By Simon Duke & Zoe Delaney
The man behind the disastrous Glasgow Willy Wonka event, which ended up needing police intervention, has been revealed in a new Channel 5 documentary that aired on Saturday night.
Families were expecting a fantastic day out at the Willy's Chocolate Experience, hoping to share their fun experiences on social media. However, the reality was far from what they had been promised or seen in promotional images.
Instead of giant sweets, chocolate fountains, special audio and visual effects, and Oompa-Loompas as advertised, visitors found a poorly decorated warehouse with a disappointing arch, flimsy backdrops, a Willy Wonka dressed in a Greatest Showman costume and a rather unhappy Oompa Loompa.
When adverts for Channel 5's Willy Wonka: The Scandal that Rocked Britain popped up on social media earlier this week, many people 'refused' to believe it was real, thinking it was just another online joke about the event. But, it was indeed a real documentary and aired on Saturday night.
After the first few minutes featured chats with parents who'd paid as much as £35 for the one-off experience, the man behind it all, Billy Coull, made his first TV appearance. Coull's first words on camera were that he knew 'people were owed an explanation,' just before the show dramatically cut to an ad break.
When it came back, never-before-seen footage of what the warehouse where the event took place actually looked like was shown. And, while the 'factory gates' looked good enough, families at the front of the line could see through them and quickly realised they were in for a letdown.
After snippets of the backlash around the event and the attention it got on national and even international TV were shown, 35 year old Coull, boss of company House of Illuminati who'd already sparked complaints over a Christmas event he ran in 2021, appeared again, saying: "The first couple of run throughs there were no complaints, people were enjoying the experience. I believed the event was going to go smoothly."
He shared how things got out of hand, saying: "It all started to go wrong when I was approached by a very angry parent and then it was just chaos, an absolute nightmare. I did not even see where the anger had come from and before long I was engulfed by angry parents. It was more like mob mentality. It was absolute carnage. And at that point I said 'enough's enough, we have to shut this down." As the video of the upset crowd was shown, Coull, who said he got 'hundreds and hundreds' of mean messages after the event, also mentioned: "I never wanted to see any children crying."
Channel 5 viewers loved the quickly-turned around investigation into the viral shambles, with one writing on Twitter (X): "I'm obsessed with how seriously channel 5 are taking this glasgow wonka documentary. its like a true crime exposé. I've got chills!" "I can’t quite believe we are all sat here watching a documentary about the Willy Wonka Experience. God I love it, well done channel 5," another quipped, as a third mused: "The Channel 5 Wonka documentary is absolutely appropriate in that they do not have enough material to cover the space. Everyone is disappointed, and those involved are taking it deadly seriously. Art imitates life. Perfect. There's another half an hour!"
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