There’s a gruesome explanation as to why a torture device, often dubbed history’s ‘most painful’, was designed in a very specific way.

When it comes to crime and punishment, several historical civilisations did not hold back when it came to inventing painful and degrading ways to kill anyone who fell foul of the law.

Tales of grim execution devices which crushed, burnt of boiled it’s victims alive can be found to have existed in various civilisations – but have you heard of the one which involved roasted a condemned soul alive while their screams were transformed into animal cries?

Watch a simulation of how it worked below:

Named the ‘Brazen Bull’ – but also referred to as the bronze bull, Sicilian bull, or bull of Phalaris – was created in ancient Greece, approximately 600-560 BCE and appears in numerous ancient texts.

The contraption was made out of bronze and built to resemble the animal. A door on one side would allow the condemned to climb inside while a fire was lit inside – leading to the individual to roast to death as the metal heated up around them.

Pretty grim, right?

Perhaps one of the more chilling anecdotes about the Brazen Bull was that the device’s very own inventor would meet his fate inside the contraption.

It’s believed a man named Perilaus of Athens had created the contraption and proposed it as a method of torture and/or execution to Phalaris, the tyrant of the Sicilian state of Akragas.

Little did he know he would soon meet his fate trapped inside the bull’s bronze innards.

The device was designed to deliver a particularly gruesome death (DiscoveryWorld)

It’s not exactly known what led Perilaus to justify being roasted to death, however Phalaris was rumoured to be a cannibal that ate newborn babies, which would suggest he wasn’t the most rational of people.

One particularly chilling feature of the Brazen Bull included the addition of apparatus which meant a prisoners screams would not only be amplified, but transformed into a sound which resembled the bellowing of a bull through an internal system of tubes and stops.

Presumably so Phalaris could sit back and enjoy watching another human be slowly and brutally cooked alive.

The bull is specifically designed to turn the prisoner’s screams into the bellowing of a bull (DiscoveryWorld)

While we may never know the extent of whether or not the Brazen Bull was actually a real torture device the story, if it is to be believed, does have a fairly satisfying ending.

Allegedly fed-up of being ruled over by a tyrant, the people of Akragas (now Agrigento) rose up and deposed Phalaris, ultimately chucking him in the Brazen Bull for good measure.

If you’ve been hooked to Netflix’s new show Baby Reindeer – which has been well and truly wedged in the top spot for over a week now – you probably know that it’s based on a true story.

The show has left viewers ‘speechless’ as it follows Richard Gadd’s real ‘warped relationship’ with his female stalker.

The comedian stars as a fictional version of himself named Donny Dunn, as he wrote the mini-series named after the name his stalker gave him.

But which parts of the series are real and which are fabricated for the show?

We’ve separated the facts from the fiction.

Baby Reindeer depicts the harrowing true story behind Richard Gadd’s stalking horror. (Netflix)

How Donny and Martha met

In the Netflix show, the pair first meet after Gadd’s character Donny offers Martha a cup of tea.

He admits that he felt sorry for Martha, and when she said she couldn’t afford a drink, he offers her one on the house.

This is true and kicked off a series of events which saw ‘Martha’ showing up at Gadd’s workplace and sending thousands of emails, letters and voicemails.

“At first everyone at the pub thought it was funny that I had an admirer,” he told The Times.

“Then she started to invade my life, following me, turning up at my gigs, waiting outside my house, sending thousands of voicemails and emails.”

The volume of emails

Over four and a half years, Gadd’s stalker sent 41,071 emails, 350 hours of voicemail, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages and 106 pages of letters.

In real life, she also sent a reindeer toy, sleeping pills, a woolly hat and boxers – something that was not featured in the Netflix series.

Sent from my iPhone

Netflix has confirmed that every single email Donny receives in the show is real, which means the eerie ‘sent from my iPhone’ is also an accurate representation of what happened.

All of the emails end in the words ‘sent from my iPhone’ – despite the fact she didn’t have an iPhone and wasn’t emailing from one.

When the police became involved

In the series, Donny wasn’t taken seriously when he first reported Martha.

According to Gadd, it was six years before the police finally intervened in what had been happening.

“I’ve been through two police investigations in my life and they’ve both been hilarious, fly-on-the-wall terrible,” he told The Guardian.

“Honestly my advice to someone who ever thought of pressing charges would be: it’s a f**king nightmare process, and it takes years.”

Baby Reindeer is a chilling true story. (Netflix)

Which details were fiction?

While the show is based on real-life events, some details have been changed to protect identities.

Gadd spoke about this himself, explaining that ‘Martha’ had been disguised to such an extent that he doesn’t think she’d ‘recognise herself’.

“We’ve gone to such great lengths to disguise her to the point that I don’t think she would recognise herself,” he told GQ.

“What’s been borrowed is an emotional truth, not a fact-by-fact profile of someone.”

Jessica Gunning starred as ‘Martha’. (Ed Miller/Netflix)

It’s also unclear whether the real-life Martha went to prison.

In the show, Martha leaves a voicemail with the threat she could potentially stab ‘someone’ and was arrested.

During her hearing, she was sentenced to nine months in prison and given a five-year restraining order.

But speaking about the real events, Gadd told The Independent: “Stalking and harassment is a form of mental illness. It would have been wrong to paint her as a monster, because she’s unwell, and the system’s failed her.”

