Is the ‘Clap for Me Now’ video a wind-up?

‘What did you do in the coronavirus crisis, dad?’

‘Well son, I’m glad you ask. I helped make a very important video, entitled ‘You Clap for Me Now’. It used a technique we call passive-aggression to make people realise what horrible racists they had been towards immigrants. The video was really a poem, set to rousing piano music. The Guardian wrote about it and it got millions of shares. Most of them were ‘outrage’ shares, from people who hated it, but that’s because Britain is racist.’

‘Wow dad, you are a hero! Were you a key worker, too?’

‘No son, I’m an entertainer and an online ‘slacktivist.’

‘Oh. Cool.’

That, I imagine, is how in the future Tez Ilyas might converse with his progeny, if he has any. Tez features in the ‘You Clap For Me Now’ video that is doing the rounds on social media. His turn involves him pointing out that migrants ‘bring food from your soil’, as if he himself were a farm hand, when of course he’s not.