Handforth parish council meeting parodied in hilarious TV soap trailer

In a very 2021 turn of events, a British parish council's Zoom meeting has suddenly gone viral, weeks after it happened.

If you’ve not seen it by now, you’re missing out – a clip of the meeting, which is from December of 2020, started to circulate on Twitter last night, eventually going viral as chaos ensued. 

The meeting itself was because of a battle over how the Handforth Parish Council meeting itself should be held – the full hour and 20 minutes are up on YouTube, but there’s also a handy summary here.

As the clerk tried to bring the meeting to order, a councillor was muttering insults under their breath, apparently unaware that they were unmuted. 

The regular chairman, Brian Tolver, was not happy that Jackie Weaver was acting as a clerk and was removed from the meeting. From there on, it just descends – including the semi hysterical laughter that can be heard on the Zoom call.

Of course, it’s immediately become a meme. 

Some one person has even mocked up what the ITV soap will look like.

The imaginary into is based on the one for long-running ITV show Emmerdale, but includes clips from the now infamous meeting which fade in and out.

And it's not the only one, others were quick to reimagine shows based on the council meeting.

The stars of the meeting seem to be handling fame very well – Jacki Weaver has been trending for hours, and she’s already gone on BBC Women’s Hour and been interviewed by ITV.

If we were to guess, we'd say there may even be T-shirts soon with her name on them...