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FACTCHECK

Debunked: Tony Cascarino did not throw his takeaway in the bin and other fake queen claims

There were no Irish dancers at Buckingham Palace either.
6.14pm, 9 Sep 2022
39.4k

IN THE HOURS following the death of the UK’s Queen Elizabeth II, there have been multiple claims about how specific broadcasters, personalities and groups of people reacted to the news.

BBC Radio claims

One such claim was about how the announcement of the monarch’s death was made on BBC Radio 1 Dance.

Videos spread on social media show a radio player app tuning in to the station, with lively dance music playing before it cuts to the announcement of the queen’s death.

Following the announcement in the clip, dance music resumes playing.

This video, at the time of writing, has been viewed over 4.3 million times with thousands of shares and likes.

The video was also shared by New York-based music journal, Consequence of Sound, on Instagram.

However, this is not what actually happened during the announcement of the queen’s death on BBC Radio 1 Dance.

While the first song in the clip, Footprints by Kaz James, was playing when the announcement was made yesterday, the song that plays following the announcement, Mimi by Chris Lorenzo and COBRAH, has been edited in.

The same announcement was played across all BBC radio stations yesterday, with normal programming being suspended immediately.

Broadcaster Scott Bryan, who hosts a podcast on BBC Radio 5, confirmed that the BBC did not cut back to dance music following the reading of the news.

While claims that the BBC cut short a dance song to announce the death of Queen Elizabeth II are correct, videos circulating on social media showing music returning after the announcement have been doctored.

Irish dancing

Another clip that has gone viral in the last 24 hours is a TikTok of a group performing an Irish dance routine to Another One Bites the Dust by Queen outside Buckingham Palace in London.

This clip, which has been viewed almost 10 million times and has received hundreds of thousands of likes and shares across social media, was shared 10 minutes ahead of the announcement of the queen’s death.

The clip, captioned on Twitter as “Holy shit Irish tiktok doesn’t fuck around”, however is misleading as it was initially recorded in January 2022 rather than on 8 September.

The original video was posted on Twitter by Irish dance group Cairde on 18 January 2022 and was viewed over 272,000 times, with it being shared by hundreds of people.

It has no connection to the death of the queen. 

Tony Cascarino takeaway

A third claim comes from what was originally a joke on Twitter, which said that former football star Tony Cascarino had thrown away a Chinese takeaway he ordered after hearing of the queen’s death.

The post reads:

“A solemn Tony Cascarino is broadcasting on Talksport. Who better to cover this historic event.

“Cascarino said: ‘I had a Chinese delivered just moments after the announcement. It felt wrong and very disrespectful to eat it, so as a mark of respect I threw it in the bin.’”

The claim was picked up across Twitter with users posting screenshots from online articles. 

PunditArena

However, in the talkSPORT segment referenced in the tweet, Cascarino doesn’t speak about throwing away a Chinese takeaway out of respect for the queen.

Additionally, in a further response the original poster confirmed that it was a hoax.

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Author
Tadgh McNally
tadgh@thejournal.ie
@TadghMcN
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