How to Tell if You're a Massive Stalker

Richard Brittain, Countdown winner (Screen grab via)

In 2006, Richard Brittain won series 55 of warm-bath-into-which-OAPs-are-gently-lowered-directly-preceding-their-death TV show Countdown. You might scoff, but Richard Brittain has his own page on The Countdown Wiki, plus he’s met Pam Ayres, plus he has a teapot with a clock in it and a bunch of heavy dictionaries. So leave him alone. What have you ever done with your life that’s so good?

I’ll tell you what you’ve done that’s so good: you’ve never stalked someone to Glasgow with a tent and a plan to kidnap them – a plan that went so horribly awry that you then learned every single adjective and used them all at once to write a novel about your stalking subject called The World Rose. So I guess what I'm saying here is: Countdown Champion Richard Brittain – 1; you – 1. Let’s call it a score draw.

In a first-person blog post titled "The Benevolent Stalker", which is quite widely doing the rounds at the moment, Richard describes his infatuation with and ensuing stalking of a young woman he went to university with. On the surface, it’s straight up weird and terrifying, but also a rare glimpse into the mind of a stalker who genuinely doesn’t know he’s a stalker. He just thinks he’s in an especially one-sided relationship.

“It was her smile that enchanted me, which may sound clichéd, but it is the truth," he writes. "Her smile stimulated the deepest feelings of wonderment inside my being. Some people offer fake smiles, but a smile should never be forced. There is something incredible, infinite and indefinably good about a genuine smile. She was pretty, too. We did a quiz together, and I kissed her cheek when I left.”

If you’re not a Countdown winner with 26 volumes of the dictionary groaning on a low shelf, you might have struggled with this paragraph, so I’ll translate: “It was her smile I liked. It may sound clichéd, but I liked her smile. Some people are fake when they smile. Not her. Real smiler. Wasn’t just the smile. Rest of it was banging as well. We did a quiz together and she kissed me on the cheek. While smiling.”

"She agreed to be on our team. 'Don’t worry honey, I’ll get these forms filled out for you,' she said when I provided her with the paperwork, as though it was a privilege to have her on our team, which it was. She let me choose a picture of her to use on the form, since she was busy.

That evening, I went through her many Facebook pictures. 'Maybe this one?' I asked in a chat message.

'It’s not opening,' she said. 'What photo is it?'

'You’re wearing a low-cut black lace-trimmed top. On your pink lips, a mischievous smile is playing,' I described."

Again, to translate: “‘It’s not opening,' she said. ‘What photo is it?’ ‘The booby one where your flimsy human lips are smiling,’ I described.”

Admittedly, it is tricky to fill in a University Challenge entry form without inadvertently sounding like a murderer – an actual murderer, an actual smear blood across your nude concave chest while screaming into a dictionary murderer, an actual "they found a room in his house full of pictures of Susie Dent pursing her lips and thinking of an eight-worder" murderer – but at least try.

“Determined to impress her and get our team onto TV, I intensively revised my general knowledge. I also frequented the student bar where she worked. I figured out what hours she did each day and went at those times.”

In English: “Determined to make a girl like me without actually talking to her or making consistent eye contact, I read the Guinness Book of Records twice then hung out where she works, nervously sweating and doing a big Sudoku.”

I think I might move to Scotland.

— Richard Brittain (@TheWorldRose) August 26, 2014

Then – presumably because she noticed all her years-old Facebook profile pictures were getting "Liked" in the deep, dark hours of the early morning by Countdown champ and bar regular Richard Brittain – our heroine unfriended him on Facebook.

“'You’re kinda freaking me out,' she explained. 'You’re a good guy but you’re being far too forward.'

'Are you still doing University Challenge with us?' I asked."

Definitely the most important question to ask there, yeah.

"For some reason, I then decided to tell her how I really felt; that I had become infatuated with her, and that I was in love with her. With hindsight, of course I wouldn’t have done that. In fact, I would have done almost everything differently but, at the time, I felt compelled to do what I did."

