A former Glow reality TV star has been criticised on the internet after he was 'caught out making up a story for Twitter likes' and apparently nicking photographs online and passing them off as his own.
Former TV star and nightclub owner Brian Matthews said that the 'hilarious' prank happened whilst he was trying to help his mate sell a BMW car last week using his 'large following' on social media.
The 36-year-old said that he'd received a text from a 'chancer' who had made an offer for the vehicle that was £2,500 below the £7,500 asking price, so he decided to get his own back by sending him on a wild goose chase.
You know the sort of thing, it's been done before.
Matthews shared a number of texts that he claims were between him and the prospective buyer, who he said he sent to an address to pick up the car, only for it to be the address of the mental health unit of a local hospital.
Hilarious stuff, don't you agree?
The initial tweet received more than 4,700 likes and shares, but all that clout was for nothing as an eagle-eyed observer noticed that Brian had - in actual fact - nicked the whole thing from the internet.
They discovered that the texts had been circulating online from potentially as early as August 2019.
The images have also seemingly been doctored to remove the part where the original image read 'James' post' at the top, indicating that the original prankster was called James.
Seeking out fame through performing outlandish stunts isn't exactly new territory for Matthews.
He even appeared on the Channel 4 show Sex Tape in order to 'save his relationship'.
However, for once he refused to say anything when confronted about the claims that his prank is actually someone else's work.
In the original post, he wrote: : "The person was really chancing it - they were being a bit of a pest and wouldn't go away or accept no for an answer, so we thought we'd wind it up a little bit.
"They wanted £2,500 off the car - I thought it was very cheeky.
"[So I thought] what we should do is send him to the mental hospital and I'll look up the nearest one to where the car's being sold and we found that one.
"It was my idea - at one point I felt quite bad that I'd made him travel for an hour but with the laugh me and my friend had it made it worth it - it was hilarious at the time."
Brian actually lives in Scotland, and the posts refer to Nottingham and Peterborough, but he was still adamant that it was his gag.
He said: "I've got a friend who lives down south and he had actually asked me to try and sell his car for him by sharing it on social media and helping him out a little bit because I've got quite a large following.
"I did that for him and a person had private mailed me saying he was interested in the car and so we swapped numbers and he started texting."
At the end of the prank, Brian - but not actually Brian - told the buyer to head on in to the mental health ward because he 'can't be right in the head' if he thought he was getting the car for that price.
Brian added: "He didn't realise it was a joke until he arrived outside the mental hospital.
"I thought there's no way he's going to travel all that way without looking up the address first, but maybe the address didn't show on his google maps, he just thought 'right ok I'm going to travel and get this for an absolute bargain' until he reached outside the hospital, read the sign and then it must have sank in when I said 'check yourself in there'.
"At one point I felt quite bad that I'd made him travel for an hour but with the laugh me and my friend had it made it worth it, and it made the guy realise that you can't just get £2,500 off a car."
Brian initially made himself available to journalists to discuss the 'prank' but then did not respond to requests for comment once his ruse was discovered.
Featured Image Credit: Kennedy News and MediaTopics: UK News, TV and Film, Fail, UK Entertainment, Twitter, Weird, Scotland