PIERS Morgan has applauded pranksters who tricked anti-vaxxer Piers Corbyn into taking £10,000 in exchange for an end to criticising AstraZeneca vaccines in his speeches.
The prank shared online shows YouTubers Josh Pieters and Archie Manners pose as stakeholders in AstraZeneca who are concerned about the negative of Corbyn’s anti-vaccine speeches.
The comedy duo filmed the encounter in Central London which saw them trying to convince the former Labour leader’s brother to take £10,000 to stop criticising the Covid vaccine.
Morgan shared the video online, tweeting: "Brilliant work, chaps."
In the video, the pranksters showed Corbyn the £10,000 cash and then used sleight of hand to replace the real cash with Monopoly money before he appears to accept the envelope and agrees to focus on Pfizer and Moderna instead of the AZ jab.
In the video – which has gone viral online – Pieters can be seen purchasing shares worth £100 in AstraZeneca to ensure he could legally pose as a stakeholder in the company.
They then got in touch with Piers Corbyn via email proposing a donation to his campaign ‘Stop New Normal’ in which he agreed to meet up.
Pieters and Manners arrange the meeting in Sloane Square and set up a restaurant with hidden cameras.
The meeting begins with Pieters telling Corbyn his father owns a very successful restaurant chain in South Africa and implies the family has a number of other businesses and investments.
He then adds: “One of our main interests, funnily enough, is we have share holds in the AstraZeneca vaccine.
“Can you believe that? It’s not from a personal standpoint, it’s more of a case that it’s good business.”
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Pieters later suggests they could support Corbyn’s campaign in exchange for a favour.
The comedian says: “If we can help your campaign in any way then that's obviously going to help us. We've got shared interests.
“We actually even brought something along today that is just a token of our intention of helping out with your campaign.”
Manners then lifts out an envelope containing £10,000 in real cash and shows it to Corbyn who responds saying “oh wow” and calls it “fantastic".
Pieters then adds: “This is obviously just a statement of intent -we’d love to keep funding you so there’s £10,000 there”.
Piers Corbyn is said to appear delighted with the money but claimed he couldn’t be influenced – he then sets out his terms of agreement saying “As long as I can accept it with no insistence on any policy changes or anything that I'm doing”.
Manners then agrees they would not ask for policy changes but says “if there is anything that can be done to focus a bit on Pfizer and Moderna – that would be a useful thing”.
Corbyn then begins writing benefits for the AstraZeneca vaccine and agrees with the request for the vaccine to be ignored in his future anti-vaccine speeches.
As the duo prepare to swap the real cash for monopoly money, Manners’s girlfriend is later seen to pose as a fan of Piers Corbyn and asks for a selfie.
As the photo is being taken, the pranksters then use sleight of hand to swap the envelopes.
To avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest Piers tells the YouTubers that if asked where the money has come from, he’d say it came from “a businessman that runs restaurants” rather than from AZ.
Corbyn then claims that a focus on Pfizer and Moderna “would happen anyway without any interference”.
Josh Pieters has previously targeted controversial figures in his videos – last year he convinced Katie Hopkins to fly to Prague to accept a fake award.
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