Nadhim Zahawi confused actors Leslie Phillips and Lesley Joseph in a tribute tweet following the former’s recent death.
This tweet appears to have been fabricated by a satirical Facebook page and is now being shared out of context. We can find no evidence Mr Zahawi ever tweeted this, and it appears to be a joke in reference to a genuine blunder by the minister.
A widely shared post on Facebook claims to show a tweet from minister Nadhim Zahawi confusing the actors Leslie Phillips and Lesley Joseph.
The Facebook post appears to be a screenshot of a tweet posted by Mr Zahawi which reads: “RIP Leslie Phillips, a great actress, grew up watching Birds of a Feather”.
The same image has also been circulated on Twitter with hundreds of shares.
It was announced on 8 November that Leslie Phillips, who was known for appearing in the Carry On films, had died. However Mr Phillips did not appear in Birds of a Feather. The screenshot appears to show Mr Zahawi mixing him up with Lesley Joseph, who did.
Many of the comments on the Facebook post criticise Mr Zahawi for apparently confusing the two actors.
However, we can find no evidence that Mr Zahawi ever posted this tweet from his official Twitter account. The tweet doesn’t appear in search, and the font in the screenshot is different from the usual Twitter font.
Full Fact has contacted Mr Zahawi to confirm whether or not he ever posted this tweet, and will update this article if we receive a response.
The screenshot posted to both Twitter and Facebook has a watermark in the top right corner indicating that it was posted by a satirical Facebook page. The Facebook page in question states: “All watermarked memes are created by the page administrators and as such are the intellectual property of the page administrators. All memes are jokes, not claims and should be taken within comedic context.”
It therefore appears that the image was originally posted as a joke, but some of the comments on the posts now indicate it is being taken seriously. The joke may be a reference to a genuine mistake Mr Zahawi made on Twitter in the past, where he confused actor Dennis Waterman (who died in May) with music producer Pete Waterman.
The wording in the screenshot shared on social media is almost identical to the post where Mr Zahawi made this mistake.
This is not the first time we have fact checked fabricated screenshots purporting to be tweets by MPs, with tweets allegedly from Nadine Dorries going viral on social media.
Image courtesy of Chris McAndrew
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as satire because we can find no evidence Mr Zahawi ever tweeted this and it appears to have been made by a satirical page before being taken out of context.
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