Sweet Bobby catfish victim Kirat Assi on taking her pain to the screen
The latest true crime documentary to hit our screens is described as “a fairytale romance gone horribly wrong”. It labels itself “one crazy story” in its opening scene.
But while Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare is a true story, the near-decade of deception, manipulation and coercion it depicts isn’t a crime.
Pic: Netflix
Catfishing – the name given to using fake online profiles to trick others into believing they are in a relationship – is not illegal in the UK.
Kirat Assi, the subject of Netflix‘s Sweet Bobby documentary tells Sky News: “People say, ‘How can you be so stupid?’ That’s the constant question you get. But none of us [victims] are stupid. It’s just the perpetrator’s gone the extra mile.”
Thought to be the UK’s longest-known catfishing scam, it’s the story of Kirat, an events assistant and radio presenter, who was deceived into believing she was in an online relationship with a cardiologist called Dr Bobby Jandu between 2009 and 2018.
Using the identity of a real person who Kirat had once briefly met, the perpetrator spent years building up the fake friendship, with the relationship becoming romantic from late 2015. They even became engaged.
But nothing was what it seemed, and every interaction – with around 60 people in total across multiple social platforms – was all one of Kirat’s distant relatives.
Kirat admits she wasn’t keen for the first telling of the story via Tortoise Media’s podcast of the same name in 2021, let alone the documentary it’s now inspired.
So why is she allowing it to be shared with the world via the world’s largest streaming platform?
Now 44, Kirat says: “At the moment of her confession, I was screaming, ‘Why?’ But I’ve long ago let go of that… There’s just no reason to have done what she did. Now, I just need to know how she did it.”
Pic: Netflix
How unlucky can one person be?
The documentary sets out how, during Kirat’s relationship with Bobby, he was shot six times in Kenya; put into witness protection in New York; suffered a stroke, brain tumour and heart attack; and fathered a secret child.
But while Kirat concedes she found it “strange,” “a bit weird,” and even asked herself “How unlucky can one person be?”, a circle of Bobby’s friends and family always validated the events in his life across numerous forms of social media.
The couple would Skype call all night and share voice notes and messages constantly.
Kirat is at pains to say it wasn’t a 10-year romance, and that initially she baulked at the idea due to their friendship being firmly in the “bro-zone”. But after years of persuasion, she says she finally gave in and they became a couple.
Pic: Netflix
‘My life was hellish’
Towards the end of the relationship, Kirat says Bobby became controlling, accusing her of flirting with other men, and discouraging her from going to work or seeing friends and family.
She says that’s when things took a turn for the worse: “I started to lose weight… It was coercive control, to a point where you’re thoroughly being abused, where you don’t have any sense of yourself left anymore. And you’re just scared all the time”.
That’s when she hired a private detective, confronting the real-life Bobby on the doorstep of his family home in Brighton.
Kirat says: “I was just trying to find out the truth in that last period, but at the same time trying to keep the peace and not rock the boat because my life would be made hell. And it was hellish enough already.”
Pic: Netflix
‘Victim shaming is dangerous’
Despite reporting it to police in 2018, no charge has ever been filed. The Met Police confirmed to Sky News that the case was closed in 2019 but has since been re-opened for reinvestigation.
A 2020 civil action, believed to be the UK’s first successful claim of its kind relating to catfishing – resulted in a private apology and substantial payout the following year.
Kirat hopes the documentary will inspire other victims of catfishing to speak out.
“There’s so much online abuse and bullying. There’s so much victim shaming, which stops people from speaking up… all of us have been suffering in silence.”
She says she’s received vicious abuse and trolling online since the podcast was released in 2021.
Kirat’s relative declined to be interviewed for the film, but her representatives told documentary producers: “This matter involves events that began when she was a schoolgirl. She considers it a private matter and strongly objects to what she describes as ‘numerous unfounded and damaging accusations'”.
Pic: Netflix
‘I dare not speak for her’
She’s not seen her relative since the day she came to her home to confess the deception.
She admits she “dare not speak for her,” adding that there’s still fear in her close-knit London Sikh community about speaking out .
“I guess people are still scared of what she might do, even if the case is open. [People are afraid] because of the non-action from the police, the slow action from the police, the limited actions from the civil case. People just don’t have the faith that it’s been dealt with in order for them to speak up.”
But Kirat refuses to be silenced: “The person that did it needs to be held accountable. I can’t bear the brunt of being blamed for bringing it out in the open. I’ve had to do what’s right for me,
Pic: Netflix
‘People expect me to be a whimpering wreck’
Six years after her world fell apart, Kirat’s dating again.
She says she’s back to her “old fiery self”, admitting, when people realize who she is, they “have the shock of their life because they expect me to be a whimpering wreck”.
But parts of her life are still disrupted: “I have to be very careful about what I do and how I do it, who’s Googling me when it comes to work things.”
And with technology at our fingertips 24/7, Kirat has a word of warning: “It’s becoming easier to do it. The crazy things that AI and online can do now are just getting worse. I feel like I’ve had a lucky escape that it didn’t happen to me now.”
Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare is streaming on Netflix from Wednesday 16 October.
The Stone Roses bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield has died at the age of 63, his family has said.
Mani’s brother, Greg, said in a post on Facebook: “It is with the heaviest of hearts that I have to announce the sad passing of my brother.”
“RIP RKID,” he added.
Gary “Mani” Mounfield and his wife Imelda at the world premiere of “The Stone Roses : Made Of Stone” in 2013. Pic: Reuters
Formed in 1983, The Stone Roses were a mainstay of the “Madchester” scene.
