Father Ted writer Graham Linehan fooled thousands of Twitter users into thinking that Osama bin Laden was a big fan of another of his shows, The IT Crowd.
After US officials released footage of recently deceased Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden watching television at his compound in Abbottabad before his death, Linehan decided to pull a fast one on his followers by suggesting that bin Laden was watching episodes of The IT Crowd, which has aired on Channel 4 for the last five years.
Linehan tweeted: “Does anyone have confirmation that Osama was watching The IT Crowd in these home movies? Amazing if true. Don’t know how to feel.”
He followed his original tweet up by suggesting that he had been bombarded with phone calls from journalists looking for a quote and that he had been sent footage of bin Laden watching the show by the Irish Embassy in Washington, which he was ‘not allowed to upload’.
Confident that many of his 96,000 plus followers had fell for the prank, Linehan deviously suggested that seeing bin Laden watch his show had altered his feelings about the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks.
“Used to feel only hate re #OBL but now…really hard to say what I feel exactly. He’s telling someone offscreen to be quiet,” he tweeted.
Unfortunately for Linehan, the jig was up when he suggested that the audio in the clip was distorted or pirated, something that alerted his followers to the possibility of a hoax, seeing as the footage released by US authorities contained no audio.
With tongue firmly in cheek, Linehan then claimed that after using popular music identifying programme Shazam, he discovered that the show in question was not The IT Crowd, but bland US sitcom The Big Bang Theory, a revelation that forced Linehan to revert to his original feelings about bin Laden.
“It is ‘Big Bang Theory’! Why was it reported as ‘It Crowd’? Fu**ing Osama. FU**ING ROT IN HELL, MOTHERFU**ER!” read a later tweet.
Still believing that Linehan genuinely thought bin Laden was a fan of the show and was offended when he discovered the truth, some of his followers began to ask him how he felt upon being dealt with such a letdown.
Linehan finally put the matter to bed when responding to IT Crowd researcher Chris Jones about the whole debacle, tweeting: “Mostly exhausted from laughing and freaked out that some still buying it.”
