My name is Emily Dredge, one of the fugitives from the Channel 4 show Hunted, who successfully evaded capture from professional experts drawn from intelligence backgrounds such as the Metropolitan Police and even the CIA. No matter how close they came, I was too unpredictable and astute for them. Having now seen the show from the viewer’s perspective, the odds looked slim, but also quite different to how I actually experienced it. Social media, too, saw a different side, proclaiming me “too emotional”, “flakey”, or simply “she won’t make it”.
I never thought for a second that I would come to spend four weeks sitting in a bush, disconnected from everything: my job, my family, even my two-year-old son. Does that make me selfish? Perhaps. But that is what the show was about: 14 people with very different personalities experiencing life on the run – essentially life in isolation. “Trust no one” has never rung truer.
Taking part triggered the fight-or-flight emotion built in all of us, which is possibly what made it so interesting for viewers. The question we ask ourselves as a viewer is: “What would I do?” I took on in my mind: “I am a fugitive now, run or be succeeded by my hunters.” What did I think they would do to me? I don’t know, but I made up stories to help me run for my life.
I lost the plot 48 hours in. Suddenly my mind-set became what I was told it was – that of a fugitive. I was a fugitive and everyone was after me. I cannot express the paranoia and the determination that I had to succeed. Fast-forwarding to just days from the finish line, I had such a violent cough that I wanted to vomit. I had to go to the doctors. Knowing the risks this presented, my first steps back into normal society, I went alone. My temperature was 39.1C. The doctor told me I was just days from hospitalisation for pneumonia. I left the appointment and played down the events to the production team, saying to my camera man it was just a chest infection and I’d be OK. I was actually prepared to die to win it; I wouldn’t be caught at any cost. That’s how real it was.
I once watched Rollerball, the 1975 dystopian movie in which players on skates murder each other with a metal ball. The team captain, played by James Caan, is asked to retire but the need to win gets the better of him – he refuses to be beaten, no matter what the odds stacked against him are or what he has to do. His belief that he is the best player becomes his reality: he can never give up, whether he gets anything for it, or not.
By the end my mind too had gone and I thought it would never come back. I couldn’t look people in the eye. I became aggressive if anyone doubted I was being hunted. I wanted to just run and run and run. I was paranoid, tired and felt insane. Twenty-eight days was the perfect time to cut it; any longer and God knows what could have happened to my mind, or if I would have ever recovered.
But the experience still sits with me: I’m ready in a heartbeat to run from a blacked-out BMW; I fear men in dark glasses who loiter from a distance. I stand behind the bus stop always knowing an escape route. I have insomnia most nights and wake up at the slightest noise.
After being on the run for 28 days, there were weeks when I needed two therapy sessions to get over the paranoia – I started to suffer from panic attacks, up to three times a day. Valium was the only course of remedy. I still suffer from the trauma of being hunted down by more than 30 of the world’s best investigators.
Before the show I was a single mother with no qualifications, stuck for ideas, wanting to provide a future for my son. Like many in my position, I was poor, struggling to pay the bills. After the show I set up my own company, www.stuckforideas.com, because I learned that if I can succeed at something as big as Hunted, I can succeed at anything. There’s an old saying: the same boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg. I could have come out of this experiment and crumbled, but instead I have never felt stronger.
My advice to those who become a contributor to a social experiment? Please understand that you will lose your mind – it’s only a matter of time. We are creatures of habit and the sudden lifestyle change will throw even the strongest of minds. If, however, you succeed, you will gain a whole new zest for life. I’m now training for the London marathon on behalf of Crimestoppers and I’m mentally stronger than ever. If social experiments are just that – an “experiment” – then I passed with flying colours.
