The truth about Richard Gadd: From his relationship with his parents and idyllic upbringing to just how lucrative Baby Reindeer has been, BETH HALE reveals all...

It's the dark and twisted tale that's taken on a life of its own.

Baby Reindeer is the seven-part drama written by a comedian (who also plays the lead character) based on his real-life experiences with a female stalker – the fallout of which is now turning into a phenomenon that threatens to eclipse the original story.

When Richard Gadd decided to turn his stalking ordeal into a work of performance art for the Edinburgh Fringe five years ago, he surely never could have imagined the result would be a Netflix hit viewed nearly 60million times in a month. And certainly not that Fiona Harvey, the woman identified by online sleuths as his stalker, would end up outing herself this week in a TV interview with Piers Morgan, a spectacle that itself has now garnered nearly four million views on YouTube.

Needless to say Harvey, 58, vehemently denies allegations that over four-and-a-half years she sent the 41,071 emails, 744 tweets, letters totalling 106 pages and 350 hours of voicemail messages, which is what Gadd says his stalker did. (Harvey admitted sending Gadd no more than 10 emails, one letter and 18 tweets.)

Baby Reindeer is the drama written by comedian Richard Gadd (who also plays the lead character) based on his real-life experiences with a female stalker, played by Jessica Gunning

Gadd's comic style at Edinburgh festival has always mixed humour with a shock factor

Ms Gunning, Gadd and their fellow castmate Nava Nau. Ms Nau plays a trans woman who dates Donny during the series

But one thing is indisputable in this tangled web of claim and counter claim: Gadd's background could not be in starker contrast to the chaotic and traumatic experiences charted in Baby Reindeer (the show also documents in flashback how he is groomed and raped by a man he considered a friend, another experience based in reality).

As the Mail has discovered, Gadd's middle-class childhood, growing up on the shores of the River Tay in Scotland, was anything but tortured.

Gadd, 34, grew up with his older sister Kate and parents Geoff – a university professor and scientist – and Julia – a school secretary – in a large, detached home in Wormit, a village in north-east Fife. There, he went to the local primary school, played football and tennis for the local club and made his first appearance treading the boards in his school nativity play as one of the Wise Men.

As he himself says: 'I had a happy childhood, it was amazing, I wasn't anxious at all.'

After primary school, Gadd moved on to Madras College, the alma mater of newsreader Alastair Stewart and singer KT Tunstall, a 1,400-strong comprehensive set in historic buildings in picturesque St Andrew's.

It was at Madras that Gadd's love of drama flourished (he dropped Latin in favour of drama) – not least when he landed the starring role of Macbeth in his final year.

Piers Morgan last night with Fiona Harvey, the inspiration for Martha, where she gave a bombshell interview on his YouTube show Uncensored

There was an early taste of acclaim in the Madras 2005 Christmas newsletter, which remarked: 'Richard Gadd excelled in the title role. He delivered a wonderfully physical performance in which he was perfectly prepared to smash his head off the set when the role demanded it!'

The production also fuelled a school romance with Gadd's leading lady, the young woman appearing alongside him as Lady Macbeth.

Another member of the cast this week spoke glowingly of his erstwhile school pal.

'I've known him since we were five or six years old,' says the friend. 'We're from the same village, went to the same primary school. I'm happy to see him doing so well and if I could speak for the people of Wormit I'm sure everyone there is extremely proud to call him one of our own.'

But it would seem there are uncanny parallels between the young Gadd and his character Donny in Baby Reindeer.

Just as Donny takes pity on Martha, offering her a cup of tea on the house when she appears at the pub where he is working, claiming to be a lawyer but seemingly unable to afford a drink, back in his school days Gadd was also quick to look out for the underdog, in this case his friend who was being bullied.

'He stuck up for me when I was being bullied in secondary and nobody had done that for me before,' says the friend, Rob. 'He was one of the good ones when I knew him and it makes me happy to see him doing so well.'

As for Macbeth, Rob says: 'In my opinion he was a brilliant Macbeth and even then he was a very committed, capable and natural actor.'

After the production, and in their final year, the Rob and Gadd went on to take part in the National Theatre's nationwide annual youth theatre festival Connections, winning leading roles in Gregory Burke's play Liar.

Gadd's performing ambitions were obvious even then.

The comedian was a hit at Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2016 with his Monkey See Monkey Do show, which explored masculinity and mental health. Throughout the performance he runs on a treadmill trying to escape a figure in a monkey costume - a metaphor for his trauma

Tayside, Scotland, where Gadd enjoyed a 'very happy' childhood. There, he found his passion for theatre

'While we were rehearsing he told me that while he was focused on getting his results, he was really enjoying his theatrical endeavours and wanted to pursue them,' Rob recalls.

'I remember that during our run of Liar we both were approached by an agent who had seen the show; nothing ever came from it for either of us as far as I know, but I remember how buzzing the both of us were that we had been singled out.

'I'm really happy to see he's doing something now that he could only dream about back then.'

By Gadd's own account, his time at Madras was 'inspirational'.

'The drama department was like a gem, the teachers seemed to be above and beyond. They were inspirational to me,' he said in a podcast.

It was his parents who persuaded him that having a degree might be 'wise', although he has always insisted they were never pushy.