Who is responsible for this enduring myth that, if nerds in glasses just deeply confess their love to someone they’ve met about three times, they will fall upon them all swooning and going, "Yes, alright, let’s run away together! Somewhere exotic! But not so exotic that your weird nerd allergies flare up again!"? Is it rom-coms? Is it those books about Warhammer they all read? Is it anime?

"She pulled out of the team. We found a replacement and failed the audition anyway (I doubt that her inclusion would have made a difference). My dream of winning University Challenge and impressing the maiden was shattered."

Peep that bracketed nerd burn. "You don’t love me? WELL YOU PROBABLY WOULDN’T HAVE HELPED US BEAT CHRISTCHURCH ANYWAY!"

"Over the next few weeks, when it became clear that I had no chance with her, my behaviour became increasingly erratic. I would drink 2 bottles of wine and go into a club, climb over the fence after being kicked out, and get into fights."

Only time he’s sounded cool, mainly because he inexplicably turned into Ollie Reed when heartbroken.

Anyway, after a few bar-fights and a few more bottles of wine (and a few numbers rounds, just to stay sharp), Richard decided to send his crush a bunch of love letters, presumably by gluing a load of those white-on-blue Countdown letters to a sheet of human back skin.

"That might seem a bit much, but it felt like I would be denying my love if I did nothing. Eventually, she contacted the police. I was called by a policewoman and told that I had to stop contacting her."

Here’s the thing: regardless of whatever feelings you are feeling, if the actual police tell you that your love is terrible and wrong, then maybe take that as a sign to stop.

"I abstained for six months"

Good, yeah.

"But I learned that she was returning to Greenwich for her graduation, and I went to see her. As chance would have it, she was positioned at the far end of one row, in front of where I was standing. She saw me and tried to swap with the person next to her, but it was too late; as the photo was taken, I was standing near her."

Oi Richard, mate, was a mischievous smile playing upon your pink lips while the photo was being taken?

(Screen grab via)

It's here that the realisation finally began to set in.

"After that, I thought long and hard about what I was doing. I think that is when I first accepted that I had become a stalker. Before, I had been an admirer. But what does stalking really mean? It seems to mean that you truly love someone who does not love you back."

I don't want to have pull out the dictionary here, Richard, but yeah, that's not really what stalking means at all. Stalking, in this case, seems to be frightening a young woman so much that she calls the police, and then frightening her some more, and then thinking about it and realising it might be wrong – and then going to Glasgow and asking if she wants to be kidnapped. Because that’s what happened next:

"When it was complete, I decided to try to make my book known by getting into the national news. I found out that she worked in Glasgow, so I travelled there with a plan. I was going to tell her that if she came with me, and we faked a kidnapping, we would both become famous. We would go into the hills and camp out for a few days while the nation searched. I had brought the necessary supplies."

This is the properly scary bit, because that plan is so far detached from reality – and wrapped around a cold logic, a core of, "Well, we’ll be famous" – that it kind of makes you wonder what else someone might be capable of doing if they think turning up to Glasgow unannounced with a tent and a restraining order might be a good idea.

"I would like to reiterate that I was not plotting to kidnap her."

It’s weird how few people on Earth have ever had to say that sentence. Also this one:

"I also realised that I didn’t have the heart to ask her if she would like to be kidnapped."

Really got to work up the brass to ask a girl if she wants to get kidnapped.

Sadly, this is where it all falls apart – he finds her, she looks shocked, takes his picture for the police and wordlessly marches away, and he’s stood there, with a tent and a coach ticket home, with the slow realisation that what he calls “our relationship” is probably pretty much over now. That's it. Love – or at least the concept of love as envisioned by an Octochamp being intensely weird at someone for a sustained number of months – is dead.

So what's Richard up to now? Well, he’s written a book (extract: “They stepped onto a slanted floor and leaned against the wall, which was also slanted”) and is working on another (which is literally called Chocolate Holocaust). He's also, according to his blog, working his way through a succession of jobs where he normally hates the boss (“She seemed to think that she could get away with such behaviour simply because she had big boobs”) and quite often gets fired.

He’s also sullied the good name of Countdown champions throughout history. Would Julian Fell do this? Would Mark Nyman? Exactly. Turn in your badge, your gun and your 26 volumes of dictionaries, Richard. It’s over.

@joelgolby

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