Would you drink Cyanide? What if an influencer told you to?
A BBC hidden camera series has exposed a trio of reality stars admitting they don’t try the stuff they flog — before auditioning to advertise a poisonous drink to their followers.
Pretending to be a health drink brand, “Blindboy Undestroys the World” invited three famous UK TV stars — “Love Island” star Zara Holland and “The Only Way Is Essex” stars Lauren Goodger and Mike Hassini — to an interview to ask them if they would be okay with promoting a product they hadn’t tried yet … and all three instantly agreed.
The cringeworthy clip shows the trio then reading the script for an ad for the drink “Cyanora”, which contains all natural extracts such as chamomile, magnesium, lemon balm, lavender … and hydrogen cyanide.
“Yes, hydrogen cyanide,” host Blindboy Boatclub explains. “You know, the illegal chemical agent they used to poison troops in World War I and the gas chambers of World War II, and the Yanks kill criminals with it. No one would fall for that, right?”
“Now we were very transparent,” he continues. “The product was clearly labeled ‘hydrogen cyanide’, and we wanted to see if they’d consider selling it to their fans, which would kill them.”
The three are all recorded admitting they don’t need to try products before promoting them, and sometime simply share posts to make it “look” like they use them.
Watch these influencers audition for the role of brand ambassador of a brand new herbal drink… containing the poisonous chemical hydrogen cyanide.
Blindboy Undestroys the World is now streaming on @BBCiPlayer: https://t.co/9hrjEYvzLP pic.twitter.com/fo8f28wRoy
— BBC Three (@bbcthree) December 19, 2019
In the video, Goodger even admits that she’s never even tried SkinnyCoffee, a brand she promotes, and one which has been accused of containing laxatives.
“Half these posts you see that people do they’re not even trying them half the time anyway,” Goodger’s agent is recorded saying before Goodger herself chimes in: “I’ve never tried SkinnyCoffee!”
The pair are then seen laughing at her own friends who contact her asking if the product works. “I’m like, do you not know this by now?” she guffaws. “And they’re actually going and buying it!”
After the damning video was published Goodger, who boasts 2million followers on social media, blamed the agent for setting up the meeting, and said they had since parted ways.
“I’ve been completely set up and it’s not really fair. I wanna make it clear that I have since split with the agent who set up that job audition and my new team would never put me in a situation like that,” she told OK Online.
“I never saw the script beforehand, I didn’t know anything about the product so when they were explaining it to me it was the first time I was learning anything about it,” she said.
“I’m not a scientist. I don’t know what hydrogen cyanide is and I’ve never heard of it before. I genuinely just thought it was some special ingredient that was being used. Like if you asked me what is in Lucozade I couldn’t tell you. The BBC set me up and I feel like I’ve been unfairly targeted by them.”
Her former agent’s reps told BBC their client “would not endorse the promotion of products that contained harmful or suspect ingredients, or without knowing the contents. Our client was told the product was still in development.”
Zara Holland, who boasts 500k social media followers, admitted reading out ingredients which included hydrogen cyanide, and not immediately knowing what it was at the time; adding she would never deliberately mislead her followers or promote a product that was dangerous.
Mike Hassini, who boasts 400k followers, has yet to respond.
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