Finds me funny. Great
breasts. Incredible figure. Tall but not too tall. Finds. Me. Funny.

...

Gadd But no matter how hard I tried, it would always came back to same
thing, the same issue, juddering against my rationale.

...

Gadd She had a penis.

...

Gadd The bar so was heteronormative it killed me. Every day I tried to
keep up this pretence of being just like them.

The drinking. The chauvinism. Stories of threesomes and late-night shags

up the top bar. Each shift the pretence became more difficult to keep up.

...

Gadd Am I gay? Am I straight? Am I something in between? If Teri’s

trans what does that make me? That’s the thing when you doubt yourself,
you feel like everyone else knows – like they’re waiting to catch you out.

...

Gadd But when Martha turned up, that insecurity faded. I became known
as the guy with the mad doter who sat at the end of the bar. Gossiping to
others about how manly I was. How tough I was. How strong and rugged I
was. How brave.
...

Gadd Martha saw me the way I wanted to be seen.

...

Gadd But Teri saw straight through me the second I flashed her that
email –

...

Teri I just don’t know why you feel the need to flirt with someone who is
obviously so. vulnerable?

Gadd I dunno – she’s lonely – she clearly gets something from being in
the pub, around me – an excitement of some kind.

Teri But, Dicky – it’s leading her on. It’s making her think you care.

Gadd Oh, come on, Teri, if every ironic comment was a genuine
proposition, we’d all be living like the Bonobo Apes. What’s wrong with
giving her a little bit of confidence?

...

Gadd She sits there. Stoic, almost. She doesn’t say anything. She just
absorbs my words for now. Then, two days later, she brings me a book to
read – Stefan Zweig’s Beware of Pity – and tells me to read it cover to
cover.

...

Gadd It was a Penguin book written in 1939, amassing 465 pages, and
there ain’t a relationship in the world that could make me do that, but I
knew how much she wanted me to read it – and so I did what any
respectable other half would do and watched the film.

...
Gadd It tells the story of this lieutenant – who meets a paralysed girl
with less than a year to live. To give her hope in the final months of her life,
he promises to marry her if she survives. When she does, out of fear of
ridicule from his peers he denies the engagement. She ends up taking her
own life and he spends the rest of his days overwhelmed by guilt.

...

Gadd He spends the rest of his days overwhelmed by guilt.

...

Martha Email We sat isn the bar and you spoke sof curtains and fucking
all kinds, you said alot a shit to me, yeah? A lot of shit and you can’t say
that’s and no follwi it up yeah? That’s’ whats called toying with people’s
smotions. Youc an’t do that. It’s not fair. I’ve gotta go. Sent from my iPhone

Scene Six

Martha Pint of Diet Coke.

...

Gadd Two pounds fifty please.

...

Martha You never charge me.

Gadd I have to.

Martha Can’t afford it.

Gadd I thought you were a lawyer, no?

...

Gadd No more games, no more playing. Need to shut this down.

...

Martha What’s going on with you?

Gadd Nothing. I’m fine.

Martha Why don’t you love me anymore?

Gadd What? I’m not interested, Martha.

Martha But you said with the curtains comments –

Gadd I know and it was a joke! I’m a comedian, I make jokes.

Martha So what’s the past few weeks been then?

Gadd It’s been banter, harmless flirtation, nothing I wouldn’t say to my –

dad – maybe.

...

Gadd Sometimes, you have exactly what you want to say in your head
and then when you get down to it, it totally comes out wrong. I remember
breaking up with an ex once – had it all written down, everything I would
say – but I left the conversation having agreed to move in with her.

...

Martha But, Baby Reindeer, you said – you said a lot of stuff to me. A
lot of – a lot of ‘things’.

...

Gadd She was staring right at me, fists clenched, blinking back tears.

...

Gadd I’ve known you a couple of months and you’re blinking back
tears?!
...

Gadd Look, Martha, don’t cry – I think you’re great – obviously there’s
– chemistry – I just – it’s an age thing – I – I only date people my age. I
want kids someday. A family.

...

Gadd She stared down at the floor. In silence. It was rare she didn’t hold
my eye, so seeing her look away like that made me question what she was
going to do next.

...

Gadd When – after a few moments – she mumbles to herself.

...

Martha That bastard age gap.

...

Gadd And runs out crying.

Scene Seven

Martha Email Clots galore! Not menopausal babe, not evn close. Billin’
beetrrot! Yowdy! Grusme amount. I’ve gotta go. Sent from my iPhone

...

Gadd The following day, I received sixty-three emails from Martha –

blood, clots, email after email, reinforcing this image of her fertility.

...

Gadd She was letting me know that the barrier I had created between us
– didn’t exist. ‘That bastard age gap.’
...

Gadd There is no excuse now. In her eyes – we are becoming a thing.

...

Gadd I decide to withdraw further. I stop the comments, and the jokes. I
start subjecting her to a polite formality whenever she orders at the bar –
and in return she doubles down on the pretence.

...

Gadd The pretence of her being a lawyer, the pretence of us being a

couple – and her cold, distant, attempts to make me jealous by chatting to
other members of staff. Laughing hysterically. Checking whether I would
notice. Whether I would care.

...

Gadd Then, every night, constant emails like we hadn’t fallen out at all.
Random stories – blood and period chat alongside other fantasies. In life
she played the game, in private she lost all restraint.

...

Gadd She starts to bring with her a stack of paper, Bible thick, every
time she comes into the pub – and she sits, making notes and annotations on
them all day long – eyeing me out the corner of her eye, just eyeing me.

...

There was always a ticking motion too as she rifled through the documents.
Tick. Tick. Ticking. What is she ticking? Do lawyers tick?!

...

Gadd She nips to the bathroom, and on the bar, Bible thick, sat her
papers. Do lawyers mark papers? I don’t know.
...

Gadd I lift them up.

...

Gadd They were blank, the pages, all of them. Blank, white, A4, fresh
from the packet, crumpled for effect. Printer paper. She had just gone out
and bought printer paper. The notations just ticks and scribbles. On one
page she has drawn a little baby reindeer.

...

Gadd I follow her out the pub and down the road. I expect her to turn
right towards Hampstead where her ‘firm’ is, or Belsize Park where her
‘home’ is, but she takes a left and walks down Holloway Road.

...

Gadd I feel unsettled, as I follow her, but at the same time, I felt – ‘in the
moment’ – you know? Like I wasn’t anywhere else.

...

Gadd About a year prior to this, I was at acting school in Oxford. I

would travel down from my flat at weekends to meet a man in the industry
and take drugs in industrial quantities in his flat – and isn’t getting groomed
magical before you realise you’re actually getting groomed? Until you’re
passing out from a combination of GHB, acid, MDMA, and coke, on his
living-room floor, as he tears at your trousers with his disgusting hands.

...

Gadd Being sexually abused threw my life out of joint in so many ways
– mainly my ability to think coherently about anything regarding my
sexuality.

...
Gadd I was filled with these punishing thoughts, like did it happen to me
because I was giving off a gay vibe I wasn’t aware of? Or did it make me
gay?

...

Gadd I was so sure of who I was before.

...

Gadd I wore the bar-towel heavy when I was working in that bar. The
bleak dead-endedness of it all. There wasn’t a glass-ceiling, just padded
doors and it felt like every barman working there did nothing but question
how they were ever going to get out.

...

Gadd I always found working in a bar stifling because, as long as I was

working there – he wins. As long as I was working there then maybe I will
never pick myself up again? I imagine someone asking him – ‘What ever
happened to that Richard Gadd boy you used to run around with?’

...

Gadd ‘He works in a bar, I think’ – with a self-satisfied grin on his face,
knowing fine well I was stuck there in large part because he took my
confidence to go out and chase the world away from me – and, now, in my
life – on top of everything else – Martha. The mystery of Martha.

...

Gadd There was something so arresting about her. A feeling she inspired
in me that made me focus so singularly when she was around.

...

Gadd She was flammable, you know? Pure focus.

...
Gadd I didn’t think of him while she was there.

...

Gadd We’re outside Islington station about fifteen minutes from the pub
when she stops in her tracks. I double-back into a doorway and question
whether she’s spotted me.

...

Gadd Oh please, don’t let her spot me!

...

Gadd I peek out and she’s facing my way, but she’s staring down into a
bin. Then without a single beat of self-consciousness, she starts raking
around inside. It was one of those letter-box bins, and whatever she was
trying to get out was clearly at a difficult angle because it took her a while
to set it free.

...

Gadd It was a piece of carpet. A rug. She pulls it out, rolls it up, chucks it
over one shoulder, and keeps on walking.

...

Gadd We reach a tower block near Canonbury, where she enters, rug in
hand.

...

Gadd I never believed she was a multi-millionaire lawyer who lived in

Belsize Park. But seeing the depths of her lies played out in front of me
expelled whatever make-believe I had revelled in, whilst following her.

