It has today been revealed that former comedian Dom Joly was behind footage which emerged yesterday afternoon, purportedly showing Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi touring the city of Tripoli in a motorcade. The footage, which was subsequently aired on several international news networks, showed an overweight man dressed in black, with a black hat and dark glasses, hanging out of the sunroof of a silver SUV, fist-pumping his way around what appeared to be a North African city, to an adoring crowd of a dozen or so followers waving Libyan flags.
Later examination of the former I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here contestant’s Twitter feed revealed a number of particularly unsubtle remarks alluding to the fact that it was in fact Joly, wearing a rubber mask, in what can only be described as a further failed attempt to revive his flagging television career, which to be fair, has pretty much been in freefall since the second episode of Trigger Happy TV aired in late 1999.
The comments were removed some hours later, but not before a spokesperson for the one-time British Comedy Awards nominee had confirmed that this had been intended as part of a pilot for a hilarious new hidden-camera show, and conceded that it was perhaps a little insensitive and ill-thought-out, in light of the ongoing military action by pro-Gaddafi forces against the Libyan people.
The one-time TV regular, once branded “perhaps the funniest man in Britain” by an unnamed reader of the LA Times, was today unavailable for comment. Concern appears to be growing for the former funnyman’s mental health after rumours began circulating that he was spotted yesterday afternoon in a North-West London branch of a popular nationwide bakery chain, allegedly bellowing “I’M NOT APOLOGISING!” repeatedly into an average-sized mobile phone, before stuffing a whole Belgian bun into his mouth, flinging himself to the floor, and refusing to move until a paramedic arrived.
