A town council meeting that descended into chaos, with some councillors trading insults and ultimately getting booted off the Zoom call, has become an unlikely internet sensation.
After clips of the Handforth Parish Council meeting in England were uploaded to Twitter, it was shared over three million times.
Clerk Jackie Weaver hosted the meeting in which some councillors lost their cool, leading her to kick chairman Brian Tolver off the Zoom call.
The meeting was the second time chair Mr Tolver had been removed, having previously been evicted from the earlier 7pm Planning and Environment Committee.
The 7.30pm extraordinary meeting, which took place on 10 December but went viral in the last 24 hours, began with an unseen councillor mumbling "f*** off" under their breath.
Mr Tolver refused to recognise the legitimacy of both meetings.
He told Ms Weaver, from the Cheshire Association of Local Councils, to "stop talking" and "you have no authority here".
In response, she removed Mr Tolver from the Zoom call and placed him in a virtual waiting room.
Following Mr Tolver’s eviction, vice-chair Aled Brewerton, joined by another unnamed gentleman, proceeded to yell at Ms Weaver to "read the standing orders".
When fellow councillor Susan Moore calls for civility, the meeting erupted into semi-hysterical laughter and two further councillors, Mr Brewerton and Barry Burkill, were removed.
There was then confusion over Mr Tolver’s Zoom username, in which he had labelled himself the "clerk".
Ms Weaver said: "The chairman simply declared himself 'clerk’ and notified everybody of the case.
"There is no way of stopping him from calling himself clerk. Please refer to me as Britney Spears from now on."
Those remaining on the call voted not to allow the three men back into the meeting, with Cllr Cynthia Samson likening one to a "laughing hyena".
Mr Tolver told the PA news agency: "I cannot think of any other council meeting anywhere, that was taken over by an unqualified member of the public like this.
"Removing half the councillors from the meeting denied half of the voters of the village from being represented – it was an appalling attack on their democratic rights.
"This made tensions rise, and that is why voices were raised in the second meeting."
Ms Weaver told the BBC today that she had received "nothing but really lovely, positive support" since the clip had gone viral.
She said that it was important to try to eradicate "bad behaviour" from local councils.
'99.99% of council meetings just aren't like that.'
— BBC Woman's Hour (@BBCWomansHour) February 5, 2021
We spoke to the one and only Jackie Weaver about *that* #HandforthParishCouncil meeting and how to keep your cool in online meetings 🖥 listen to the whole interview on now @BBCSounds https://t.co/loB3agTaHt pic.twitter.com/VuweULMlAV
Mr Tolver said Ms Weaver was just present as a member of the public and "had no status to speak other than when invited".
"If you look at the first meeting you will see I have reason to be angry," he said.
Mr Tolver, who previously described the clips shared on YouTube as "corrupt copies", said they were "hooky videos" and added: "Whether they are completely genuine or not, I don’t know."