...
Gadd Reality set in cold and hard. Who is this woman? And what does
she want from me?

...

Mother Interview I think there’s always been something about you – like
a danger, like a – an ability to see nothing but good in people, or to accept
people who are a bit unhinged. Maybe it’s because your father has always
been a bit mad? I remember, you came home and told me – we were out the
back of the house – that this thing happened to you and you were confused
about it – and you were crying – and I felt lost for you. Then you told me
about this woman and the things she was doing to you – and I couldn’t
believe that this was all happening. You’d been in London less than a year –
and I thought – What is going on down there? What is happening to my
boy?

Scene Eight

Martha Email Reams amd reams of blood, fertile ghround, ever bonked
on fertile ground? Heavy, reams, need a tub to show the doct or. Sent from
my iPhone

...

Darren That is fucking rank, mate, what the fuck?!

...

Gadd Darren and I go way back. He is such an unrelenting dickhead.

One of those friends who you hate – but underlying that, you love them
really. But underlying that, you really do hate them.

...

Darren Why is she sending you that shit if she wants to get you in bed?

Gadd No idea.
Darren You fucked her didn’t you?

Gadd I never fucked her!

...

Gadd I hand him my phone and tell him not to rationalise it – just to
bask in the glory of reading the emails of someone who escapes reason.

...

Darren Why does she keep calling you Baby Reindeer?

Gadd Fuck knows. Wish I knew. Most of her emails are just ranting.
Like she just wants someone to talk to. Man, I feel sorry for her.

...

Gadd Darren locks me with a shit-eating grin.

...

Darren And do you always beg her for anal sex?

Gadd What?

...

Darren Do you always beg her for anal sex?

Gadd What are you talking about?

Darren Here.

...

Gadd Darren, hand me back my phone.

Darren To me it looks like you’ve been begging her for anal sex.
...

Gadd Email Anal sex plz. Right. Now!

...

Gadd You wrote back?! Are you fucking kidding me?!

...

Gadd Darren looks at me like he expects me to laugh.

...

Gadd Did you send it?! Shit! You actually sent it! Are you stupid?! Are
you a fucking moron?!

Darren Oh come on, you love the drama!

Gadd I love it when it’s contained, I – what the fuck are you playing at,
you stupid cunt?!

Darren Oh, chill, she’ll see it as a joke!

...

Martha Email When? Where?

Scene Nine

Gadd Martha’s talking became increasingly obsessive. Complimenting

me on my ass. Questioning when I was going to fuck her. Asking how I am
going to lick her out once she ‘dries up down there’. Darren’s email was all
she needed to let go.

...
Gadd It became a game of duck and dive every time I pass her in the
pub, I wriggle under her wandering arms, sprint past her before she can
reach out and pinch me, occasionally hold her wrists and smile and say
‘don’t do that’ as she comes towards me. The obtuse male in me, couldn’t
bring myself to say to my manager, ‘I feel weird about all this.’

...

Gadd I’m coming out the downstairs bathroom one day and she’s
waiting outside, stopping me getting past.

...

Gadd Martha, I’m not messing, get out the fucking way.

Martha I’m allowed to go to the bathroom.

Gadd Go to the bathroom then. The door is right there – Martha, stop.
What are you doing?

...

Gadd She gropes me. Right on the crotch. Pitch-perfect precision. I

remember freezing and letting it happen. I didn’t know what to do. So – my
instinct. Freeze. She cups my balls and does this odd up-and-down motion
with her hand, almost like she is weighing my cock – weighing how big it
would be – whether it lived up to her fantasises – or whether it was mostly
testicle. It didn’t feel human. It never does.

...

Gadd She weighs it a few times, lets go, and then lays her head on my
chest.

Martha You’re beating.

Gadd What?

...
Martha I’m making you beat.

...

Gadd Later that night, I am in bed struggling to comprehend how to

handle this situation now it has seemingly blown out of all proportion, when
I decide to Google her name.

...

Gadd Luckily, the most famous Martha Scott was a 1950s actress, so I
breathed a sigh of relief.

...

Gadd But then – out of intrigue rather than any belief it would yield a
result – I type in ‘Martha Scott Stalker’.

...

Gadd Reams and reams of news articles and stories and all kinds of mad
things pop up. I click the first link. ‘Perverse stalker torments barrister’s
deaf child’.

...

Gadd I read through the article – and it tells this story of her becoming
gradually obsessed with this family, after the husband fired her from his law
firm.

...

Gadd Hanging about outside their house, interrupting meals out and
work occasions, phoning the home phone number. Then, worst of all,
falsely reporting them to the police for abusing their deaf child.

...
Gadd ‘What this woman has done simply defies belief. She is incessant
and I don’t think she is ever going to stop. We’ve contacted the police about
her numerous times but they are unable to do anything about it. She is
clearly disturbed and I genuinely fear for my safety.’

...

Gadd I sat there, taking this all in, reading the other news articles; one an
interview with the husband who talks about the twisted lengths she would
go to get at him, waiting for him in the car park outside his work. This one
time she attacked his mother in the street. Her one-and-a-half-year
suspended sentence.

...

Gadd It hit me like a ton of bricks. This isn’t a woman with a vague
infatuation. This is a woman with a track record of this kind of behaviour
before. This is a woman who is stalking me. A repeat offender. A seasoned
pro.

...

Gadd My stalker is a seasoned pro.

...

Martha Email Such a fked up dream yyesterday. You were on all fours
bonking s a lAdy about sixty, telling her you love her. I hated it. Horriblle.
Sent from mmy Phone

OceanofPDF.com
Act Two

Scene One

Gadd Uh, I would like to – report something. How does it work?

Policeman What would you like to report?

...

Gadd Right. Well. I don’t know how to tell you this, but, uh, I’m getting
stalked –

Policeman By a man or a woman?

Gadd A woman.

Policeman And have you had a sexual relationship with this woman?

Gadd No. I haven’t. She’s twice my age.

Policeman Age is generally not a factor we consider.

Gadd No, of course. I can assure you though – she latched on to me and
that was it.

Policeman ‘Stalked’, how?

Gadd She comes to my work, to my shows.

Policeman Shows?

Gadd Yeah, like comedy.

Policeman Stand-up?

Gadd No, theatre I suppose.

Policeman Is it comedy or theatre?

Gadd Don’t you start!

...

Policeman What specifically is concerning you about her behaviour?

...

Gadd Martha had started turning up to all of my gigs. Every one. If a gig
got put up on Twitter, she would be there. When she turned up to a gig in
Cheltenham, that’s when I really started to worry.

...

Gadd She wasn’t just sitting and watching, she was heckling too. I have
this routine where I play flashbacks to a break-up over the top of a Sinead
O’Connor track. But every time it played, she would heckle with –

Martha Sinead O’Connor doesn’t get on with Miley Cyrus, you know.

Gadd She just sort of says it – and it derails the whole gig. One time, to
combat her heckling, I told the audience, as a joke –

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Martha, my stalker. Say hello to Martha

everyone!

Audience Hello, Martha!

...

Gadd And she springs to her feet – spitting this venom towards the stage
–
Martha Don’t you say that to me! I’m here to enjoy a comedy show and
you’re shite really! I’ve never seen it go well! Two-bit fucking actor type!
Honestly, there’s nothing to it! Nothing! Chances are you’ll be pulling pints
for a long time! It’s embarrassing! It’s embarrassing!

...

Policeman I understand this is frustrating, but heckling is not a crime,

Mr Gadd –

Gadd Well, it fucking should be!

...

Policeman Look, I’m not getting any reason to feel your life is in danger.
Are you scared of her?

...

Gadd I felt like there is a string in my chest, which pulls my oesophagus

down into my belly every time I think of her. I feel her on my skin, in my
peripheries in public. Like she is tapping me. Constantly, even when she’s
not there.

...

Gadd It’s busy tubes, crowded buses, populated crowds, populated

Canonbury, it is being in a cramped place where I physically cannot turn
around where she prods me the most. Where I am squashed in with a whole
bunch of other people. Then this insidious hand slips through the crowd
with a scalpel or a knife or a broken bottle and stabs me in my lower back.

...

Gadd No, I’m not scared of her.

...

Policeman Can you give me a sense of anything else she is doing?

Gadd She sends me emails. Like, all the time.

Policeman How many?

Gadd Fourteen thousand emails in the past year, perhaps.

Policeman Fourteen thousand emails?

Gadd Yes.

Policeman Fourteen thousand?!

Gadd Yes!

...

Policeman Are any threatening towards you?

Gadd Oh, I’m sure. Let me find one. I mean, look how often she emails
me for starts?! Here, let me just open a random one –

...

Martha Email I just watched Shawshank.

...

Gadd It’s perhaps not the best example. How about this one?

