Just a few days before she was booted off Twitter, Katie Hopkins was tricked into flying to Prague to receive a fake award in an elaborate prank by a South African YouTuber.
In the clip, Josh Pieters explained that he had set up a fake website called “The Cape Town Collective for Freedom of Speech” three months ago and invited the former The Apprentice participant to receive her trophy for being “an inspiration”.
Hopkins can be seen smiling with Pieters in front of a screen bearing the words “Campaign to Unify the Nation Trophy”. When she collects the award, the capital letters enlarge, spelling out the c-word.
“It’s strange to hear nice things being said about yourself,” she can
be heard saying as a group of
actors, hired by Pieters applauds.
But then the controversial columnist goes into a tirade of racist and prejudiced mocking, among many, Muslims and Greta Thunberg.
On Thursday, after Hopkins’ Twitter account was suspended, Pieters dropped the video: “Now that Katie Hopkins can’t read Twitter, I can tell you that on Monday I made her fly to Prague to pick up a completely fake award,” Pieters wrote before uploading the clip.
The video was also uploaded to at least six Katie Hopkins fan pages on Facebook.
But this is not Pieters’s debut prank. He started making YouTube videos after his dream of playing professional cricket was dashed when he fell ill with glandular fever. Last year, he fooled the world with a fake Ed Sheeran.
He took a Sheeran lookalike from Manchester, called Ty, who was flooded by the singer’s fans and influencers who attended a boxing event.
“I was so scared because I organised it all on a whim, last minute, and I was just thinking, what if we turn up and some people go, ‘Oh there’s Josh, and who’s that guy who looks a bit like Ed Sheeran?’” Pieters said. “You don’t know what people are gonna think.”
The result was even better than they expected, with Ty posing for selfies with some of the biggest online stars, and getting invited to super-VIP after-parties hosted by KSI.
“I think we always try to, not only from a creative point of view, but also from a slightly moral point of view, not completely dupe someone by breaking the law,” Pieters said.