JAN MOIR: Armchair sleuths trying to unmask Baby Reindeer's stalker are fuelled by the same dark compulsions as the stalkers themselves

Can there be too much real life in a real-life drama? What if the true crime in a true crime series is telling too much that is true? And who owns the moral rights to anyone's life story anyway?

All these questions have been thrown into focus by Baby Reindeer, comedian Richard Gadd's seven-part television series about his own experience as a ­victim of stalking.

To his surprise as much as anyone's, the modestly budgeted show has become an unexpected global hit.

Since it was launched two weeks ago, coincidentally — one hopes — just in time for National Stalking Awareness Week, Baby Reindeer has become the number-one Netflix streaming show around the world, topping the charts from America to Australia and beyond.

Millions have watched the unflinching and occasionally squalid tale of how struggling comedian Donny (played by Gadd himself) was stalked by Martha (Jessica Gunning) — and also groomed, then raped, by television executive ­Darrien (Tom Goodman-Hill) for good measure.

Donny (Richard Gadd) and Martha (Jessica Gunning) in Baby Reindeer

The problem — the big problem! — is that the real-life Martha has now been identified and the wrong television ­executive identified by the same kind of ghoulish, Googling, bad faith, online armchair sleuths who got involved with the disappearance and death of Nicola Bulley last year.

Despite pleas from Gadd and others to desist, the sleuths went right ahead and named the real Martha online, while an entirely innocent television producer has had his reputation shredded because of their clumsy and ­erroneous Inspector Clouseau-like meddling.

Both have received death threats and abuse; both are said to be consulting their lawyers. In ­addition, 'Martha' has been named in some newspapers, although the Daily Mail has ­chosen not to do so.

In published interviews and on her social media feeds this week, Real Martha showed the kind of salty reactions and dishevelled thinking that chime precisely with those displayed by the ­Fictional Martha.

'He stalked me,' she said of Gadd, while accusing him of ­bullying her. 'He is using Baby Reindeer to stalk me now; I'm the victim. He's written a bloody show about me.'

Last month, long before these perilous developments, Gadd told Variety magazine that the ­character of Martha and his real-life stalker were not similar.

'We had to make them different for legal reasons,' he said. 'You have to change things to protect yourself and protect other ­people.' Well that worked out well, didn't it?

Yet I don't believe this is Richard Gadd's fault. He should be allowed to tell his own story, and he has done so with admirable candour and no little compassion.

In many ways Baby Reindeer is harder on Gadd himself than it is on Martha; the author never ­forgets, despite severe provocations, that mental illness is to blame for her behaviour. And he even admits onscreen to his own weak complicity when, crippled by self-hatred, he is flattered by her greasy attentions.

Surely the extreme way that people now react to such criminal situations, real or fictionalised, is not his responsibility? Some have said that Gadd could have done more to protect Real Martha, deleting his tell-all, decade-old social media posts for a start.

But it looks to me like that is exactly what he did — or restricted access to them at the very least. However, in an online world where little is private and even less is out of bounds to the dedicated voyeur, it is amazing what nuggets these truffling pigs can dig up.

The drama depicts stalking as the life-wrecking, gut-wrenching, grinding harassment that results in restraining orders, family calamity, new identities and ­sometimes even murder

And isn't it ironic that they are fuelled by the same kind of dark compulsions as stalkers themselves; obsessed to the point where both perspective and humanity dissolve into the moral murk.

One of the main reasons that Baby Reindeer became so popular was its honesty — what a pity if that honesty also turns out to be its undoing.

At the centre of the drama is Gunning's mesmerising portrayal of Martha as a woman who was vulnerable and damaged, but also capable of terrible physical and mental violence.

It was as true a depiction of the clammy horror of stalking as you will find onscreen; Martha waiting at the bus stop every day, Martha sending thousands and thousands of emails and foul texts, Martha becoming increasingly threatening and unstable as the twin ­grip of obsession and delusion takes hold.

Stalkers such as Martha often suffer from a form of erotomania; festering in a sexual obsession focused on the innocent object of their misplaced desire. Yet to its credit, Baby Reindeer is not sexy and glossy and mysterious, as stalking dramas often are.

Instead, it depicts stalking as the life-wrecking, gut-wrenching, grinding harassment that results in restraining orders, family calamity, new identities and ­sometimes even murder.

Today, there is a stalking crisis in Hollywood. There is barely a female British television presenter who doesn't have a stalker or some kind of stalking problem. And stalking incidences have increased so much in the UK that many police forces now have their own dedicated specialist stalking officers.

Baby Reindeer is a hard watch but, despite all its darkness, it should be given a public health award for depicting the ugly ­reality that faces both the stalker and the stalked.

If cyber sleuths force Richard Gadd — and others behind real-life dramas — to disguise ­reality too much, we are in danger of moving the dial ever further away from the truth.

If that happens, how could ­dramas such as Mr Bates vs The Post Office, The Sixth Commandment or even The Crown ever get made? And I didn't hear anyone quibbling about the Royal ­Family's mental health or ­well­being when Peter Morgan stuck the boot in, week after week.