...

Martha Email I just had a sandwich.

...

Policeman They’re not particularly threatening.

Gadd They’re in here somewhere, I just need to – I mean – look her up

on Google – look her up! It’s scary shit! Reams of information online.
Policeman What kind of police officer would I be if I filed reports off of
Google?

...

Gadd I’m really worried here. I think she needs help.

...

Policeman How long has it been going on for?

Gadd A year and a half, maybe.

Policeman A year and a half and you’re only reporting it now?

Gadd Yes.

Policeman Why did it take you so long?

...

Gadd The truth is I took so long because I couldn’t stand the irony of
reporting her but not him. There was always a sense that she didn’t operate
within the parameters of social understanding – that she was mentally ill,
that she couldn’t help it – whereas he was a pernicious, manipulative
groomer.

...

Gadd I imagined a policeman asking me this very question – and it

would all just come flooding up in one seismic breakdown. To admit to her
was to admit to him. And I haven’t admitted him to anyone yet.

...

Gadd Martha was woven into the fabric of my deepest secrets. Wielding
a control over me even she – herself – wasn’t aware she had.

...
Gadd So when the policeman asks –

Policeman Why did it take you so long to report it?

...

Gadd I don’t know.

...

Policeman Go home, look through her messages – and when you find
one of significance, come back.

...

Policeman Don’t engage with her and don’t let her get your number –
until then, we can’t stop her going to a public place. Even one you’re
performing at.

...

Gadd He motions for the next person to come forward and, just like that,
it was over.

...

Gadd Fourteen thousand emails within the space of a year and a half wasn’t
evidence to him. He needed something more tangible than abundance.

...

Martha Email Here’s the toss of the coign for me, if you mention my
names in a poclice station and I get wrapped for that, that is not good
enough. Bcaus rumours in a town of morons are the death of professionals
like me. That’s like me gogin to the head of comedy, the head of BAFTA, or
whatever, and making waves for you professionally and believe me I could
have went an made waves.
Scene Two

Gadd It’s my birthday. Three cards arrive that morning and a flight
brochure. I upload a tweet to Twitter saying I’ll add the flight brochure to
the pile and make it look like I have four birthday cards that year. Fifty
likes. Yes please.

...

Gadd I am off to Brighton to perform my new show Breaking Gadd at

the Brighton Comedy Festival and Teri suggests she come with me.

...

Gadd Fear grips me instantly at the suggestion.

...

By this point, Teri and I were a fully-fledged couple. Things that would
have made me baulk six months ago, I had started doing with her. Going for
meals. Heading into town. I avoided Holloway, still – but we were
progressing, together.

...

Gadd It wasn’t easy, but I felt galvanised by a willingness to make

change.

...

Gadd I imagined what it must be like to be fearless like her. It’s the most
attractive personality trait around, isn’t it? Fearlessness. It’s sexy as fuck.

...

Gadd But coming to my show in Brighton. It all felt too much. Comedy
is my world. Comedy is where people know me, they know the normative
me – I’m not ready for this –
...

Gadd I want to go by myself. Okay?

...

Gadd Teri gives me a knowing look. We’ve been here countless times
before.

...

Gadd Even though she was constantly telling me how much I needed to
accept my gay side, conversely she hated it when I acted like our
relationship was anything outside of heteronormative.

...

Gadd She always called me out on my bullshit. When I felt ashamed, or

paranoid. When I looked around too much. Walked with my hands in my
pockets – or with my hood up. I knew exactly how this was going to play
out.

...

Gadd I would give in pretending and tell her – ‘Look, I’m sorry, I just
need to take things slowly’ – and she would tell me how my actions further
contribute to trans-shame – but this time she just looks back at me and says
–

Teri But it’s your birthday?

...

Gadd I have never seen her look like that before, suddenly vulnerable.

...

Gadd Back when Teri and I met online, we would talk for hours on
Skype about the amount of men she has been with in the past who were too
ashamed to go out in public with her – who only met in hotel rooms on the
edges of town –

...

Gadd ‘Ridiculous. Ridiculous behaviour’ – I said. ‘I would never do

that’.

...

Gadd I hated how even Skype felt like it was despairing with me
sometimes.

...

Gadd She had been kept under lock and key in her past relationships and
morally I just wasn’t going to do that, but in this moment I wanted nothing
more than to keep her under lock and key.

...

Gadd Martha gave me that lock and key.

...

Gadd Look – it’s not you. Sorry, I’m stressed. Things with Martha are
heating up. It’s pretty bad. But I think, we should probably, keep this on the
down low, for now. Obviously fuck knows what she would do if she found
out about you.

...

Teri Are you serious?

Gadd Yes. She’ll be at the gig. She always is. We only have to do this
until it blows over.

Teri No, sure. Whatever you want.

...

Gadd I am in Brighton, backstage, feeling fucking terrible about lying to

Teri. The show I am about to do is a chaotic manifestation of my life at this
point. Misery upon misery, compiled by a brain void of structure, and it
starts with me coming onto the stage, dressed as a mattress and dancing to
‘Agado’ in what might be the most off-putting opening to a show ever
conceived.

...

Gadd If people went with it, I would have a good show. If I was greeted
with a perplexed apathy – I would be in for the longest hour of my life.

...

Gadd So I have travelled to Brighton, on my birthday, having alienated

my girlfriend, and was now backstage, dressed in a mattress, about to
perform to seven people, when my phone rings. It’s my landlady. She never
calls.

Beattie Hi, Gadd, happy birthday.

Gadd Thanks, Beattie.

Beattie Look, there’s a woman here for you.

Gadd Okay.

Beattie Says she’s your lawyer?

Scene Three

Martha Email ur a clever one but don’t be putting all that info on
facebooks and twitters, fmily addrssses, members of family without consent.
Don’t post anything that could cbome back to you. Words wridetten down
can be distroeted in any number of ways. I’ve gotta go.
...

Gadd I have made some stupid fucking mistakes in my life but

uploading my address to Twitter has to be up there with the stupidest.

...

Gadd That night I get the train back to London. It’s a tube then a bus
journey back to where I live from anywhere central. When I get back, I see
her – sitting outside a pub on the corner of my road.

...

Gadd It was almost midnight – and she’s sitting at a pub on the corner of
my road. My stalker. Is sitting. At a pub. On the corner of my road. Not on
her phone. Staring. It was a cold night. Has she been there all evening?

...

Gadd I’m going to go over and talk to her. Reason with her. Tell her – in
the kindest way – that she cannot come here again. Not to this pub. Not to
this street. Certainly not to the house.

...

Gadd Martha – you have to leave.

...

Martha I’m a paying customer! I can sit here! How dare you insinuate
mixed intentions!

...

Gadd Keep it light. Keep it light. Don’t let the situation devolve.

...
Gadd I’m sorry – I shouldn’t have said that, but I feel you’re here
because my house is one hundred yards away.

Martha You live next to my friend.

Gadd Then why are you here and not next door at your friend’s?

...

Gadd She just stayed silent.

...

Gadd Please, Martha, you have to leave. Don’t do this –

...

Martha What’s wrong, baby reindeer?

Gadd Stop calling me that! It’s weird!

Martha What’s wrong? You can tell me?

Gadd I can’t believe it. You have no idea do you?

...

Gadd You. Martha. You’re what’s wrong.

Martha What’s wrong? What do you need? Tell me, tell me, tell me –

Gadd Space!

Martha Space? From – me? From – us?!

Gadd What are you talking about?! There is no ‘us’.

Martha What’s wrong, baby reindeer?! What’s wrong?

...
Gadd It’s amazing. I can say anything to you, can’t I, and you will just
pick and choose the bits you want to hear? Staring at me like I am about to
reveal a secret torment right now that could be anything but you sitting at
the end of my road.

...

Gadd I think back to when I first met you and how much I felt sorry for
you and how much I hated feeling that way – but now, grief, rather than
empathy, as I watch you, staring at me. Hopeful. Childish. Like all my
standoffish behaviour is about to be explained. And I realise. You believe it.
You believe I’m your boyfriend. You utterly believe it.

...

Martha What’s wrong? What’s wrong –?

...

Gadd Martha – I’m breaking up with you.

Martha What?

Gadd I’m breaking up with you.

...

Gadd Obviously this means, we can’t see each other anymore.

...

Gadd Instead of trying to make her see the reality of things – as they
were – my reality of things – I conform to her reality of things.

...

Gadd She looks up. Nods. Then returns to this confused internal
processing. Buying into her delusion made her buy into my disinterest.
...

Gadd I left her there, stuck in tableaux – processing things. Stood up and
walked home.

...

Landlady Interview Eventually Gadd did tell me, you know, well, almost
the full extent of it – and my gut reaction was – well, you’ve got to go to the
police – well, maybe I was scared for myself – I was living with my
daughter, she’d just had a child – but Gadd said it was futile, he had
already done it, nothing had been done – and so at that point, I said, to be
honest, I think you’ve got to move out.