Some names and details were changed to protect identities. (Ed Miller/Netflix)

He also added to The Times that he ‘didn’t want to throw someone who was that level of mentally unwell in prison’.

Baby Reindeer is available to watch on Netflix now.

If you’re experiencing distressing thoughts and feelings, the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) is there to support you. They’re open from 5pm–midnight, 365 days a year. Their national number is 0800 58 58 58 and they also have a webchat service if you’re not comfortable talking on the phone.

An actor who performed an unsimulated sex scene in a movie has defended his decision to take on the role.

Actor Kieran O’Brien starred in the controversial movie, 9 Songs back in 2004 where he played Matt.

The movie tells the story of an intense relationship between a young couple, charting their first encounter at Brixton Academy to their split.

You can watch the trailer below:

In the movie, O’Brien took part in numerous graphic, unsimulated sex scenes with co-star Margo Stilley.

At the time, 9 Songs was particularly controversial after it featured oral sex and ejaculation – but O’Brien doesn’t regret any of it.

Speaking to The Guardian back in 2005, he said: “It wasn’t difficult for me to make and I’m really proud of it.

“Honestly, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. It’s a film about two people in a monogamous relationship, having sex as you’d kind of hope that everyone does.

Revolution Films

“It’s the age-old cliche: if you don’t want to be offended, don’t see it. But really I can’t believe that people will be offended.

“I don’t think anyone really was – they either didn’t see it or they saw it and affected that reaction.”

The movie, which was directed by Michael Winterbottom, was particularly criticised by Ann Widdecombe, who compared it to pornography.

At the time, she said: “It is not the [BBFC’s] role to allow pornography to enter the mainstream.”

But the critics didn’t fuss O’Brien, who only has fond memories of filming.

He added: “The film to shoot was bizarre and incredible. I doubt I’ll experience anything like it.

“At some points, I would be taking direction from Michael standing naked with no mistaking where he could hang your towel, if you know what I mean.

“Michael would be wondering where to put his eyes. A lot of it was very funny.”

Alison Buck/WireImage

Stilley also spoke about her thoughts on having sex on camera, explaining that she too is ‘proud’ of the movie.

Speaking to The Irish Examiner in 2008, she said: “You’d think I invented sex! I got told I was a whore and a sl*t and how could I do it.

“And what kind of role model did I think I was giving young women?”

She added: “It was a film about love and sex. It wasn’t porn. I mean, I had sex with my boyfriend last night and that wasn’t porn.

“It was just hot sex! 9 Songs was a real film about love and sex, and I wanted to do that film and I am proud of it.”

The man who invented what is often considered to be ‘the most painful torture device in history’ was the first victim of his cruel creation.

History is strewn with examples of horribly painful ways for a person to die and even scientists have weighed in on some of the most unpleasant ways to go out.

However, there’s absolutely nobody disputing that one of the most awful fates that could befall a person was to be locked inside the Brazen Bull, and ancient device used to torture and execute people.

Created in the 6th century BC by a Greek inventor, the torture device was a hollow sculpture of a bull made out of bronze with a trapdoor fitted into it and a set of pipes near the mouth.

The idea behind it was that a person would be locked inside the Brazen Bull and have a fire lit beneath them, cooking them alive while the pipes transformed the sound of their agonising screams into bellowing bull noises.

The supposed creator of this awful torture device was a man named Perilaus of Athens (or Perillus), who built the thing and presented it to Phalaris, the tyrant of the Sicilian state of Akragas.

Phalaris was an absolutely awful person who was renowned for his appalling cruelty. It is even claimed that he was a cannibal who ate newborn babies, so he was either one of the most evil people in history or he really angered some people enough for them to say he ate children.

Adwo / Alamy Stock Photo

Despite his renowned cruelty, Phalaris may not actually have asked for the Brazen Bull as some accounts say that rather than being commissioned to make it, Perilaus instead created the horrific contraption on his own volition and presented it to the tyrant in an attempt to get on his good side.

If you think the way to make friends with a guy is to invent the world’s worst torture device for him then you might wonder if he’s a friend worth having, but Perilaus didn’t really consider that when he presented his gift to the tyrant.

Phalaris asked the inventor to get inside the bull and demonstrate how the person inside making noises would sound to everyone on the outside, but once Perilaus climbed inside to show how his invention worked he was locked inside and a fire was lit beneath him.

The Brazen Bull’s inventor became its first victim, though he didn’t die from it as after being cooked alive for a while, he was removed from the bull on the orders of Phalaris.

If the inventor was hoping that his ordeal was over then he was very much mistaken as the tyrant had him taken to the top of a hill and thrown off to his death.

World History Archive / Alamy Stock Photo

As for the bull, it stayed with Phalaris and became the tyrant’s new favourite toy and anyone he didn’t like was thrown inside and cooked alive.

The tyrant supposedly enjoyed the spectacle of the bull rocking back and forth as someone was burned to death inside it along with the noises it made, and then he had the bones of his victims made into jewellery.

Being cooked alive inside the Brazen Bull would have been unimaginable agony, and a person would have spent up to 10 minutes experiencing the horror of being roasted alive before they died.

The tyrant’s reign came to an end in 554 BC when he was overthrown and killed by being placed inside his beloved Brazen Bull.

That wasn’t the end of this awful torture device, as historical records note that the Carthaginians nabbed a Brazen Bull from Agrigentum, the Roman city built atop the ruins of Akragis, while the Romans later nabbed it back.