'They could have been more pushy,' he said in another podcast interview. 'They were not from a theatre background at all; they could see how much it meant to me and never pushed me in a particular direction, they [just] pushed me to be the best I could be,'

When Gadd turned his  ordeal into performance art for the Edinburgh Fringe five years ago, he never could have imagined it would become a Netflix hit viewed nearly 60million times

Gadd duly enrolled at Glasgow University, completing a degree in English Literature and Theatre Studies, apparently managing to get through it all without missing a single lecture or tutorial.

Already an avid writer, he started to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe while still a student, winning the Laughing Penguin New Act of the Year award in 2010 and becoming a finalist in the Chortle Student Comedy Awards the following year, competing against Mock the Week star Glenn Moore.

Gadd then left Glasgow for a year at Oxford School of Drama, graduating in 2012. Since then his career has been one of steady – if less than conventional – ascendance, traversing both drama and comedy.

Subversive, dark, anti-comedy are just a few of the descriptions that have been applied to Gadd's sometimes uncomfortable vein of stand-up.

His breakthrough moment came in 2016 with his Fringe show Monkey See Monkey Do, a harrowing account of being sexually assaulted by an older man, made even more harrowing by the physical presence on stage of Gadd, pounding away on a treadmill, night after night, mile after mile, trying to escape a figure in a gorilla suit.

Gadd has said of the abuse, which culminated in rape – it was not a single incident and he did not report it to police – that it led to a 'masculinity crisis'. Once 'quite a lad', he said: 'I would say that I certainly started to feel like my face didn't fit in among the lad part of my life anymore.'

The one-man show (Gadd himself described it as 'dark, off-kilter and weird') won Gadd, who is bisexual, the Edinburgh Fringe comedy award and a £10,000 prize.

Gadd (centre) appears in Channel 4's Tripped, a 2015 series about friends who wind up in a parallel dimension

'It's not been an easy few years but he's become adept at changing horrendous experiences into award-winning shows,' his mum said

Gadd, now an ambassador for We Are Survivors, a charity dedicated to helping male survivors of sexual abuse, wrestled with what had happened – the treadmill prop in his show was apt, because the only way he could cope with crippling anxiety attacks was to run and run until he was too tired to think.

Now a devotee of meditation, he suffered anxiety, depression and has spoken of post-traumatic stress disorder. He has undergone extensive therapy.

One cathartic show based on his real-life experience was not enough, however, and Baby Reindeer the one-man stage show debuted at the Fringe in 2019, laying bare a whole new raft of deeply personal, deeply disturbing material.

For Gadd says that amid the success of Monkey See Monkey Do he was having to cope with being stalked.

As he told the Guardian: 'It felt like I'd expunged the demons of one person who had caused me so much grief, only so that she [his stalker] could take centre stage in his place. It felt so awfully ironic.'

The events of Baby Reindeer are understood to have unfolded in the mid 2010s, in the years after Gadd left Oxford and moved to London, becoming an occasional barman at trendy Camden pub the Hawley Arms.

This week, at the £1 million semi-detached house in leafy Muswell Hill where he once lodged, neighbours said he abruptly left the property and returned to Scotland in 2015.

One neighbour said: 'He lived here for two years or so. One minute he was here and the next he was gone - it all seemed to happen very suddenly.

Gadd also stars in BBC Two's Against The Law as Eddie McNally, who engages in an illegal homosexual relationship with the show's lead character, Peter Wildeblood

'He used to come out and do some comedy sketches on the doorstep. It was things he was doing with friends and they would put it on the internet. He was just making a name for himself and good on him.'

Gadd, whose career aspirations include wanting to play Hamlet with the Royal Shakespeare Company, has certainly found financial success since then.

According to Companies House, his eponymous company RRSG Ltd (RRSG representing his initials, has just over £1million in assets, which includes £819,959 'cash in the bank'.

The firm's profits in 2023 quadrupled from the year previous, as his show was picked up by Netflix. Most recent figure show the company £836,233 in profit, compared to £178,344 in 2022.

He might have found financial success, but personal contentment appears to elude him still. While Baby Reindeer also charts a relationship he had with a trans woman, he is currently single.

His parents remain his biggest supporters.

In 2019 his dad wrote this proud post on Twitter, now X: 'My son has made number 4 in the List's 2019 Hot 100. To my chagrin I am not in the top 3. Or even in the other 96.'

His mum, meanwhile, responded to a well-wisher the same year: 'Thanks for the congratulations re Richard. It's not been an easy few years but he's become adept at changing horrendous experiences into award-winning shows.'

Baby Reindeer will likely be a shoe-in when it gets to awards season, but whether the fallout is now turning into a horrendous experience only he can say.

Following her interview with Morgan, the world now knows the name Fiona Harvey, although Gadd has never identified his stalker.

Baby Reindeer opens with the line 'This is a true story', Gadd said in an interview with GQ magazine that the focus of the Netflix show had been on 'capturing the emotional truth, not creating a factual profile.

'We've gone to such lengths to disguise her that I doubt she would recognise herself in the show.'

Earlier this week Netflix Policy Chief Benjamin King said the streamer and producer Clerkenwell Films had taken 'every reasonable precaution in disguising the real-life identities of the people involved in that story.'

In retrospect, that seems disingenuous to say the least.