Joel Dommett dated woman he was catfished with during Skype blackmail scandal that almost ended his career

Joel Dommett is hosting alongside Davina McCall during Comic Relief tonight (Friday, March 20) – however he was once victim of a catfish scam.

As well as building a successful career in stand-up comedy, Joel also turned the attempted blackmail into material for his act after the experience threatened to become far more serious.

Joel met his now-wife Hannah Cooper back in 2016 after she messaged him on Instagram with a heart-eyed cat emoji. That social media message ended up changing his life for the better.

But one earlier experience of connecting with someone online had a very different outcome altogether and could have put his career at risk.

Joel Dommett was the victim of an attempted blackmail before appearing on I’m A Celebrity (Credit: Channel 4 YouTube)

Joel Dommett’s experience of being scammed by a catfish in attempted blackmail

Speaking to i in early 2018, 12 months after he’d been a contestant on I’m A Celeb, Joel recalled being catfished when he was single.

He chatted with a Twitter follower named ‘Staci’ – and eventually agreed to Skype sex.

Joel recalled: “It wasn’t something I’d done before, I didn’t even really know what it was going to be. I assumed it was going to be masturbation over the internet, and it was.”

It wasn’t something I’d done before.

However, the person on the other end of the call recorded their interaction.

And they later tried to use the footage – which showed him naked and recognisable – in an attempt to blackmail him for cash.

‘I owned it’

Despite the “horrific” humiliation and pain of the incident – and subsequent leak of nude images – Joel decided to take control of a situation beyond his control as much as he could.

He was also aware what had happened would also make the newspapers due to his increasing public profile.

Joel Dommett met Hannah Cooper in 2016 and they married in 2019 (Credit: SplashNews.com)

And so he utilised the attempted blackmail as material for a show.

Joel said back in 2018: “I decided to tackle it head on and make it funny. At least then I owned it, instead of a paper owning it. It’s a mad thing but it’s the new world that we live in.

“I’m in a very lucky position that I’m a comedian and I can talk about it. If I was a teacher I would have lost my job.”

Read more: Joel Dommett’s shock poo confession while on a business class flight

Davina asked Joel about ‘Catfish Gate’

Joel Dommett then dated a woman who was also a victim of the same blackmail scam

Not only did he overcome the catfish scam, but he dated the woman who was also scammed by them.

He told Davina McCall this week during an episode of her Begin Again podcast that it was ‘traumatic’.

She told him that people “get cancelled” in modern day pop culture, and wanted to hear his experience.

Joel admitted he ended up dating the woman whose images were stolen: “I put a Google image search of the person whose profile picture it is, who they’d stolen. I was like, well, let’s talk to the real person whose photo they’ve stolen… It turns out that this person is a real person and I go, ‘hey, just to let you know, someone’s stealing your photos and pretending to be you…”

She told Joel that it happened more than once, and they agreed to meet up.

The pair found out they got on well and ended up dating for several months!

Joel Dommett revealed he dated the woman who was also catfished (Credit: YouTube)

“I was like, where do you live?” Joel recalled to Davinda. “Which is a creepy thing to say to anyone and she went ‘I live in Greenwich’ and I lived in Brockley at the time, which is literally like a mile down the road.

“I meet this girl in Greenwich and again I didn’t even realise it at that point, but it’s a date. We get on really well, we go on another date, and actually we get on well and we end up dating for like six months…”

Watch Joel Dommett on Comic Relief on BBC One from 7pm tonight, (Friday, March 20).

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