Scene Four

Gadd I felt awful bringing all this shit to my landlady’s door.

Embarrassed, even, at the extent it was affecting my life. My spineless
unwillingness to do anything about it.

...

Gadd Beattie was understanding about the whole thing which only made
my guilt worse, though she did say to me as I piled my boxes into the back
of my mate’s Fiat Punto –

Beattie Do you think you’re addicted to chaos, Gadd? . . .

Gadd I moved to Parkway, Camden, off a tip-off from a mate who swore
to me I would be living with the best people, in the best place, with the best
quality of life one could ask for. A fresh start. Anonymity. Again.

...

Gadd And so two days later, I dropped my bags off at the flat I had just
agreed to move into for a year. It was damp, messy, shit everywhere, music
blaring, and people just seemed to be around constantly. Drink and drugs,
all the time. I am not sure I ever slept.
...

Gadd I would work ten hours, finish at 3 a.m. and then get back to the
flat to find they had just begun.

...

Gadd I would enter, assume a facade that the party was totally fine, kick
whoever was in my room out, and lie back on the bed and stare at the
ceiling as the heat rose through the floor and the walls pounded with the
shittest, fucking music known to man, and feel utterly overcome –

...

Gadd – with how I much I hated her.

...

Martha Email do you have a girlfriend? these are the question I ask
everyday, it would trily destroy me though makes sense, your bhevaiour is
that you would have one, needd to know, I’ve gotta go.

Scene Five

Gadd The image of Teri standing in the doorway saying, ‘But it’s your
birthday’, with such disappointment, haunted me. I didn’t want to hurt her
anymore.

...

Gadd So, after months and months of slowly, but surely – tonight, I
invite Teri to my show – Breaking Gadd – at the Soho Theatre. Tonight I
invite her into my world. And I was ready this time.

...

Gadd It was the second last night of a three-week run in a venue packed
to the brim with one hundred – seats – and ten people. I could see Teri sat
two rows from the front.

...

Gadd One row in front of her sat Martha.

...

Martha Voicemail *Laugh.*

...

Gadd She’s here.

...

Gadd I walk down the stairs of the Soho Theatre post-show with Teri,
three spiral staircases, and at the bottom, Martha.

...

Gadd Martha. You’ve got to go. You’ve got to go. Now. Okay?

Martha I can be here if I want.

Gadd Please, Martha, just this once, go home –

Teri Jesus Christ, Gadd, just tell her you’re on a date and she needs to
fuck off.

...

Gadd Martha hears ‘date’ and looks at Teri – stares through her –
accuracy without focus. What is she thinking?! Jealousy?! Rage?! Is she
trying to figure Teri out, trying to figure out who she is, where she’s from –
and what that makes me, now, in her eyes. Does she know?! Does she
know?!

...
Gadd Teri stares back – focus without accuracy. Knowing Teri as I do,
she always wanted this moment to come. A chance to unpick her
psychology. I have never met someone so convinced in their ability to break
someone down.

...

Martha Whore!

Gadd Martha shouts out, prompting the bouncer –

Martha Whore! Whore! Whore!

Gadd She starts lunging at Teri, violently trying to gouge her eyes –

Martha Ugly, nasty, little, whore! With the boots! The boots! The boots!

Gadd Her rage caused her to just name things she was looking at –

Martha The boots! The boots! The boots! Red hair! Red hair! Red hair!

Gadd I look at Teri, who just stands there defiant as the bouncer tries to
move Martha away –

Martha You look like a man!

Gadd Teri didn’t look so defiant anymore –

Martha She’s a whore! I tell you! Aids-ridden skank! Man! Man! Man!

Gadd I push Martha outside with the bouncer and without one solitary
fuck to give –

...

Gadd That is enough! You’re fucking insane! There isn’t a parallel world
where I would want you! And of course you have to stalk because you
cannot achieve love any other way and fuck you! Get out of my life!
...

Gadd I walk back in and wander up to Teri. The adrenaline was coursing
through me. I take her hand – it was a big moment for me, taking her hand
like that. But she didn’t even register it. She just stared at the floor.

...

Gadd Shall we get a drink? Sit down maybe?

Teri No. Let’s just go home.

Scene Six

Martha Email Hi, bye bye clitoris if you don’t fuck me soon baby rein,
itll fall right off.

...

Policeman We can’t charge someone for masturbating.

Gadd It’s not about the masturbating!

...

Policeman I’m simply giving you the arguments that she will come back
with. We need a credible threat or something sexually aggressive towards
you. How she pleasures herself in her own time does not qualify.

Gadd What happens if she does threaten me, then? Do we get a

restraining order?

Policeman No, a restraining order needs to be obtained from the court. A

first instance harassment warning comes first and once that is issued and
she breaks it, it can take months –

Gadd Months?!
Policeman This process can be sped up in severe cases.

Gadd This isn’t a severe case to you?!

Policeman We’re not saying –

Gadd If I was a twenty-five-year-old woman and a forty-five-year-old

man kept following me around, emailing stuff about wanking, and how
much he needs to get fucked, grabbing my vagina and ass in a pub corridor
– would that be a severe case to you?

Policeman With male to female gender stalking, the threat of a man is

physical. He carries more ‘weight’ –

Gadd Nobody carries weight against a fucking knife, okay?

Policeman Again, Mr Gadd, there is nothing to suggest in her emails that

violence is –

Gadd Ah fuck it!

...

Gadd I can’t believe I’m in a police station talking about knives. I grew
up in a place called Wormit. This isn’t The Wire. What has my life come to?
Googling what to do if she chucks acid in my face. What to do if she comes
at me. What is considered excessive self-defence. Incredible, really, how
much you can affect someone’s life within the parameters of legality.

...

Policeman Her obvious mental health problems mean that we have to

proceed with caution –

Gadd There was always something about the mental health part that
made me shut my mouth. You have to remember she’s ill! You have to
remember she’s ill! You have to remember –

...
Gadd She’s fucking up my goddamn life! Type her name into the
system! There will be something there! I’m telling you!

...

Gadd He types it in with a reluctant sigh, then, gear change.

Policeman Right, right, right, tell you what. Yes, I believe I’ve found her
– I tell you what, why don’t I, get your, your – I tell you what, take a seat
and I will – I had better type this up.

...

Gadd Part of me was like – Hahahahahahah! See?! See?! Hahahahah!

Vindicated! The other part was like – Jesus Christ, what the hell has she
done?!

...

Policeman I can’t divulge too much information here, I am afraid, but

know that she is a very serious woman, a very serious woman indeed. So
serious that she once stalked a policeman.

...

Gadd Sorry, I can’t go into any more information than that.

Gadd No, that was sufficient.

...

Policeman There are a lot of procedures we have to go through with a

person this ‘delicate’. No accusations will fly around, we will just tell her
that we are aware of the situation with you.

Gadd Great. Then what?

Policeman You’ll be surprised by how much the presence of the police

can change things, Mr Gadd.
Gadd Mmm, I get that – but you said she’s a serious woman who even
stalks policemen?

...

Policeman We’ll do what we can.

Scene Seven

Gadd The police’s presence at her door had earned me silence from
Martha for the first time in two and a half years.

...

Gadd I waited for what might happen next. Filled with anxiety from all
angles. Fear of how she would react. Fear of what she might say in
response.

...

Gadd I sat and I trawled back through her emails – not a single day from
the moment I first met her to the last did she not contact me. Now, silence –
strange, eerie – silence.

...

Gadd Reading back through everything – I was always so conflicted

with how she viewed me –

...

Martha Email it’s a weird feeling with you, its like your so cufdldly
reindeer, I don’t know whether to fuck you or put you in a bath and wash
your cloths and feed you health avge, a toyboy at my age, god give me
strength, you’re a head fk gadd.

...
Gadd She infantilised me and she sexualised me. She wanted to mother
me, then fuck me.

...

Gadd Why me? Why did she just choose – me?

...

Gadd I start to panic – at least before it was contained. Did I need to rock
the boat?! The emails allowed me to tune into every facet of her emotion. I
knew when she was sad. When she missed me – when she was ill, or drunk,
or angry. When I needed to walk to a different bus stop – or put a scarf over
my face just in case. Now. Nothing.

...

Gadd In my darkest moments, I find myself awake at night – worried –

terrified, in fact, that I am going to wake up one day and she will have
killed herself. An email in my inbox expressing that I was the reason why.

...

Gadd Through no volition of my own, I am going to bed at night with

Martha on my mind and waking up with her in the morning. More
entangled with her than I have been in any consenting experiences of love
prior.

...

Gadd Did I miss her? Was there some part of me that missed her?
Missed the drama? Missed the attention? Missed the fucking distraction
from him, and myself, and Teri, and –

...

Gadd Did I miss her?

...
Gadd The strangest part about all this is – during this period of time – I
start to masturbate over Martha. There is something so fucking awful, yet
thrilling, about the idea of doing something that would devastate my life
even further.

...

Gadd I was completely clogged up with her. It sometimes felt like it was
the only way I could get her out of my system, so I could sleep. So I could
think about her in any other way that wasn’t tedious regret.

...

Gadd I would come quickly – every time – and I would be left with the
same befuddled confusion that has become my post-wank trademark. What
the fuck was that?! Where did that come from?!

...

Gadd I didn’t know anything anymore, so in a tailspin as to where this

might end – I felt abused. Again. Defenceless and clueless as to how to
make it stop.

...

Gadd Surely, with the police knocking at her door, she’d be foolish to do
anything stupid again, right?! She’d be foolish to do anything stupid again.

...

Father Interview So – I received a call from a woman who was

supposedly a lawyer and, um, worryingly, she said my son Richard had
been in some kind of accident – and it was quite serious, and he was in
hospital – so of course, momentarily, I thought this was true – well, then of
course I phoned you and you weren’t in an accident at all – and of course, I
must have been on her radar now, because it led to her phoning my office
number every day for a considerable period of time.
Scene Eight

Gadd I post a tweet. ‘First shift back after Christmas. Kill. Me. Now.’ It
wasn’t my first shift back. I wasn’t going back. Not until this was dealt
with.

...

Gadd Tweeting was like a Pavlovian bell for Martha. I could put up a
tweet with my location settings on and no matter what, she would be there
within the hour.

...

Gadd Sixty minutes after posting, I made my way from my much more
expensive, dirty, little flat to the pub. I knew she’d be outside. Trotting up
and down the street like she always does, passing the open doors of the pub
to see if she can steal a glimpse, knowing fine well I can do nothing about
her walking on a public pavement. I hate her so much.

...

Gadd Martha!

...

Gadd She turns.

...

Gadd Leave my family alone.

Martha I don’t know what you’re talking about baby reindeer, I –

Gadd Leave my fucking family alone!

...

Gadd If you don’t, we will never be together. Do you understand?

Martha I thought, with the police, that we weren’t on the cards anyway –

Gadd If you leave my family alone, I will hang your curtains tonight.

...

Gadd I want to make sure I get it right though. All of it. So put in an
email what you want to do to me, how you want me to – ‘hang them’.

...

Gadd She walks towards me and tries for a kiss –

...

Gadd No. No kisses. Email first.

...

Martha Email Dirty bugger, funny bugger, gonna string you up fuck you
make you watch, gonan watch you masturbate, oragsms tirelessly, go all
night, a sack of rudyds bones by tgeh time im finished wthh you.

Scene Nine

Policeman Thank you for coming in.

...

Gadd Why the camera?

Policeman Just need to ask a few questions.

Gadd Okay.

...

Policeman Did you meet Martha Scott in the street the other day?
Gadd By chance. ‘Met’ would imply some prearrangement, but I did see
her, yes.

Policeman Did you ask her to send you a sexually threatening email?

Gadd No.

...

Gadd The policeman opens a laptop and clicks space bar. Then I hear my
voice –

...

Gadd Recording I want to make sure I get it right though. All of it. So
put in an email, what you want to do to me, how you want me to – ‘hang
them’.

...

Gadd Martha had taped everything. Everything we have ever done. The
curtain references, the time I asked her to help me appeal against a parking
fine, a file where we’re joking about my penis size – I tell her mine
‘stretched from Holloway to Westminster’ – I don’t even remember saying
that?!

...

Gadd Laughing and giggling, loads of laughing and giggling – and

listening to it back – it sounded bad, it sounded weird, and it sounded like I
was in control which was the oddest part. I remember that feeling – sudden
shock, caught red-handed, time stood still, bomb in a war zone, hot flush,
fucking madness.

...

Gadd She has taped everything?!

Policeman I can’t speak for everything, but she also showed us an email
from you begging for anal sex.

Gadd No! That wasn’t me. That was my friend on my account, I – he’s
an idiot, he did it for a laugh, I – she is pestering my parents, I – I – I need it
to stop! Nothing seems to be getting through to you guys – You can surely
see the depths of her motives anyway in the email?!

Policeman According to her, it was a game, knockabout fun –

Gadd You can’t surely believe that! She’s a serious woman! Your words
not mine!

...

Policeman I sympathise with your position but you must allow us to do

our jobs. In a certain light, this could be seen as entrapment – but Martha
isn’t going to press charges.

...

Gadd I’m sorry?

Policeman Martha isn’t going to press charges.

Gadd She’s not going to press charges – against me?! What the hell?!
She’s stalking me!

Policeman I suggest you apologise and let us go about doing our job
again in the correct manner.

Gadd Apologise?! To her?! Are you kidding me?!

...

Gadd How would I even apologise?

Policeman We can pass along your apologies and then we can suggest to
her – very strongly – that the two of you part ways. The police do not want
to hear from either of you again.

Gadd You’re putting us on an even playing field. How are you putting us
on an even playing field?

Policeman So?

...

Gadd Tell her I’m sorry.

Scene Ten

Martha Email Woweee, never been spoken to the wthe way that ginger
little tart spoke to me that night, looked at me. Is that it Gad???????? Just
stick your dick in anything??? Tell you what, weara bout ten condoms with
that. She’s dissolve trhoguh at leats four, trhee maybe. Tell you what wear
five, yeah? Feel like a hero sticking it in that!!! filthy little tart. Sent from
my iPhone

...

Gadd I don’t know how Martha discovered Teri’s Twitter. She must have
trawled through all of the people I follow – all two thousand – until she
found her. She must have clicked on each one, and studied their profile
picture until she found a face that matched. Her persistence never failed to
astonish me.

...

Gadd Martha was commenting relentlessly on all of her tweets – insults

about how ‘ugly’ she is and the fact she looks like a man. Teri would block
her but she would just open up a new profile and pester her on that one
instead.

...
Gadd Bar the rainbow flag in her bio, Teri never referred to herself as
trans online, but knowing Martha as I do – the countless hours she would
devote to getting dirt on her – it was only a matter of time before she found
out.

...

Gadd I regressed again. Became consumed with the paranoia of people

finding out. Walked with my hood up and my hands in my pockets. Any
moment now, she is going to out my relationship and that will be it.

...

Gadd Should I break up with Teri?! Should I sit Martha down and ask
her for sympathy?! Should I pack up, move back home, quit the pub, quit
London, quit –

...

Teri This isn’t working, Gadd.

...

Gadd What isn’t?

Teri This, you – look at you. You’re all over the place right now.

Gadd I know, I’m sorry, it’s Martha, she’s really getting to me. Honestly,
it’s got nothing to do with you.

Teri It definitely has something to do with me. I saw you unfollowed me

on all of your accounts?

Gadd That’s was to protect you –

Teri No, that was to stop her finding out more about me. If you were this
concerned about her, you would actually have done something by now.

...
Gadd What is that supposed to mean?

Teri Has it ever occurred to you that you might actually like having her
in your life?

...

Gadd What are you talking about?

Teri Think about it. She’s the one person who sees you as the thing you
try so hard to be. An embodiment of all your nasty repressions bottled into
one human being and maybe it would just help you to admit the truth of the
situation.

...

Gadd What truth?

Teri You’re a sleaze who likes being liked by women. It’s part of your
hate.

...

Gadd Come on, Teri, she’s a fucking nasty, mad, bitch – you can’t let her
affect us like this?

Teri It’s not her affecting us! It’s you. I can’t be in this ghost relationship
anymore. I can’t be with someone who refuses to make any changes in their
life.

...

Gadd You’re breaking up with me?! Because of her?!

Teri No. Because of you.

...
Gadd I never saw Teri in person again. She never responded to any of
my apology messages. She shut off that part of her mind towards me the
second she turned away. Instantly. Like a light switch. Off. Done. Gone.

...

Gadd Martha – like a guillotine, swift, concise, cutting through every

facet of my life. Was it really a nice gesture that started all this? Or was it
subjecting her to my sexist male privilege? Did I deserve this?

...

Gadd I really couldn’t tell anymore.

...

Teri Interview I feel, perhaps, looking back on it that I was maybe a

little, I don’t know. Unsympathetic. I just didn’t have the breath for it
anymore and when we first met, you gave it the big one – I won’t be like the
others. But you were. I think there is a part of you that clings to stasis
because you’re scared of the unknown. All the way through our relationship
you kept talking about change but you’re not going to change if all you do
is talk about change. I do stand by some of it. I felt – what are we calling
her, again? Martha? Yep. I think Martha was born out of your stasis. Like
she was part of it all. Being stalked wasn’t a happy time for you but, in a
way, it was a comfortable one.