Viewers in their millions responded to the truth of Baby Reindeer, they recognised its gritty veracity instantly and ­instinctively. And no wonder. Far too often audiences are insulted by ­television dramas all bent out of shape by woke concerns and the kind of anxious social ­engineering that results in the over-­representation and beatification of minorities, who are never the bad hats nor the guilty parties.

By contrast, unvarnished Baby Reindeer was down in the weeds, bereft of red herrings, modish truth-warping or clever conceits — and all the better for it.

I didn't love Baby Reindeer and I can't say I enjoyed it, but I did admire the honesty and the energy and the fact that it is too ­important to ignore.

Turn back time

Darling Cher, pictured, says she prefers younger men — but only because men her age are either married or dead.

In a bid to be helpful, I tried to find some snazzy, eligible 70-plus bachelors who would help this goddess to turn back time. Sylvester Stallone and Brian Cox are both 77 but unfortunately ­happily married, although not to each other.

At the age of 79, ­Robert De Niro recently became a dad again, just like his pal Al Pacino (at 83).

Do you know something? Cher is right to stick to her toyboys.

Potter pipsqueak! 

Please, not more sanctimonious guff from pipsqueak Daniel Radcliffe. Speaking this week, the Harry Potter star sniffed that the row over transgender rights he had with JK Rowling has made him feel 'really sad'. Despite the wonderful impact Rowling's work has had on his life, he told a magazine that 'it doesn't mean that you owe the things you truly believe to someone else for your entire life'.

That is entirely true, of course. And he is entitled to his opinion, even if it is on the wrong side of the ­ideology — and history. And that is 'really sad', too.

Long-haul air travel is hideous enough without some idiot on the plane making the journey even more miserable for everyone. Like the British tourist who had to be tackled by passengers and handcuffed during a United Airlines flight to New York. The plane was redirected to Bangor, Maine — what a pain — and the guilty party has been fined £16,000 by a U.S. court. Ouch.

Alexander MacDonald, 30, spiralled out of control after having a fight with his sobbing girlfriend. I'm grateful for the deterrent of the punishing fine, but still feel terribly sorry for her. What a way to find out your bloke is a jet-fuelled, jumbo dud.

Now the Madeleine McCann investigation has been granted another £192,000 in public funds, the ghouls are out in force once more, pinging their curdled theories across cyber space, still accusing the McCanns of murdering their own child, the maddest of the mad, still high on the hatred and the conspiracy theories after all these years. It is like peering into a bottomless sewer of madness. 

Across America, students are wearing ­Palestinian keffiyehs, and preventing Jewish students from going to their classes. They are useful idiots, fomenting a new wave of anti-Semitism that must thrill Hamas. This is a better result than they ever could have hoped for.

Reducing a complicated international conflict and lumping American society's problems together to point to a single common cause on which to blame everything — the Jews.

Now a furious spokeswoman at Columbia University in New York is demanding that humanitarian aid should be sent to the 'starving' students who have barricaded themselves in. 'Do you want students to die of dehydration and starvation? Or get severely ill?' she cried. Don't tempt me.

Still there is one awkward question that always goes unanswered in the midst of this tragedy. This failed investigation has now cost a total of £13.2 million. Why is one single child deemed such a special case when thousands of British children go missing every year? 

Lauryn all set to put the boot in 

The Football Association has got its shorts in a spiral over threats by influencer Lauryn Goodman that she is going to attend Euro 2024. Lauryn is the ex of Man City defender Kyle Walker and has two children with him — son Kairo, four, and an eight-month-old baby daughter who has not been publicly named. Kyle also has four children with his wife Annie: Roman, 11; Riaan, seven; Reign, five; and newborn Rezon.

How does the scoundrel find the time? No wonder his former teammate Eric Dier used to call him The Stallion. 'Kyle was like a racehorse, up and down that flank,' said Dier, admiringly. Well, quite.

The great FA fear is that Lauryn plus kids will show up at the official WAG enclosure during the tournament and cause the kind of seismic embarrassment that might distract Kyle from mowing down Serbian wingers. However, Lauryn is not a WAG she's a SHAG (Someone He Actively Goosed) — and there is a big difference. Lauryn's status has already seen her issued with an access-no-areas order and a lifetime ban to the inner wagdom, not that she's bovvered. But here's an idea. Instead of trying to moderate her behaviour, why doesn't the FA curtail his? Kyle is a 33-year-old father of six who seems to be permanently in the adultery sinbin.

He didn't even turn up to Kairo's recent birthday party, after Lauryn went to all the trouble of hiring 14 event coordinators plus a stylist and videographer.

If this was a friendly match before the ­publicity onslaught of the Euros, then The Stallion better prepare for the going to get rough.

Across America, students are wearing ­Palestinian keffiyehs, and preventing Jewish students from going to their classes. They are useful idiots, fomenting a new wave of anti-Semitism that must thrill Hamas. This is a better result than they ever could have hoped for.

Reducing a complicated international conflict and lumping American society's problems together to point to a single common cause on which to blame everything — the Jews.

Now a furious spokeswoman at Columbia University in New York is demanding that humanitarian aid should be sent to the 'starving' students who have barricaded themselves in. 'Do you want students to die of dehydration and starvation? Or get severely ill?' she cried. Don't tempt me.