Alex Scott reveals she was almost kidnapped by Uber driver

The BBC Football Focus presenter said her body went numb and she feared she’d never see her mum again
Alex Scott was almost kidnapped by an Uber driver in Russia.
Getty Images
Nuray Bulbul19 January 2023

While covering the 2018 World Cup for the BBC, Alex Scott said that she nearly was abducted by a "sicko" Uber driver in Russia who tried to "touch her and kiss her legs”.

The Football Focus presenter, 38, revealed in her memoir How (Not) To Be Strong that the BBC required employees to travel in pre-arranged, official vehicles.

However, because she was out for the evening with a friend, she chose to get an Uber back to her hotel. She said the male driver — “a stacked bald man, stocky, and wearing a grin on his face” — turned on her moments into the 15-minute drive.

In her book, she writes “He looked at me and said — in English — ‘Tell them they will never see you again’.”

“I don’t understand,” I stammered.

“My Uber driver picked up his phone and spoke into it, waiting for me to see the words as they appeared via Google Translate. ‘Tonight I am not taking you home,’ [it] read. ‘You come with me.’”

Scott said her “body went numb”.

She added that through Google Translate and his broken English, he told her “horrible, terrible things how he takes girls like me, how they never make it home”.

She texted her agent while the car doors were closed, telling him to send a search party if she wasn't back in 15 minutes.

The next unsettling message sent by the driver, though, was: "Girls like you, I kill."

"Oh my God," was Scott's initial thinking. "'I'm never going to see Mum again.'"

She fleed only after persuading the "sicko" that she knew Russian President Vladimir Putin because she had met him that morning.

“Putin! I had been with Putin that morning! ‘You can’t kill me,’ I said. ‘I have to see Putin tomorrow.’”

As they headed back to her hotel, she said the driver tried to touch her legs and kiss her before she escaped.

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