Scene Eleven

Gadd I am crouched down, stocking up the fridges of the pub with over-
priced beer, when I stand up to find Martha, sitting at the end of the bar.
After everything, she still comes in.

...

Martha I’ve gotta go.

...
Gadd A new staff member had served her while I was wasn’t looking
and there she was, expecting me to notice, expecting me to care, winning
yet another round in this stupefying dance.

...

Gadd She knew she had me now. The police so exhausted by the case –
and me, now, suddenly, the bad guy, in their eyes. There was nothing I
could do.

...

Gadd She sips her Diet Coke through a straw, a cocky smile pursed at
the side of her lips, knowing fine well how much this small action would
needle me. And it did fucking needle me.

...

Martha Have you really broken up with your slag girlfriend?

...

Gadd I wanted to tell her she should be barred for grabbing my cock in a
corridor, but I didn’t want to give her the fucking privilege of showing I
care. So, instead – nothing. I simply carrying on stocking the fridge, when
she says –

...

Martha I read your review by the way. One star. Not funny, apparently.
Not funny at all.

...

Gadd She had managed to dig out a Soho Theatre review from a few
months back. One I had just about managed to forget about.

...
Gadd A bad review can knock the breath out of you at the best of times,
but when it’s coming out the mouth of someone who is stalking you?
Someone who is harassing your family?!

...

Gadd She turns to a bald man on the table next to her and taps him on
the shoulder – and hands him her phone – the review already open.

Martha Excuse me. Have you read his one-star review?

Customer What’s this?

Martha It’s a review for his shit, shit comedy show.

...

Gadd He turns to me –

Customer You’re a comedian?

Martha He’s a barman, a two-bit ‘actor type’ – but he does these

ludicrous shows. Embarrassing, really. Read the review! Read the review!

...

Gadd And within seconds, they are sharing in the laugh together.

...

Customer ‘Gadd appears in a mattress and dances to “Agado” in a

routine instantly dislikeable from the off.’

...

Martha Voicemail *Laugh.*

...
Customer ‘Also every sketch seems to contain wanking or male on male
abuse of some kind – is this really where comedy is heading?’

...

Martha Voicemail *Laugh.*

...

Customer ‘There are many reasons this show doesn’t work, mainly it is.
Just. Not. Funny.’

...

Martha Voicemail *Laugh.*

...

Gadd I tell you what, mate. Why you don’t you Google something else?
‘Perverse Stalker Torments Barrister’s Deaf Child.’

...

Gadd Her face drops.

...

Customer What’s that, mate?

...

Gadd ‘Perverse. Stalker. Torments. Barrister’s. Deaf. Child –’

...

Gadd She’s on me. Grabbing my face like someone might catch a pair of
keys, and her nails go right inside my skin and I swear for one second I feel
her finger under my eyeball, and so, what do you do? I had months of anger
and emails and moving house and fucking pissed-off worries and one-star,
£6.50, phoning my parents, fucking following me home. Bullshit! Now
she’s attacking me?!

...

Gadd Three punches in the head – a reflex – before I’d even rationalised
it. She buckled at the knees, but still this outstretched hand stayed clutching
in vain at my face. She goes for me once more when five barmen – that’s
how many it took – force her outside.

Martha Frankie Boyle’s mouth got him into trouble! Yours is going to
get you in trouble too!

Gadd Her last words, as she was pulled from the bar. . . .

Gadd This was about two in the afternoon. What a sight this must have
been. The people eating their lunch must have thought – why did that
twenty-five-year-old barman just punch the fuck out of a forty-five-year-old
woman? It’s funny what an image without context will do.

...

Gadd I turn to the man who just read out the review – a look of utter
bewilderment on his face.

Customer What’s going on, mate?

...

Gadd The most simple yet loaded statement I have ever heard in my life.
I responded, in a moment of self-pity I felt I deserved –

...

Gadd I gave her a cup of tea.

...

Gadd I gave her a cup of tea.

...

Martha Email I am done withoiiu after I have written this email. you
have upset me more than its possible to comprehend, You have called me
psycho etc etc to others who have said to me. I have two degrees, one
doctorate and in fact best first class English degree in whole country and so
in fact you are the stupid one I know more about English than you, You hav
an ugly face, with stupid intentions, anaïve career and brought up badly by
shit parents and a terrible school, This is me being kind!!!!!! You have no
future in comedy acting or any of your stupid shows, that pub will be shut
and your shit uni and piointless degree will be sucked of all funding. I do
not make enemies easily but you have eaten all the biscuit re me, or taken
the busucuit, that is all I have to say, I wont send a pack of lawyers after
you becuas eyour pockets are empty but I will come if every they’re full,
Why dont you move back to Glasgow? Ful of workshy fenians like you and
peados and criminals like your family, why come here? We were happy
here. Stay away, my contacts are considerable and they are all very angryw
ith uyou.

...

Martha Email Ps I love you, that nevr changes. Sent from my iPhone.

OceanofPDF.com
Act Three

Scene One

Gadd It’s Edinburgh 2016. I’m at the Fringe doing a show called Monkey
See Monkey Do. A show where I laid my cards out on the deck. About the
man, about everything he did to me, my sexuality – everything. It was a big
moment.

...

Gadd By this point, I felt like I had no choice but to accept the fact that
Martha was a part of my life. The last experience with the police was so
burning, so embarrassing, that I refused to involve them again.

...

Gadd After everything that has happened between us, I still couldn’t
believe that I am the one with a caution on my record and that she has been
held accountable for none of the things she has done to harass me and my
family.

...

Gadd Martha was barred by the pub for attacking me, and – exhausted
by her behaviour, and unsettled by our last encounter – I decided to leave
too. It felt clean that way. To go our separate ways, like two boxers fighting
to a majority draw – the concussions of the past still ringing in our minds.
The vague probability of a rematch later down the line, apprehensively
building.

...
Gadd Her last email stuffed full of Hollywood vengeance. An ambition
to drain my life of all meaning. How serious was she?! I no longer wanted
to find out.

...

Gadd Martha didn’t know where I lived – or worked – and I had her
emails sent to a blocked folder – which meant every time she messaged it
would simply slot into a file I couldn’t see. I had plastered over her. Shut
the window to her relentless ranting. She was still there – I just wasn’t
looking anymore.

...

Gadd That month, in Edinburgh, a documentary crew followed me

around to shoot a man on the edge of a nervous breakdown when – halfway
through – they captured footage of a pair of boxer shorts, some sleeping
pills, a letter and a cuddly baby reindeer, arriving at the venue.

...

Gadd I simply pushed it into the back of my mind and focused on other
things.

...

Gadd I went on holiday straight afterwards – turning my phone off for a

full week. Sent an out-of-office reply – added my signature for some
professional pizzazz – boom, done – and off I went!

...

Gadd It was a big moment winning that award. I had strived for it my
entire life. Dreamed about it every night before I sleep. This is going to
sound ridiculous – but there is nothing like the feeling of winning the
biggest live comedy award in the world to let your abuser know – fuck you!
You failed to break me.

...
Gadd When I land back in the UK, I wait until I have unpacked and
showered before turning my phone back on. I want to sit and listen to the
congratulations messages. From friends and family – professional contacts
– enjoy them in one big chunk. I have worked hard for this moment – so
very fucking hard.

...

EE Welcome to your EE voicemail. Your EE voicemail is full. This means

if someone calls you they’ll not be able to leave you a message. You have
fifty new messages.

...

Gadd Fifty voicemails?! Oh yeah, baby!

...

Darren Voicemail Alright, you sack of bollocks. Fucking mad reading

about everything. I should probably apologise for all those times I’ve called
you a poof. though I am gutted you’ve hung around me this long and never
thought to crack onto me. Anyway, give me a call back you award-winning-
poof!

...

Teri Voicemail Hi, it’s me – I – I saw the news and wanted to say
congrats. I saw how much you struggled. I hope all this stuff you’re going
through helps you reach some kind of peace in yourself. I’ve met a new
man, so don’t call me back. I’m not sure he’s much different. It is what it is.
I dunno why I’m calling, really. Good luck, Dicky. Enjoy it.

...

Martha Voicemail I’ve just been putting down the basics regarding what
you said to the police about me and I just wanted to say nobody is going to
believe a word that comes out of your mouth. So shut your trap, yeah? Your
team, your agent, your whatever. Shut right up. Up, up, up. I cannot express
to you how furious I am about the way you shafted me.

...

Gadd She has my number.

...

Gadd How the fuck did she get my number?!

Scene Two

Gadd She’s filled it up! She’s maxed it out! I didn’t know you could fill
up a voicemail?! Why the fuck would my out of office rebound to a blocked
address?!

...

