My ‘Grim Reaper' stalker bragged he was so close he could SMELL me… but cops wouldn't tell me who he was for sick reason
Over two fraught years, the broadcaster and activist was then hounded by a faceless stalker who styled himself as her 'Grim Reaper'.
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Adopting 27 different online aliases, the unhinged obsessive threatened to kill and rape her. The stranger even bragged that he'd been so close to the actress on a train that he could 'smell' her.
Yet, despite the stalker then being arrested, police refused to tell Nicola who he was, leaving her feeling 'scared' and 'paranoid'.
Sipping water as she relived the ordeal, Nicola told The Sun in an exclusive interview: 'I felt powerless because the police wouldn't tell me who he was.
'That's when I got really scared because he knew I'd reported him.'
The police refused to tell Nicola her stalker's name over concerns for HIS privacy.
'I remember my jaw just hitting the floor,' she said. ''You can't tell me exactly who he is. Do I know him? Is he an ex-partner? Is he a colleague?'
''Is he my partner who I live with?' Obviously, I knew it wasn't. But they wouldn't tell me either way. And that's when I felt a real sense of injustice.'
Now a presenter on ITV 's Lorraine show, the 35-year-old mum became increasingly worried for her safety as her stalker now realised she had reported him to cops.
'Until he was arrested, he didn't know I was after him,' the former TalkTV host added.
'He just thought that I was the one being chased. I'm the one being stalked. I'm the one who's vulnerable and doesn't have any power.
Corrie star reveals she's married famous actor boyfriend after welcoming first child
'But the moment at which he got arrested, the power shifts. Then suddenly, he's the one who's being chased.
'And the point at which an abuser loses their sense of power over a victim can see them escalate their behaviour.'
How could the actress protect herself against a menacing individual if she didn't know who he was?
Officers declined to name the stalker because it would have breached his right to anonymity under data protection and privacy laws.
But while Nicola was in the public eye and able to speak out, other women in the same predicament weren't being heard.
Stalker frenzy
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In 2023, 1.5million British women were victims of stalking in the UK.
Other high-profile women who have been plagued by a stalker include Holly Willoughby, The Crown actress Claire Foy and journalist Emily Maitlis.
Now the Government has pledged to alter the ludicrous situation, which seemed to give more rights to stalkers than their victims.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper described the new rules as ' Nicola's Law ' in tribute to the actress's emotionally-wrought campaigning.
The presenter has always campaigned for women's rights alongside her TV career.
Born into a Blackpool family who've owned the seaside rock factory there since 1962, she always wanted a career in the news media.
'I'm the only member of my family who doesn't work in the rock factory,' she explained.
'I went to drama school in London because being a girl from a northern town, you think that's the only way to get into the media.'
Nicola's first brush with fame wasn't on stage or screen, though.
In 2015 she made headlines after refusing to wear high heels while working on reception at a top accountancy firm as a temp while a jobbing actress.
Told to wear a '2in to 4in heel' rather than the smart flat shoes she had worn to the London office, she declined and was sent home without pay.
"I was expected to do a nine-hour shift on my feet escorting clients to meeting rooms. I said, 'I just won't be able to do that in heels', ' she explained.
She started a Facebook petition calling for a change in the law, which garnered 150,000 signatures in 48 hours, forcing a debate in Parliament.
It led to the temp agency promising to review their guidelines and sparked a campaigning zeal in Nicola, which continues to this day.
Unrelated to her media exposure following the petition, she passed a second screen test to join the cast of Coronation Street.
In June 2017, she made her debut in the soap as social worker Nicola Rubinstein, the estranged daughter of Pat Phelan, played by Connor McIntyre.
A year later she opened her Twitter account to discover 'an unsolicited photo of a penis' from a stranger.
The mum said: 'Unfortunately, it's all too common for women in the public eye or, indeed, any woman, to get this sort of thing.'
