Spoof news reporter's star on the rise

Fake news reporter Jonathan Pie is to play the London Palladium.

The alter-ego of actor Tom Walker has become an internet sensation, and his video about Donald Trump's victory attracted more than 2.2million views on YouTube alone in less than a week.

His videos have even been a regular fixture on the RT news network, the Kremlin-backed broadcaster which has been accused of being a propaganda outlet for Vladimir Putin's regime.

In an interview with RT, Walker said: 'Perhaps the reason that this has been so popular... is that people recognise an element of truth in it. I mean it's fiction, and I made it to be funny, I made it to be a piece of entertainment. But if people recognise something in it and go: "Actually he's articulating the way that I feel" - then more the better.'

March's gig will mark the high point of his current tour, which kicked off with a sell-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe last August. Pie has another London date at the Shepherds Bush Empire next week, while tickets for the Palladium show on March 4 go on sale at 10am tomorrow.

Walker was out of work and on the cusp of giving up acting when he decided to film some three-minute videos as an angry news reporter raging about what was really wrong with the world once the cameras stops rolling

The Trump video claims more than 110million views across all platforms, although Facebook has a very low threshold as to what counts as a view. Here's the clip

And here is our review of the show from Edinburgh.

Published: 16 Nov 2016