How ‘This Country’ star Daisy May Cooper and Kate Thornton got catfished by a sea captain in lockdown

Lockdown made us all do weird things – creating sour dough starters, doing cross stitch, making Tik Tok videos with the kids – however, none is so weird as the ‘romance’ that occurred between This Country actress Daisy May Cooper and a sea captain named Jon.

The burgeoning relationship between Cooper and ‘Jon’ kept her Instagram fans gripped, as she took them on the journey with her. Speaking on White Wine Question Time, the Celebrity Gogglebox star, said she just wanted to have a bit of fun with the whole thing.

“I could not believe when Jon, the sea captain, fell into my lap,” she told podcast creator and host Kate Thornton.

“I've had loads of these kinds of messages and it was just his profile picture and I thought, ‘You know what, we'll have a bit of fun with this’”

She continued, laughing: “And I think it was also that first message… I mean, it's grammatically bad. The spelling's appalling, the English is terrible.

“And the thought that somebody is sort of putting that out there as bait and thinking that someone's going to go, 'Oh you know what, he sounds like a normal nice bloke looking for a relationship'. I had no idea quite how, I mean extraordinary, this guy would be.”

Read more: Seven signs you're being catfished

The romance, which was played out across Cooper’s Instagram account, involved her feeding him a whole host of lies including that she was widowed and ran a successful dog coning company, all of which he just accepted at face value.

“Everything he just kind of just took on without question,” laughed Cooper. “I mean as soon as he accepted me for for that, I thought, ‘God, I've gotta be with you for the long time babe!’”

While he wasn’t put off with hilarious lies, he did throw a wobble when Cooper sent him a photo of herself on a plane, flying out to visit him in Syria.

“Every time I sent stuff like that, I thought, right, this will be the thing that pushes it over the edge,” she admitted to Thornton.

“What was so funny though, is how quick, I mean, I can fly out and see you and how quickly it was from the message I sent to then being on the plane in the air, and he's still just completely sort of bought it.”

Read more: Daisy May Cooper admits she felt ‘flat’ after winning her BAFTA

This tale of love then took a tawdry turn when the sea captain started DMing Thornton, who had been following the whole story on Cooper’s Instagram account. However, when the TV presenter first saw a photo of the randy sea farer, she thought it was someone else…

“What's really freaky about that is that he looks like Huw Edwards,” Thornton told Cooper.

“Huw Edwards lives in the next street to me in London, and I thought 'Huw, bit lively'. And then I realised, 'No, not Huw!'”

While Cooper messaged the captain in mock outrage when she discovered he’d contacted another celebrity lady, she was actually quite relieved, as some people thought she was actually the sea captain!

“You know what? People were starting to think that it was me that was writing these things!” she told Thornton. “When he slid into your DMs, I thought 'Great, I've got someone to back me up!'”

Read more: Kate Thornton reveals TV boss asked her to bleach 'annoying' freckles

Like most social media catfishes, sea captain ‘Jon’ was after money and asked Cooper to wire him some cash so he could get a piece of bomb removed from his body, but the This Country star demanded some photographic evidence of the wound.

“He sent me a picture of the doctor instead,” she laughed. “He turns out actually to be a famous doctor!”

To much hilarity from all parties involved, the love triangle made headlines in various titles including Metro, during lockdown, however, Cooper is now worried for the real sea captain’s wife.

“Can you imagine if his wife – the real sea captain's wife – ever does a Google image search of him and finds out that these two celebrities in the UK were in a love triangle with him?” she laughed.

Sadly, the romance is now at an end, with Cooper revealing that ‘Jon’ stopped contacting her, when it was clear she wasn’t going to send him any money.

“Do you know what really upsets me?” she said, laughing. “He just ghosted me, the f*****g bastard!”

Hear Daisy May Cooper chat more about the sea captain, working with her brother and their new comedy project on this week’s episode of White Wine Question Time. Listen now on iTunes and Spotify.