Caroline Flack’s former fiance accused the GB News presenter Dan Wootton of being a murderer and a sex offender, a court has been told.
A judge in Sheffield heard how Andrew Brady compared Wootton, now also a columnist for MailOnline, to the former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in a series of messages sent over a period of more than two months.
Brady said he had a “crusade” against Wootton and posted on social media: “I feel like getting rid of him once and for all today.” He said his intention was to end Wootton’s career, “deal with” him, and repeatedly said he wanted to see the presenter jailed.
Brady, a former contestant on the Apprentice, was briefly engaged to Flack but the pair split up before the Love Island presenter’s suicide in 2020. Wootton had regularly written about Flack while working as a celebrity reporter at the Sun, and Brady had blamed the journalist for his ex-fiancee’s death.
On Tuesday, Brady, 31, pleaded guilty to one count of harassment at Sheffield crown court in relation to the messages. He will be sentenced on Friday for the offence, which carries a maximum prison term of six months.
He had originally pleaded not guilty to a more serious charge of putting Wootton in fear of violence. That case was set for a week-long trial before Christmas only for it to be abandoned on the first day due to legal issues prompted by Brady’s behaviour in court, which resulted in the former reality TV contestant spending Christmas in prison on remand.
Prosecutor Laura Marshall told the court that Wootton had been consulted about Brady’s decision to plead guilty to a less serious charge of harassment, bringing the legal proceedings to an end. She said the GB News presenter “simply wants the course of conduct to end”.
The court had previously heard that Brady’s online comments about Wootton began near the first anniversary of Flack’s death in 2021. It included threatening voice notes sent to Wootton, expressing a desire for “matters to be settled by violence”. The court also heard that Brady had also posted an explicit picture of himself and invited Wootton to engage in sexual activity.
At a hearing last year, Brady’s lawyer said that his client’s defence against the charges would be based on “freedom of expression against a public figure who was very keen to put private matters in the public domain”, but the case will no longer go to trial.
Judge Richardson told Brady: “I am pleased that this case has, at last, been resolved. You will be sentenced on Friday. As I have made clear already, the desire of everybody in this case, including myself, is for you to stop doing what you did. You must move on with your life, it is to be hoped, to sunnier uplands.”
