Is This Guy Actually Doing Cocaine on the London Tube? Or Is the Video Fake?

‘The Wolf of London Underground,’ as he was dubbed today by the ‘Sun,’ appearing to smash lines of coke on the Northern Line. Image via the ‘Sun’

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Few things go more comfortably hand-in-hand than city workers and cocaine. The boys and girls from the square mile are famed for their love of powdered Red Bull, slowly trying to erode wine bar cisterns all over town, and using crumpled bank notes to wipe away their runny, translucent nose goo on Monday mornings. It is their prize for essential number crunching, for keeping London at the forefront of world economics. Chefs and doctors have cigarettes, moody detectives have alcohol, and city workers have cocaine.

Usually, they are able to indulge this vice with total impunity. As far as illegal drugs go, it’s probably the easiest to do discreetly. Literally all you have to do is lock yourself somewhere away from prying eyes and breathe in to get high. To the outside world, you could just be taking a shit while struggling with a cold.

Read: I Got Cocaine Blown Up My Ass So You Don’t Have To

Sometimes, though, the chang madness gets you by the balls, and you start to behave in erratic ways. This may be what happened to the gentleman who has become internet-famous in the last few hours for appearing to hoover away at a baggy of nostril boggler in full view of a packed tube train.

While I want to believe this is true, we all watched the first season ofTrue Detective, and we know that things are not always as they seem. So let’s take a deeper look at the video and try to figure out if it is legit or faker than that gram of “cocaine” you picked up off of “Ricardo” in the early hours of Sunday morning.

THE CASE FOR IT BEING REAL

Image via the Sun

First, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Let’s say our friend here is actually just a stupid, gakked-up city boy who’s either trying to get home or—and this seems more likely, given his demeanor—to another shindig where there’s a gang of fellow moneymen waiting, like a murder of crows perched on the bar of a B@1, squawking chauvinisms at a barmaid. He’s excited: He’s about to rejoin the pack. The bag he’s holding certainly has some kind of white powder in it, though his hands get in the way of his drizzling action, so we can’t actually see the crystalline grains pile up on his chubby mitts.

Post-inhalation, he throws his head back, and begins to make the guttural straining sound of someone whose throat is being numbed by gear. The wild stare he employs, and the cavalier way he offers the wrap around, also points to him being fucked with a capital whoosh.

Also: Would we really be that surprised if a city boy, quite easily the most maligned people in the whole of London, were to do something as heinous as bang a load of nosebag in front of some unsuspecting commuters? The jejune excuse of “I just like taking it,” saying shit like, “This is no playground, boys,” calling everyone “boys” like the whole underground system is filled with fellow suited mash-up artists ready to pillock their way through an unsuspecting night out. This is par for the course, no?

THE CASE FOR IT BEING FAKE

Image via the ‘Sun’

Well, perhaps not. There’s just something a bit off about the whole thing. It’s all a little bit too “Mr. Comedy Cocaine Man!” Check this guy out, he’s being so brazen! And he’s wearing a suit! And doing cocaine! On the tube! Man, these city boys, it’s almost like they’re a parody of themselves.

The frequency with which he’s doing it is also suspect. There’s no respite, no long, grinding chats with strangers. He’s acting drunk, not high. The cocaine, while still making you act a cunt, would sober you up slightly, up your intensity rather than frivolity levels. And why do that much cocaine on your own, at 11 PM, as the Sun claims? Where are all his posh-bloke friends? Don’t they travel in groups? Phalanxes of Hugos and Bertrams passing round Cava bottles and wraps of hooter? Why has this man been left behind?

His chosen mode of transport raises suspicions, also. I thought city boys were meant to be wealthy. So why is this one getting the tube? The tube is for the regular Joe, the idiots who can’t organize hedge funds or quantitive easing or whatever the fuck it is that they do. This guy should, at the very least, be getting an Uber. If not an Uber Exec, then a regular one.

This guy is a prick, there can be no questioning that. But is he really bashing out little pyramids of bona fide charlie on the Northern Line? I think not. Next time on VICE Solves: the conflict in the Middle East.

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