Blast Theory at 30 | Kidnap

In 1998 we kidnapped two strangers and held them in a safehouse for 48 hours. We live-streamed it all online. And got sponsored by a clothes company. And appeared on BBC 1 and ITV and Channel 4 and Channel 5. As part of our 30th birthday celebrations, we’ve made this little documentary about what happened and why we did it. We talk about lottery madness and the person who fantasised about being kidnapped by dolphins. We explain what happened if you paid extra for handsome/pretty kidnappers. And we talk about the impact of the Spanner trial. Four gay men were sent to prison for consensual SM (welcome to Thatcher’s Britain). And our anger about that drove us to do a bit of consensual non-consent of our own. ---- About Kidnap: Entrants paid £10 to enter a lottery in the hope of being kidnapped. Ten finalists were chosen at random and put under surveillance. Two winners - Debra Burgess, a 27 year old Australian working as a temp and Russell Ward, a 19-year-old from Southend working in a 24-hour convenience store - were snatched in broad daylight and taken to a secret location for 48 hours. The process was live-streamed online and visitors were able to control a video camera inside the safehouse and communicate live with the kidnappers. During the run-up to Kidnap, a 45-second video Blipvert was shown to 800,000 people at cinemas around the UK. ---- Want more content like this? Sign up to our monthly newsletter: Follow us on Instagram: