True story behind Greatest Show Never Made - fake reality show and £100,000 ruse
When Lucie Miller walked back into her local pub, she felt sick as the eyes of the locals passed over her. There were a few smirks, a couple of pointed comments and some snickering. For the next few months she tried not to think about the experience she’d had in London. Over the years it became known as ‘The Thing’; even her eventual husband knew not to ask too many probing questions about it. It was something to be ashamed of, to stuff deep down into a box and close the lid.
Nikita ‘Nik’ Russian was a fantasist, she believes now, but not a malicious one. When the book shop worker first put out adverts in 2002 inviting a group of "characterful, resourceful and energetic" people to audition for a brand new reality TV show, Lucie - like the 29 others who ended up being fooled - thought he was the real deal.
It was the golden age of reality shows like Big Brother, where normal people like builder Craig Phillips and dental nurse Jade Goody were turning into celebrities overnight, just for being themselves on telly. With a chance to win £100,000 if she could stick it out for a full year, and live out her dream as a TV presenter, Lucie took the plunge and told her then long-term boyfriend she had to leave him to pursue what she believed was the opportunity of a lifetime.
But when she arrived off the train in London on June 10 that year and met up with the other successful auditionees in a rain-soaked park, it wasn’t long before the nerves and excitement disintegrated into cold nausea: there was no reality show, or £100,000 prize pot. It had all been a lie.
John, Lucie, Rosy, Daniel, Jane and Tim are reunited 21 years on from their first meeting in The Greatest Show Never Made (Amazon Prime Video)She, along with contestants John Comyn, Daniel Pope and Jane Marshall, plus cameraman Tim Eagle, agreed to go back to Tim’s flat to figure out what was going on. They realised the hefty contracts they’d signed with Russian’s production company were bogus: the accommodation, food and leisure money they’d been promised for a year didn’t exist and they would have to pay for their own expenses. No TV channel had even picked up the premise of the show: everything they did from here on in would be for their eyes and ears only.
TOWIE's Chloe Brockett makes cheeky dig at Saffron Lempriere during filming
More than two decades on, the swindle is being retold in Prime Video’s The Greatest Show Never Made. Cameraman Tim, who never received a penny in wages from Russian, kept the footage he shot from 2002 in some dusty shoeboxes, vaguely aware that one day the tapes might be useful. After four days living in the flat - expertly recreated in a studio for the three-parter - the group of reality show wannabes persuaded a London Tonight crew to tell their story, and then went their separate ways.
More than 20 years on, it’s clear now how much the strange experience shaped them: actor and singer-songwriter Jane, who was 21 at the time, had packed in her life and left her parents’ home in Bury in the hope of getting on telly and becoming famous. “I felt disappointed and ashamed afterwards, so much so that I couldn’t go home for four or five months,” she recalls. “I stayed in London with Daniel instead and had a blast, I got a taste of the high life and was out every night partying - some people even recognised us from the news. I couldn’t stand to go home and have my dad roll his eyes and mutter, ‘I told you so’.”
Daniel, who now works in finance, still hasn't told his mum what happened to him back in 2002 (Amazon Prime Video)Daniel, who had recently arrived in London from the Caribbean aged 23 when he applied for the show, admits he still hasn’t told his mum of the events back in 2002… or that he’s about to star in the Prime docuseries. “She’s back home, she doesn’t know a thing about this, not even what happened to me 20 years ago. Not a thing,” he grimaces. “I don’t know how she’s going to react. I’ll go back to the Caribbean this month as it needs to be a face-to-face conversation. I’m dreading that moment!”
John, meanwhile, still feels some anger towards the way Nik Russian treated them, and says it’s had a lasting impact on his life. “The experience changed me, for sure. I became more cautious and less trusting of people,” he ponders. “I try to feel compassion for Nik, but I still have moments of anger over it.” After leaving Tim’s flat, John put the experience in a “little box” and never contacted his fellow contestants, despite having their numbers.
Cameraman Tim was a professional clown and entertainer before signing up to the show as a cameraman (Amazon Prime Video)And Lucie, now 55, went through some dark times in the aftermath of the experience. She returned home to her long-term boyfriend, and while their relationship continued for a few more years, they eventually split. Now married with nine-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, Lucie has had therapy to deal with the feelings of embarrassment and humiliation that she’d initially tried to bury. She sees the new docuseries as “a gift” that has shone a light on the way things worked out and even helped her to heal the angry wound she’d ignored for so long.
And what became of Nik himself? It turned out even his name was made up - he’d been born Keith Gillard in 1977 and lived with his parents in Surrey until the age of 16. Following a miserable childhood, Nik created his alter-ego to establish himself as a successful TV producer, and he also gave up his flat and job along with the other contestants when he thought his show might sell. There was just one problem: he hadn’t told the 30 reality show candidates he’d auditioned and handpicked that there was no show until after they’d said goodbye to their friends, family, homes, jobs and relationships. Until Prime came knocking, nobody had heard from Nik in two decades, after he’d fled from Tim’s flat where he’d been camping out with the group of people who appeared on London Tonight.
The contestants had all responded to adverts inviting them to try their luck at getting a spot on a reality show dreamed up by Nik Russian (Amazon Prime Video)Afterwards, he was forced to live on the streets for seven weeks. “There were lots of unfavourable articles about me,” Nik, now known as N Quentin Woolf, tells the docuseries. “I was being recognised everywhere, I would be routinely sitting on the bus and there’d be people sitting two seats behind me discussing loudly how I’d done this or done that, and they were the most outrageous fictions. I found myself slipping more and more into drink - I was an alcoholic, so I was completely isolated and I was in a terrible state for a long time, probably 10 years.” Life has taken a happier turn since then: he is married with two children, and while he’s yet to meet the people whose lives he irrevocably altered, he’s watched video interviews where they’ve said their piece about the way he treated them. To his surprise, some even wanted to thank him for helping them discover their bravery in jumping into the unknown.
“I’m perfectly aware it’s not a good thing to carry so much hurt with you over the years, and I hadn’t realised that I was,” says Lucie now. “Taking part in this filming has been healing. If I could meet Nik Russian now, I would tell him: ‘I was young, you were young, we make mistakes and things don’t work, but we’re having a great time now and it’s because of you and the things that you dreamed up.’”
*The Greatest Show Never Made launches on Prime Video on October 11
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