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10 Sept 2025
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10 Sept 2025
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A video showing a man who was told by the police he was being arrested for calling someone a muppet has spread widely on social media.
Most of the posts did not make a claim about when the video was taken, however, one discussed the events in its own video, which was billed as containing “breaking news”.
The video shows police arresting a man, saying it is for a “section 4a public order offence” and telling him that “there’s been a member of the public who you’ve apparently been shouting at and calling a muppet … and you caused them alarm and distress.”
The video is from around three years ago, it was uploaded to YouTube on September 24 2022.
The videos shared on social media have an embedded TikTok username. A search for that username shows that the TikTok channel in question uploaded this video on Saturday September 6 2025.
However, this is not the original video. A reverse image search led the PA news agency to find a version of the same video – uploaded in September 2024 – on YouTube. At around two minutes and 50 seconds into that video a voiceover credits “Auditing Yorkshire” as the owner of the video.
By combing through the videos on a YouTube channel of that name, PA found a version of the video from September 2022 – almost three years ago. That video is titled “Arrested For Calling Someone A Muppet Section 4a Public Order!”
The video shared to TikTok and then spread widely on social media was a shorter clip from a nearly 29-minute long video. The relevant section can be seen from around 24 minutes and 40 seconds.
After the man filming is arrested the camera is turned off. Seemingly later in the day the man starts filming again. In the video he explains: “I were in there (referring to the police station) for about half an hour and when I got to custody desk, give all my details and then the custody officer – the custody sergeant – didn’t authorise my detention basically.
“So in layman’s terms he refused to accept me into custody because of how little the allegation were basically.”
Section 4a of the Public Order Act 1986 says that if “with intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress” someone uses “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour” thereby causing someone else “harassment, alarm or distress” they are guilty of an offence.
Section 4a has not been changed since 2006, when a part of it was repealed.
Links
Post on X (archived post and video)
Ninth post on X (archived post and video)
Video on YouTube (archived page and audio download)
Second video on YouTube (archived page and audio download – listen from about 24.44)
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