Nicola screenshotted the image, blurred it, and reposted it and asked people to report the man.
'His account was closed down,' she recalled. 'So I just put it to the back of my mind and thought, 'Problem solved'.'
But over the next two years, she received a flood of abusive messages on Twitter - now called X - and Instagram, from different people.
'They ranged from being sexually explicit, to sexual violence, non-sexual violence, threats to me and my family," she says.
'I was speaking at the time about feminism, the MeToo movement. I thought there might be some men out there who didn't like that and wanted to tell me.'
Then, after 18 months of being bombarded with messages, Nicola began to notice a pattern: 'Some of the spelling mistakes in the messages were quite similar.
'There was one profile that used a photograph of me and pretended to be me.
"It showed an obsession that I hadn't quite seen from other hateful messages that I'd got from people.
'And I started to twig that the posts could be the same individual.'
In one post the stalker told Nicola that she "was to be put in a headlock and forced into sexual acts and wanted to make my parents watch'.
The online stalking wasn't constant. There'd be a surge of messages and then nothing for months.
'I remember one in particular saying, 'I'm your Grim Reaper. I'm never going to leave you'," she revealed.
"And that really chilled me.'
Sickening messages
At the time she was living alone on a houseboat in London. She armed herself with anti-attack spray and an air horn, and fitted new locks.
'To this day, I don't know if I was being stalked in real life,' she recalls. 'There were messages that he sent saying that he was following me on the Tube and had got close enough to smell me.
'He also sent me messages that included details about my home and some of my activities around my home.
'And they were vague enough that they could have been an educated guess, but they were detailed enough that it made me really concerned.'
The sinister messages continued.
Nicola added: 'He sent me a photograph of a girl walking down an alleyway and said, 'I'm going to assault her because that's what women deserve'.
'And he also sent a message saying, 'All women deserve to be on their knees in service of men'.
'It wasn't just about me, it was all women. And that's when I decided to do something about it.'
'Sense of power'
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In 2020, she handed police an 89-page dossier of the revolting messages she'd received.
Officers told her that there was nothing they could do unless Twitter and Meta, owners of Instagram, cooperated.
More than a year passed before cops received the information they needed.
The accounts all linked back to the same IP address. Police arrested Ravinderjit Dhillon, 31, at his home in Feltham, west London.
They were able to identify the inside of his bedroom from the background in the "d**k pic" he'd first sent.
It was now that Nicola felt most vulnerable as Dhillon knew she'd made a complaint against him.
The broadcaster didn't find out her stalker's name until his first court appearance in February 2022.
The first time she clapped eyes on him was when she was queuing to go through security at Uxbridge Magistrates' and a guard read out his name.
What to do if you suspect you're being stalked
Tony Neate, CEO of Get Safe Online, tells Sun Online: 'The perpetrators commonly obtain details about you via online information of personal and financial affairs, social and work life, relationships and your location.
As a starting point, ensure only the minimum information about you is available online and take stalking seriously.
Report it before it has serious effects on you and others and keep a record of all that takes place so you collate evidence whilst it is happening.
For expert advice visit Get Safe Online."
'I sat in a waiting room for half an hour with a guy who's stalked me for going on three years," she said.
'I felt a sense of power because he couldn't look me in the eye. I wasn't scared anymore. I just saw a very lonely, troubled person.'
Dhillon was jailed for 30 months and Nicola was granted a lifetime restraining order against him.
Afterwards, she worked alongside Home Office minister Jess Phillips to secure the right for victims to know their stalker's identity.
Married to Nitesh Patel, 35, who starred in BBC romcom Starstruck, Nicola gave birth to a daughter last year.
The broadcaster, who will recount her experience at CrimeCon - a true crime conference - reveals she refused to be driven off social media by her stalking ordeal.
'Nothing will stop me from living my online life,' she added. 'It's not on women to change their behaviour. It's on perpetrators to stop their abuse.'
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