Gadd Shit, shit, shit – okay, think – think. I start deleting her messages. I
don’t want to give her the fucking privilege of clogging up my entire inbox.

...

Martha Voicemail I’ve gotta go in a –

EE Message deleted.

...

Gadd Plus, my brain is already wrought with the idea of the messages I
might have missed.

...

Martha Voicemail Don’t forget –

EE Message deleted.
...

Gadd Old friends calling to say nice things.

...

Martha Voicemail Baby reindeer –

EE Message deleted.

...

Gadd What if someone called, offering me work, and then couldn’t leave
me a message?! And now they’ve forgotten about it entirely?! Fuck, I’m
never turning my phone off again!

...

07840 475173 *Ringing.*

...

Gadd And then she starts calling me.

...

Gadd She’s calling me – on my fucking phone! Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck!

...

Gadd I block her number. I’ve done it before to that fucking prick and
that was the end of his ability to contact me – so this will be the end of her –
surely?!

...

07505 821794 *Ringing.*

...
Gadd Then she calls me off another phone! Only a fucking stalker would
have multiple phones!

...

Gadd I block that one too. Then I unpack some more. I decide to busy
my hands while I figure out what all this means. If she has my number, she
can’t do mad shit with it, can she?! Sign me up to spam mailing lists or get
into my police records somehow? No, that’s mad – surely, that’s mad –?!
I’ve blocked her. There’s nothing more she can do –

...

Unknown Number *Ringing.*

...

Gadd Then she rings me off an unknown number! The mad bitch is
ringing me off an unknown number!

...

Gadd I repeat the process. I open my phone. Go into settings. Scroll

through the drop-down and realise – you can’t block unknown numbers on
a smartphone!

...

Gadd I try and download some software, but it’s all too expensive and
none of it fucking works – and so after a while, I give up deleting her
messages. I decide I’m going to leave my inbox full and just leave it to the
cunts at EE to tell her she can’t leave me any more.

...

Gadd Maybe if she hears it from them eighty times a day – maybe, just
maybe, it will sink in. Maybe, just maybe – she might fucking realise that
her behaviour isn’t normal at all!
...

Unknown Number *Ringing.*

...

Gadd But she doesn’t. She rings all morning, all afternoon, all evening –
and long into the night, sometimes in the hundreds –

...

Gadd – and there’s something about her having access to my phone –

having access to the fucking device my life runs off. The fact she vibrates
near my crotch – I don’t want her vibrating anywhere near my crotch. The
fact that every time I text someone or send an email she cuts through it by
phoning me – every fucking minute of every day –!

...

Unknown Number *Ringing.*

...

Gadd She’s ringing me again. Literally, now, as I stand here!

Policeman I can see that, Mr Gadd.

Gadd Well, then, do something about it. You can’t ring someone that
many times in a day, surely?!

Policeman Leaving somebody voicemails is not in itself a crime –

Gadd So what you’re telling me is I can call anyone up – anyone I meet

– as many times as I want – all hours of the day and as long as I don’t
threaten them I’m free to do as I please?!

Police You’re not planning to are you?

Gadd No! I’m not planning to! I’m making a point! This behaviour
shouldn’t be allowed!

Policeman You could change your number?

Gadd Why do I have to adjust my behaviour around her? She should

adjust hers around me! Here, take my phone. Download the voicemails.
Listen to her. I’m serious. She needs help. Whether she threatens me or not,
she needs help.

Policeman We can’t listen to that many voicemails. We don’t have the

resources.

Gadd So, what?! What am I supposed to do?

Policeman Go home, listen to them – and mark down moments where

she says something threatening. If she has left you fifty messages, the
chances are there will be something there we can use.

...

Unknown Number *Ringing.*

Scene Three

Gadd That weekend, I listened to sixteen hours of voicemail – and I had

barely scratched the surface. She had left me thirty-three hours in total in
the days while I was away. And the scariest part? It took her two days to fill
it. Thirty-three hours in two days.

...

Gadd After sacrificing the first weekend to her gulf of voicemails, I

decide the best course of action is to hook my laptop up to my phone and
export the voicemails overnight. Then email myself that MP3 and download
it back onto my phone so I can listen with headphones.

...
Gadd She became the podcast to my life. I listened to her on every tube
journey, every bus ride. In the street between meetings. She was there, in
my ears, all the time, and in a fucked-up way she had got all she wanted.
She was spending every waking minute with me.

...

Gadd Every seven days the voicemails automatically deleted and she
would refill my inbox – all thirty-three hours – all over again. And I would
repeat the process – hooking up my laptop, exporting the voicemails,
emailing them to myself, re-downloading them, and listening to every
single one. Thirty-three hours a week was almost a full working week. I
was devoting a full working week to Martha.

...

Martha Voicemail And it wasn’t until after I got back to the flat – to the
house – that I realised you probably felt the same, it’s an energy thing isn’t
it? You know when you know.

...

Gadd The voicemails played out a retrospective of our entire

relationship. The emotional instability, chats, bile, misinformation, painting
the fact we were loved ones –

...

Martha Voicemail When you said you were all about hanging the
curtains and all that, I remember going home – I needed a sandwich, you
see, and so I brushed my teeth, headed out – and I think you must’ve been
working a half-day or covering for that Emerald bitch – because, when I
got back you weren’t there.

...

Gadd She remembered everything with such lucidity. Moments I’d

forgotten about, other times I had been ignorant or said something which
had given her false promise.

...

Martha Voicemail Remember the picnics in the park? Well, I went out
that day, bought a ton – from Sainsbury’s – cocktail sausages, cheese-
strings, and all that, and the next day you looked at me like I was a fucking
alien. You were the one who suggested it!

...

Gadd Other times, I couldn’t believe the meaning she would glean from
the most implausible places.

...

Martha Voicemail It was a Wednesday, I remember midweek, because

I’d just done the accounts, yeah? And I was in the pub for my break and I
was watching you serving in your tight whites and I remember thinking, red,
red is your colour, don’t know why you’re wasting your time with these tight
whites, you know? Well, the next day you were wearing red – isn’t that? I
mean, I don’t know whether you believe in those things but I – do you get
what I’m saying?

...

Gadd Most of it was anger. Anger over me bringing up the online article
– or going to the police. The time I called her a stalker in the middle of my
comedy routine. Meeting Teri at the Soho. She talked a lot about Teri.
Unabating fury. Like no time had passed at all.

...

Martha Voicemail That is an Aids-ridden little tart with lips that could
suck ten men – fucking hate her! The way she looked at me? If I had a
clock, yeah? If I had a clock, I would turn it back and get someone to run
straight through that ugly, nasty little bitch.

...
Gadd Anger over my sexuality. Anger over the abuse. Anger that I
wasn’t who I said I was. Who I pretended to be.

...

Martha Voicemail How dare you say all those things to me and then
come out with, all this, all this – this gay abuse business – how dare you
treat me like that – I think you’re getting a flavour – a flavour of just what
you’ve done to me.

...

Gadd That’s the thing with stalking, it doesn’t take much for the
adoration to shift into something else.

...

Martha Voicemail Is it a genetic thing? With the Gadds? That you’re all
so fucking ugly and mad looking? I mean, really. I mean, what does your
dad think about giving birth to a part-time shirt lifter? He doesn’t look like
the type to be so accepting, yeah?

...

Gadd I knew the homophobic comments would be enough for the police
to charge her – it’s a hate crime. But – even though I had been saying it to
audiences up and down the country – the thought of going to the police
station and admitting it to a random stranger seemed like courage too far.

...

Martha Voicemail So you’re bi, yeah? Can’t be fully gay because I saw
that skank you use to run around with – is that it, Gadd? Only able to get
your rocks off when they look like a man?

...

Gadd Even now – after everything I had been through in Edinburgh – I

still felt ashamed. All Martha’s words did was reinforce my irrational belief
that everybody else felt the same.

...

Martha Voicemail The time I’ve wasted on you!

...

Gadd One week, two weeks, three weeks, four –

...

Martha Voicemail I’m angry, Richard, I really am angry.

...

Gadd Even with the headphones off, I start to hear her – late at night,
panic in my chest, retching with the worry that she has forever changed a
part of my brain and I would just hear her constantly for the rest of my life
whether she stops calling or not.

...

Martha Voicemail I used to believe people who said they had been
abused.

...

Gadd Come on, give me a threat – give me something!

...

Martha Voicemail So tell me – where were you raped? Ass? Ear?

...

Gadd One month, two months, three months, four –

...
Martha Voicemail I mean really, who are you fooling?!

...

Gadd How is this happening?! How is this happening to me?!

...

Martha Voicemail You won’t know what’s hit you, baby reindeer, when
my team of lawyers come at you – hard, yeah?

...

Gadd Honestly, if I hear this baby reindeer shit one more time!

...

Martha Voicemail *Laugh.*

...