Mani joined the band in 1987 and formed part of its classic line-up alongside singer Ian Brown, guitarist John Squire and drummer Alan ‘Reni’ Wren. He remained with the group until their split in 1996.
Mani’s death comes two years after that of his wife, Imelda Mounfield, who was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer in November 2020. The couple welcomed twin boys in 2012.
Ian Brown, left, with Mani, right, performing on stage during their 2012 reunion concerts in Manchester. Pic: Reuters
The Stone Roses frontman Brown shared a tribute online, writing: “REST IN PEACE MANi X.”
Oasis singer Liam Gallagher said he was “in total shock and absolutely devastated”, describing the bassist as “my hero”.
“RIP Mani – my heartfelt condolences to his twin boys and all of his family,” wrote the Happy Mondays’ Shaun Ryder, whose bandmate Rowetta added: “Back with your Imelda, Mani. Going to miss you so much. All my love to the boys, the family & all those who knew & loved him.”
The Charlatans frontman, Tim Burgess, shared a photo of himself with Mani, writing alongside it: “I shared this photo a week or so ago on Mani’s birthday.
“It never failed to bring a smile to my face – and that was exactly the same for the man himself.
“One of the absolute best in every way – such a beautiful friend.”
Echo & the Bunnymen vocalist Ian McCulloch said Mani was someone “who I have always loved and always will love, deeply and forever. Like a brother”.
He continued: “I am in shock to be honest. Please tell me I’m just having a bad, bad dream. My thoughts and feelings and Mani. Love to all of his family from me”.
Pic: Robert Marquardt/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
The “Madchester” bands were known for blending indie with acid house, psychedelia, and pop.
The Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album of 1989 was a huge success, and was named the second greatest album of all time in a “Music of the Millennium” poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4, The Guardian, and Classic FM.
The novel has survived the industrial revolution, radio, television, and the internet. Now it’s facing artificial intelligence – and novelists are worried.
Half (51%) fear that they will be replaced by AI entirely, according to a new survey, even though for the most part they don’t use the technology themselves.
More immediately, 85% say they think their future income will be negatively impacted by AI, and 39% claim their finances have already taken a hit.
Tracy Chevalier, the bestselling author of Girl With A Pearl Earring and The Glassmaker, shares that concern.
“I worry that a book industry driven mainly by profit will be tempted to use AI more and more to generate books,” she said in response to the survey.
“If it is cheaper to produce novels using AI (no advance or royalties to pay to authors, quicker production, retainment of copyright), publishers will almost inevitably choose to publish them.
“And if they are priced cheaper than ‘human made’ books, readers are likely to buy them, the way we buy machine-made jumpers rather than the more expensive hand-knitted ones.”
Chevalier, author of the book Girl With A Pearl Earring, with the painting of the same name. Pic: AP
Why authors are so worried
The University of Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy asked 258 published novelists and 74 industry insiders how AI is viewed and used in the world of British fiction.
Alongside existential fears about the wholesale replacement of the novel, many authors reported a loss of income from AI, which they attributed to “competition from AI-generated books and the loss of jobs which provide supplementary streams of income, such as copywriting”.
Some respondents reported finding “rip-off AI-generated imitations” of their own books, as well books “written under their name which they haven’t produced”.
Last year, the Authors Guild warned that “the growing access to AI is driving a new surge of low-quality sham ‘books’ on Amazon”, which has limited the number of publications per day on its Kindle self-publishing platform to combat the influx of AI-generated books.
The median income for a novelist is currently £7,000 and many make ends meet by doing related work, such as audiobook narration, copywriting or ghost-writing.
Read more: The author embracing AI to help write novels
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Could the AI bubble burst?
These tasks, authors feared, were already being supplanted by AI, although little evidence was provided for this claim, which was not possible to verify independently.
Copyright was also a big concern, with 59% of novelists reporting that they knew their work had been used to train AI models.
Of these, 99% said they did not give permission and 100% said they were not remunerated for this use.
Earlier this year, AI firm Anthropic agreed to pay authors $1.5bn (£1.2bn) to settle a lawsuit which claimed the company stole their work.
The judge in the US court case ruled that Anthropic had downloaded more than seven million digital copies of books it “knew had been pirated” and ordered the firm to pay authors compensation.
However, the judge sided with Anthropic over the question of copyright, saying that the AI model was doing something akin to when a human reads a book to inspire new work, rather than simply copying.
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Most novelists – 67% – never used it for creative work, although a few said they found it very useful for speeding up drafting or editing.
One case study featured in the report is Lizbeth Crawford, a novelist in multiple genres, including fantasy and romance. She describes working with AI as a writing partner, using it to spot plot holes and trim adjectives.
“Lizbeth used to write about one novel per year, but now she can do three per year, and her target is five,” notes the author of the report, Dr Clementine Collett.
Is there a role for government?
Despite this, the report’s foreword urges the government to slow down the spread of AI by strengthening copyright law to protect authors and other creatives.
The government has proposed making an exception to UK copyright law for “text and data mining”, which might make authors and other copyright holders opt out to stop their work being used to train AI models.
“That approach prioritises access to data for the world’s technology companies at the cost to the UK’s own creative industries,” writes Professor Gina Neff, executive director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy.
“It is both bad economics and a betrayal of the very cultural assets of British soft power.”
A government spokesperson said: “Throughout this process we have, and always will, put the interests of the UK’s citizens and businesses first.
“We’ve always been clear on the need to work with both the creative industries and AI sector to drive AI innovation and ensure robust protections for creators.
“We are bringing together both British and global companies, alongside voices beyond the AI and creative sectors, to ensure we can capture the broadest possible range of expert views as we consider next steps.”
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