'People in the industry know who the "rapist" is': As Baby Reindeer is picked ... trends now

It is relatively low-budget and was launched with minimum fanfare and very little promotion, but in just three weeks Baby Reindeer has become one of the most talked-about TV sensations of the year.

The Netflix drama about a struggling comedian targeted by an obsessed and deranged female stalker has notched up almost 14 million viewers in the UK alone and is the number one show globally. Part of the fascination, it seems, is the fact it's billed as 'a captivating true story'.

What's more, the lead actor and scriptwriter Richard Gadd is the person it happened to.

Gadd used his real-life experiences with stalking and sexual abuse to create a chilling one-man show for the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

It later became an Olivier Award–winning play in London and was quickly snapped up by the streaming giant.

Gadd was not just the victim of a stalker. With unflinching honesty, he also reveals the disturbing story of his grooming and rape at the hands of a predatory TV comedy writer and producer.

All this has created something of an online frenzy among armchair sleuths desperate to identify the real-life characters, locations and events.

Here we try to separate what in the show is fact, what may have been embellished, and what is pure fiction...

1. The real Donny Dunn

No amateur sleuthing is required to learn that the main character in Baby Reindeer, Donny Dunn, is Richard Gadd, who plays himself and wrote the series.

Gadd, now 34, is re-enacting a period from his early 20s when he was the victim of both a stalker and a rapist. Gadd dieted down to 10 and a half stone to play his skinny, tormented, neurotic younger self.

Like Donny, Gadd is a Scottish stand-up, originally from Fife, the middle-class son of a microbiologist dad and secretary mum. He graduated from Glasgow University with a degree in English literature and theatre studies.

Although Gadd did move to London and work in a pub, his comedy gigs were more successful than Donny's — although Donny tells many of the same jokes Gadd has used in his own comedy routines.

Gadd won the New Act of the Year Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2010 when he was just 21 and unlike Donny — who regularly played to empty pubs and unamused audiences — YouTube videos show Gadd's comedy was popular and well-received from early on in his career.

2. The real Martha

It took internet sleuths a matter of days to unmask the identity of Gadd's real-life stalker, who goes by the name of 'Martha' on the show.

Played by actress Jessica Gunning, 38, Martha is depicted as an older, overweight Scot with brown curly hair, who says she's a lawyer and makes fanciful claims about having a huge salary (despite not being able to afford a drink), famous contacts and homes dotted around the world. Prior to broadcast, Gadd was insistent that he and Netflix had done all they could to make the TV character different from the real stalker, saying: 'We've gone to such lengths to disguise her, I don't think she'd recognise herself.'

Gadd explained that he had to make the character of Martha different from the real Martha for 'legal reasons', but added that what he was looking for was an actress who could capture that 'kind of energy'. However the woman believed to be the real Martha is also an older, overweight Scottish woman with brown, curly hair and a law degree.

The woman, whom the Daily Mail is choosing not to name, is 58, originally from Stirling, and lives in a council flat in London.

Social media users have uncovered the woman's obsessive tweets to Gadd from 2014, her demands to know whether he received her letters and gifts, and her boasts that she has a 26-year-old 'toyboy'. There are also tweets where she makes a reference to 'hanging her curtains' — the same phrase (used as sexual innuendo) in Baby Reindeer.

The 'real Martha' gained a law degree from Dundee University and began working as a trainee solicitor. Over the past fortnight she has written a series of angry and confused Facebook posts denying Gadd's portrayal of her as a stalker and told the Mail in an interview that she is now the victim. This week she claimed she will be doing a TV interview to tell her side of the story.

3. The pub where it all began

Donny Dunn is shown working as a barman at a London pub called The Heart, the place where he first encounters Martha.

Many believe the pub where Gadd actually worked and met the real Martha is The Hawley Arms in Camden, North London. The hipster venue was highly popular at the peak of the Britpop scene, and regulars included Amy Winehouse, Kate Moss and Noel and Liam Gallagher.

Neither Gadd nor staff have confirmed he ever worked there, but that hasn't stopped fans of Baby Reindeer flocking there, especially after the 'real Martha' wrote Facebook posts about visiting The Hawley Arms and made accusations about its staff.

4. The scale of the stalking campaign

In Baby Reindeer Donny tells the police his stalker has been pursuing him for six months. In real life, Gadd was targeted for more than four years.

'It's very emotionally true,' says Gadd of the Netflix series. 'I was severely stalked and severely abused. But we wanted it to exist in the sphere of art and protect the people it's based on.'

Martha is shown deluging Donny with emails. Gadd claims to have received more than 41,000 as well as 350 hours of voicemail messages, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages (from four separate accounts) and 106 pages

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