Gadd It still feels like nobody knows how to deal with this situation. Six
months ago I won an Edinburgh Comedy Award and now I am sitting, for
hours, every day, listening to this fucking mental cow – I don’t even care
anymore – this fucking, psychotic, stalking cunt, over and over again!

...

Martha Voicemail So if I was bi, or a poof, or whatever, I wouldn’t talk

so freely, yeah?

...

Gadd Belittling my abuse, telling me I’m a liar – I cannot believe,

having gone a fair way to exorcising the demons of one man who caused
me so much grief, she now takes up centre stage in his place.

...
Martha Voicemail Had I slept with you I would have contracted all
sorts, Aids, VD, whatever.

...

Gadd Am I addicted to chaos? Did I summon her into my life through

some vulnerability or is it God or fate, or whoever the fuck, chucking me a
cold bucket of irony in my face at a time when I have just professed my
abuse to the world – admitted to my bisexuality – a barraging homophobe
gains access to my phone, to my life, twenty-four seven, to deny my
experiences, and to remind me why I stayed scared and trapped for so long
– because of people like her and opinions like this.

...

Gadd Isn’t that just fucking typical!

...

Martha Voicemail You think you’ve suffered?! You don’t know what the
word means and no I haven’t been abused – no I haven’t been shagged up
the ass in my twenties – I mean that’s hysterical anyway, isn’t abuse for
little boys? And their piano teachers? But, no, you don’t know what
suffering is. I’ve suffered, yeah? I’ve suffered. Fucking toyed about by you,
haven’t I? A Fenian faggot –

EE Message deleted.

...

Gadd I don’t even feel sorry for you anymore. I hate you – I hate what
you’re doing to me, to my family, I hate every viewpoint you espouse from
your deranged mouth – I hate the fact you have devoted your life to making
people miserable.

...

Gadd I hate the fact I’m scared of you.

...

Gadd I hate the fact, as I listen to every voicemail, your unpredictable

jargon makes me now – more than ever – worry you are going to do
something to me – stab me when my back is turned – write blogs about me
sexually abusing kids – or go to the press – say something about me when
my stock is high – when I have finally – after ten years of pub jobs and
slaving away at the Fringe – finally got people to care.

...

Gadd Every time I go outside, I fear I bump into you, somewhere dark,
cast in backlight, a knife in your hand, and I think, ‘This is it – this is how
you get me.’

...

Gadd My thoughts have become corroded and out of shape. I fantasise

about killing you daily – chopping your hateful tongue out of your
disgusting mouth.

...

Gadd I hate the fact I care. How your words affect me. You were the one
person who saw me as strong and now I stand before you as I truly am. As I
have always been. Someone frightened and scared.

...

Gadd How even now – after all the progress I have made – you are there
– in my phone – reminding me of how far I haven’t come. How I am still
ashamed. How I wish I could go back to when I was safely hidden away.
When nobody knew who I was or what had happened to me.

...

Gadd I hate that I relate to you. That I know what it’s like to be
consumed by someone else. That I am to you what he was to me.
...

Gadd You’ve won. You’ve got everything you wanted. You’re with me
everywhere I go. My first thought when I wake up and the last before I
sleep. If I sleep.

...

Gadd You have compromised every facet of my life. Family, love,

health, career.

...

Gadd I thought I was your baby reindeer?

...

Gadd I will never understand why you latched on, over nothing – and
gripped on, over nothing.

...

Gadd Was it nothing? Do I deserve this?

...

Gadd Do I deserve this?

...

Martha Voicemail I’m fucking furious with you, Richard, I’m fucking
furious. But I don’t know why I’m surprised. You come from a long line of
liars. Like – your mum. Found out all about her. Problems with the council
perchance? And your father? Some crackpot that nobody gets on with?
You’re a mess, Richard Gadd. All of you. I know all about you and your
little lives and I know a lot worse. Keep your traps shut. Yeah? You’re all on
your final warning. I fucking mean it this time – because I’ve got a pulsing
PMT – you get me? This is off the charts big this is – I’ve a raging PMT
where I could stab just about everyone in England – in Britain – and so you
watch what you’re saying because maybe one day I will stab someone. You
just don’t know. Yeah? So button it up. Right up. Or I might have to do
something.

Scene Four

Gadd I was walking outside Euston station when I heard it. I played it
back seven times over until I was sure it would be enough to charge her.
And it was.

...

Gadd The restraining order was issued on 6 February 2017. The first
time I met Martha was when I first moved to London in January 2013. It
had been going on for over four years. The first time I went to the police
was 8 September 2014. It took over three years for me to obtain it from the
moment I first stepped inside a police station.

...

Gadd And in that time – she ruined my job, threatened my family,

attacked me, followed me everywhere, made me move house, jeopardised
my career, my relationship, and destroyed my mental health.

...

Gadd Forty thousand and seventy-one emails, three hundred and fifty
hours of voicemail, seven-hundred and forty-four tweets, forty-six
Facebook messages, three fake Facebook accounts, one hundred and six
pages of letters, some sleeping pills, a woolly hat, a pair of brand new boxer
shorts, and one cuddly baby reindeer toy.

...

Gadd All within the realms of legality.

...
Gadd I know her better than anyone I have ever met before. I know
where she gets her hair cut, what she has for lunch, her degrees and the
institutions she got them from, her first husband, her last boyfriend, her
drug-dealing neighbour, which side of her back she has psoriasis on. I could
write her biography. And I never chose to be commissioned. I never chose
any of this. And here I am talking about her on stage, like we’ve shared a
thousand memories together, all mutual, all consenting.

...

Gadd She is not allowed to contact me directly anymore otherwise she

goes to jail. So instead she rings me off an unknown number and hangs up
every day. Instead she harasses my parents at their work address. Instead
she sends racist messages to my new girlfriend on Twitter. Instead she
reports the bar to the licensing police for things they haven’t done.

...

Gadd This show doesn’t have a conclusion. Sometimes I question

whether it will ever have one. She needs help – but the system cannot give
her help unless she proves herself to be a physical threat to someone else –
or herself. So they just let it continue.

...

Gadd There is a woman in an article online talking about Martha and

how the police cannot do anything. That was 2003. Here we are sixteen
years later and nothing has changed. So my life is a waiting game, waiting
for something to happen.

...

Gadd Anytime my mum or dad ring out of the blue. ‘What has she done?
Has she – done something to them?!’ The small talk at the top of the
conversation when we both know we’re just waiting to ask one another,
‘Have you heard from her again?’ I find it weird that in my darkest
moments that I have wished for something bad to happen so that would be
the end.
...

Gadd I think, as audience members, we expect art to be virtuous and tell

the truth, but the truth isn’t always virtuous. Sometimes the truth is messy
and morally complicated. It wouldn’t be fair to paint myself as the perfect
victim because I wasn’t. It wouldn’t be fair to paint her as a remorseless
psychopath because she wasn’t. It’s somewhere in the middle.

...

Gadd I still check her emails from time to time. I still wait for the date
on the restraining order to expire to see what might possibly happen next. I
still look over my shoulder everywhere I go. I still question what she’ll
think of this show, when she finds out about it – and she will find out.

...

Gadd I worry that she might be in here with us tonight.

...

Gadd On 4 February 2017, I got my last piece of written correspondence

from Martha. It was a list – sixty bullet points strong, with no structure
whatsoever – detailing all the reasons she loves me. It was the first moment
I ever understood – Why me?

...

Martha Email 60 one final word about the baby reindeer, had it since I
was born, earliest memeory ws Christmas time, my parents hasd an old
photo of me, sitting with a papper hat on head and reindeer, cos I often
wonderrd why do I like richard gadd and thre was another boyfriend way
back when who lookd like this other toy, a big eared Eric the mous???
aren’t you glad yu don’t look like a big eared mouse????? Anyway, the
reindeer was cuddlym. Had big lips, huge eyes and the cuutest wee bum.
You are the twin of that reindder. I still have it to this day!!!! It was the only
good thing about my childhood. I’d hug it when they fought. it means so
much to me. you mean so much to me. its fifty-one years old!!!!!!!!!!! ive
gotta go.

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 METHUEN DRAMA
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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BLOOMSBURY, METHUEN DRAMA and the Methuen Drama logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury
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First published in Great Britain 2019

Copyright © Richard Gadd, 2019

Richard Gadd has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be
identified as author of this work.

Cover design: Ben Anslow

Cover image © THE OTHER RICHARD

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owners.

This version of the text went to print before the end of rehearsals and may differ slightly from the
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All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved and application for performance etc. should be
made before rehearsals by professionals and by amateurs to Casarotto Ramsay & Associates Ltd,
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ISBN: PB: 978-1-3501-4342-5

ePDF: 978-1-3501-4343-2
eBook: 978-1-3501-4344-9

Series: Modern Plays

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