Joe Lycett has responded to the negative reactions to him shredding £10,000i in protest of David Beckham going to Qatar, by confirming that the bank notes were in fact fake.
Last week the comedian and former host of the Great British Sewing Bee said he was taking a stand against the ex England star being an official ambassador for the Middle East tournament, despite the major issues that have been raised about the host nation. have been raised in regard to the deaths of workers working on building the stadiums for the World Cup, the country's attitudes to women and the fact that homosexuality is still illegal in Qatar and punishable with people facing fines, prison or even the death penalty.
Joe, who recently came to Newcastle on his latest arena tour, vowed to destroy £10,000 of his own money to LGBT charities if former Manchester United and Real Madrid winger ended his rumoured £10million sponsorship deal before the tournament started, setting him a deadline of of Sunday, November 20 to do so.
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And when he heard nothing back from Beckham or received any word that he was intending to leave his Qatar role, uploaded a video of him solemnly loading what looked like real bank notes into shredder, with the contents shorting out the other end,
The stunt received plenty of negative reactions from critics who argued Joe should have given the money to an LGBTQ+ charity and, after facing substantial backlash, he returned to social media before England v Iran to say: "1The truth is, the money that went into the shredder was real, but the money that came out was fake.
"In fact, the 10 grand had already been donated to LGBTQ+ charities before I even pressed send on the initial tweet last week." In a final assurance over his actions, he added: "I would never destroy real money," he told his followers, "I would never be so irresponsible."
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