Quiz Show Stalker: Angry Author Drives 400 Miles to Attack Online Critic With Wine Bottle
Imagine being so incensed by somebody on the internet that you drive 400 miles (after tracking them down online) to hit them over the head with a wine bottle at their place of work…
This is the story of Richard Brittain — the thin-skinned author who bottled one of his critics after his novel The World Rose sent her to sleep.
This is also the story of a former television gameshow champion, a university graduate, a poet and a writer who was destroyed by his obsessions and narcissism.
This is Richard before the media had any whiff of his violent malevolence.
Richard Brittain first came to public attention on the 11th of September 2006, as a nineteen-year-old. The show is the British game show Countdown. An institution for the out-of-work and early finishers in the UK.
Richard won the coveted Countdown teapot and was invited back on a further 7 occasions (the maximum allowed is 8 victories) and entered the pantheon of great Countdown contestants.
He was crowned the 55th series champion and awarded a leatherbound Oxford dictionary for his impressive efforts.
Brittain, humble in victory proudly declared himself as immediately recognizable due to his Countdown victory:
“If you’re a British viewer, you probably immediately recognise me as the winner of series 55.”
Let’s be honest here, a Countdown winner is hardly David Beckham.
“I know you want me to talk about rumours of dressing room encounters I may or may not have had with Carol Vorderman. But I’m not going to go into that because that isn’t my style.”
I’m sure Carol Voderrman (at one time the country’s most desirable woman) was overcome with relief that the apparent tryst never happened.
Well, that was Richard’s time on Countdown, time to bask in the glory and uphold the standards expected of Countdown champions….
Yet, beyond Countdown, Brittain’s story took an unsettling turn. His infatuation with Ella Durant, a student he met at university, unfolded into a harrowing narrative of stalking and obsession. His relentless pursuit, fuelled by poems and letters, spiralled into a chilling pursuit, leading to court warnings and Durant’s relocation in a desperate bid to escape his shadow.
Richard met Ella before her 21st Birthday at the student union bar, and they struck up a friendship.
Ella served him drinks, she was friendly (the role of a barmaid) and described Richard as “odd but harmless”.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttppVTCwZFo
Richard added Ella on Facebook and became a regular at the student union. They both signed up to represent Greenwich University on the BBC’s University challenge.
Needing a photo of Ella to send to the BBC, Richard went through Ella’s Facebook to find a picture and then began relentlessly commenting about how beautiful she was. At this point, Ella grew concerned and notified the university.
Brittain was now working out Ella’s hours at the student bar and visiting primarily during those times when he would just sit and stare.
Ella decided to keep a distance from Brittain and unfriended him on Facebook and told him that she was not interested.
Richard’s rejection sent him into a spiral of alcoholism. He was banned from the Student bar and sent love letters to Ella (he disturbingly got her address off of the gameshow application for the university challenge — which they never participated in).
The crush and infatuation had developed into stalking.
Ella graduated from university and went to live with her mother.
The nightmare ended.
Except, in 2014, having located Durant’s address by tracing her mother on the electoral register, he once again started sending poems, drawings and love letters to Ella via her mother’s home.
The World Rose
This is Brittain’s debut novel. He wrote it intending to emulate Tristan and Isolde.
The World Rose was written for Ella.
The Blurb reads as follows:
“An epic fairytale romance set in a semi-fictional ancient world, containing elements of action, adventure, poetry and comedy. The title has a triple meaning: the central character is a renowned beauty — ‘the rose of the world’ — while the rose flower features heavily in the plot, and it also implies that the world rose up. When Ronwind Drake discovers treasures in a distant paradise, a new golden age seems set to begin, but Ella Tundra will find that all which glitters is not gold as she faces many obstacles in her quest for true love.”
Probably Harper Collins and Penguin weren’t interested. Richard’s first audience was Wattpad — a platform for wannabe authors who post in the hope of getting feedback and who knows?
Getting picked up by Hollywood in the process…
Not for Richard unfortunately.
The book got savaged on Wattpad.
Richard sent the book to Ella — but Ella despite initial feelings of fear dismissed it, she was now in Glasgow and had moved far from Richard.
Until he turned up outside her work one day.
In Richard’s terrifying words:
“… 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.”
However, Ella did not engage with Richard and ran as soon as she saw him.
Again Richard expands on the failed wooing as follows:
“I left Glasgow, and I think our relationship is finished now. I gave it my best shot. I really thought that we would both become famous. We would have disappeared for a few days, people would have read my book, and she could have played the lead role when The World Rose is made into a movie. But alas; I’ll have to find another way.”
The endless rejection sent Richard into a state of dizzying despair and as he logged into Goodreads to see how his magnum opus was being received, there was a review from one Paige Rolland.
SHE HATED THE BOOK.
Richard had snapped. He found Rolland’s details online. Being a young girl, Paige uploaded a lot of her life on Facebook. Where she worked, where she lived, and what she did in her free time.
Richard tracked Paige down and found her in the local grocery store/supermarket that she lived with. This was in Gelnrothsm Scotland — a 400-mile journey for Richard.
3rd October 2014 — Paige was stacking the cereal aisle in her Asda uniform. Rolland spots her, picks up a bottle of wine, walks to the aisle where Paige is and cracks her over the head with it. Then walks out of the supermarket without saying a word.
Paige Rolland is seriously injured in the attack.
Between the day of the attack and before his court case, he returns to his blog and makes two new posts: A statement of remorse for what he did and A re-evaluation of romance , both sharing his perspective that he knows what he did was wrong. He posts a few more times in this period, some were poems, some about how he was receiving therapy about his behaviour and one post critiquing Julien Blanc’s teachings about how to pick up women , which is pretty hypocritical when you think about it.
Richard was sentenced to 2.5 years for the attack on Paige.
Richard had the nerve to send Paige love letters after his release (which we can all agree is the worst attempt at wooing in human history — bottling someone and then sending them love letters):
“I dreamed of you last night. Are you going to send me back to prison? Maybe I need it — I’m bored out of my mind. How is the nursing degree going? I was quite surprised they revealed such information about you in court. I was tempted to get a bus ticket to Dundee and come visit you but I thought that might look weird. Any chance we could just become friends? We could keep our communications secret like we did in last night’s dream.”
Recently Richard has been quiet and maybe just maybe has seen the error of his ways. However, he has a history of violence, a history of stalking and is a dangerous man and dare I say it without the threat of violence… he’s also a crappy writer.
I hope Richard Brittain never reads this article.
Originally published at https://www.thecrimebox.com on December 1, 2023.
