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A man shouted ‘well done Russ’ at the Prime Minister and ultra-runner Russ Cook

A man’s voice heckling the men with obscenities has been added to a video shared on social media.

August Graham
Wednesday 08 May 2024 08:31 BST
Russ Cook and Rishi Sunak run past Buckingham Palace (Rishi Sunak/X/PA)
Russ Cook and Rishi Sunak run past Buckingham Palace (Rishi Sunak/X/PA)

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

A video of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak jogging with ultra-runner Russ Cook appears to show them being heckled by a man shouting “you f****** wanker.” It has been shared multiple times and is gathering thousands of likes on social media.

Evaluation: False

The video is real, but the audio has been edited to add the heckler’s voice.

The facts

The video is a short clip from a longer video which was shared on the Prime Minister’s account on social media platform X of him meeting Russ Cook, who ran the entire length of Africa in a 352-day challenge and is known as the “Hardest Geezer”.

In that longer video, at around 1.57 seconds, the supposed heckler’s voice cannot be heard shouting obscenities at the two men over the footage later shared by other accounts on X. Instead there is a  different male voice who shouts encouraging words that sound like “well done Russ”.

Links

Post one on X (archived post and video)

Post two on X (archived post and video)

Post three on X (archived post and video)

Rishi Sunak’s post on X (archived post and video)

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