Willy Wonka experience boss has been given an unfortunate nickname following debacle

The owner of the infamous Willy Wonka experience has opened up about how it had affected his life, including the unfortunate nickname it has earned him.

Billy Coull was the organiser behind the Glasgow-based Willy Wonka experience that gained international attention because of how terrible it was.

Speaking on the Channel 5 documentary Wonka: The Scandal That Rocked Britain, Coull revealed that controversy has taken a significant toll on his life, as he has been labelled with the nickname “Willy W**ker” which has since trended on social media.

“Because of everything that had happened, it ran into my personal life,” Coull explained.“I have lost my friends. I’ve lost the love of my life. I was made out to be the face of all evil. And genuinely, that’s really not the case.”

Coull was criticised by Paul Connell, the comedian hired to play Willy Wonka, for providing him with a script that was “15 pages of AI-generated gibberish”.

Pop culture page Culture Crave said Coull claimed he only used AI to “check spelling, grammar and continuity”, however, it suggested Coull was found to have “published 16 AI-generated books last summer on Amazon”.

Coull argued that he was not a “scam artist” and that he was just as “devastated” as anyone about how the event turned out. He spoke about the aftermath of the controversy and the online abuse he suffered.

Coull said: “I was getting hundreds and hundreds calling me the most awful names saying I’m a villain, I’m a horrific dad, I’m better off dead, I should kill myself.

“I was devastated and I was sick to the pit of my tummy, I had a whole host of emotions.”

Sign up for our free indy100 weekly newsletter

How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 ranking