has opened up about the he experienced when he was in his late 20s, revealing how he ended up dating the real woman whose photo was used on the fake profile.
In 2016, a statement was released on the comedian’s official Facebook page while he was on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, which was titled ‘Statement From Joel Dommett’s Penis’.
In the message, which was , he explained that he was ‘catfished a long time ago by somebody pretending to be someone else on the internet and was lured into Skype sex’, adding: ‘It’s a genuinely horrific thing for another human being to do, to take advantage of what is private of someones life and make it public for everyone to see.’
presenter was blackmailed and the footage was subsequently L***ed when he refused to pay the money that had been requested.
Joel is one of several comedians to appear in ’s new Amazon Prime Video series , in which he was filmed chatting to fellow comedians Katherine and Rosie Jones about what went down when he was tricked into having Skype sex and threatened.
After Katherine brought it up, much to Rosie’s excitement, she assured Joel that she hadn’t watched it, but ‘did see screengrabs’.
‘I didn’t believe it when I heard you had a sex tape and that you’d been like hustled by a Moroccan gang of online tricksters or whatever. I just saw the red beanie. What was it, like a threat that they were going to release this tape?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, they were going to release the tape and they asked me for money, and I was like no,’ Joel responded.
Then when asked on what actually happened, the 36-year-old recalled how he’d been chatting with someone on Twitter ‘back and forth’ when they asked if he wanted to have Sky sex with them.
‘We had Skype sex, but the Skype sex was weird. It turns out it was just a video, basically, of this person who looks similar to the person in the thing,’ he said.
‘And this girl in the “fake video”, was having Skype sex, getting n**ed.n**ed?’ Katherine asked, to which Joel replied: ‘Yeah, so it was like a porn star or something.’
The I’m A Celebrity runner-up eventually searched the Twitter user’s profile picture on Google, stumbling across the real person behind the photo.
‘I messaged this girl, and I said, “Look, do you know someone else is using your photos.” She replied, she’s like, “Yeah, I know about it. They’ve been using them for the last like three years. And so I was like, “Look, this is gonna sound really mad, but do you want to meet up? Because we could get a photo together and then send it to the scammers, and be like, “Look, I found the real you.”’
Katherine and Rosie’s jaws dropped at the revelation that Joel asked the girl if she wanted to meet in real life, as the show’s host questioned: ‘Did you f**k this girl in real life?’
‘So…’ Joel said in response, prompting his co-stars to scream in shock.
Katherine asked if it was ‘triggering’ to have dated the person behind the catfish profile… but that wasn’t the end of the story.
Joel revealed that after dating for around three to four months, the girl in question went back to Russia, which is where she’s from – and they ended up having Skype sex in real life.
‘So it was like full circle. I had Skype sex with the real person I wanted to in the end,’ he concluded.
‘It’s crazy being that hot,’ Katherine quipped.
Is this what one would call a fairytale (of sorts) for the digital age?
Joel is now married, having wed Hannah Cooper in 2019.
Backstage with Katherine Ryan is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video.
