Chinese group hit back at pianist after video demanding not to be filmed sparked fury
Footage of a pianist being confronted by a group of Chinese tourists in London's St Pancras International station has ended up going viral.
Brendan Kavanagh, who also goes by the name Dr K, is a piano playing YouTuber who last Friday (19 January) live streamed himself playing on the publicly available piano in St Pancras station.
However, Dr K ended up being confronted in the station after a group of tourists asked him to stop filming.
The livestream, which has now been viewed over four million times, showed Kavanagh setting himself up at the piano and beginning to play, while a group of people waving Chinese flags could be seen in the background.
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At one point, while someone else is playing the piano, Dr K asks one of the group whether they'd like to dance to the music but they decline.
At around nine minutes into the livestream the other piano player tells him that someone from the Chinese group wants to 'have a go' and Kavanagh vacates the piano.
However, she told him they were there for 'Chinese TV' and asked him if he'd filmed them when he was playing the piano.
She told him he wasn't allowed to film them, saying that what they were filming was 'not disclosable' and didn't want it to be released.
At that point, another man from the group joined the conversation to say they didn't want to appear on camera, saying 'we cannot share our images online', and that they were protecting their rights.
From there the situation rather deteriorated, as the man who came over alleged that Kavanagh was touching one of the women in the group while speaking to them.
On the livestream, he could be heard asking 'why are you touching her' before suddenly yelling 'stop touching her' at the pianist, who claimed he had only touched the Chinese flag she was holding.
When the police arrived they shepherded away the group, while one of the officers told Kavanagh they had requested that the video be deleted, and the pianist challenged the officer to tell him anything he'd done wrong.
According to the Daily Mail, one of the women involved in the incident accused the pianist of provoking her group, saying he played a 'discriminatory' song, referred to them as Japanese instead of Chinese and told them 'we live in Britain, not China'.
She said: "We kept waiting for over 40 minutes. He still played the piano for a long time.
"When I approached him, his assistant kept filming and this was when I realised he was probably a content creator filming videos. But I didn't know he was live streaming at the time.
"So I asked can he delete his video because our content today is non-disclosable. It can't be made public in advance. He kept asking me questions and I really didn't know how to respond."
In the UK, it is not illegal to film in a public place and police have no powers to stop people from filming in public.
Officers are allowed to ask questions of someone they believe is filming or taking pictures, but unless the use of a camera is for criminal or terrorist purposes the filming can continue.
In a later video on his channel, Dr K said there had been an attempt to get the livestream taken down, telling his fans to download the footage as he didn't have a copy of it himself.
LADbible have contacted Brendan Kavanagh for comment.
Topics: China, London, Music, UK News, Viral, Social Media, YouTube
Joe Harker