‘Two years on my daughter still has nightmares of the Unknown from Glasgow’s Willy Wonka experience’
History has its defining moments. There was the Sex Pistols at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall and Jimmy Hendrix at Woodstock.
In Glasgow, there was the Willy’s Chocolate experience.
The ill-fated event promised to be a ‘heart-pounding’ journey through an enchanted warehouse.
What actually happened was people paid £35 to walk through a dystopian industrial estate experience.
Families were met with sagging posters and demented AI-generated storylines. Organiser Billy Coull hired actors but provided no rehearsals and the ensuing disaster spawned a thousand memes.
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While the event may have passed two years ago, it is still very fresh in the minds of its victims.
Maryanne McCormack took her daughter Perri, then aged 11, not knowing it would go down in folklore. One character in particular sticks in Perri’s mind and haunts her dreams. The Unknown.
‘She remembers that mask,’ Maryanne said. ‘She was very scared for quite a while going to bed. The character they created was terrifying for a kid and she often was scared at night seeing the mask.’
The Unknown was employed as a terrifying rival to Willy Wonka despite not being part of Roald Dahl’s imaginary world.
Thankfully, a bizarre local connection helped Perri come to terms with the character, described as ‘looking like Diana Ross at an Eyes Wide Shut party’.
Maryanne said: ‘We found out the wee girl under the mask was only 16 and she was in fact a member of my little girl’s Cub [Scout] group at the time.
‘Perri even knew who she was, so she felt better knowing it wasn’t real. I don’t know how long we would have been dealing with her being afraid.’
The mum said that she was ready to ask Billy for her money back, adding: ‘I just haven’t bumped into him yet.’
It wasn’t just the children who were traumatised by the event.
Michael Archibald, was lured into playing an unofficial Willy Wonka with a promise of £500 for his first acting job. He did not expect to become the face of a global mockery or face a barrage of racist comments.
He told Metro: ‘It was just something I’d decided to do one day since I was good with public speaking and needed the money at the time, being an estranged 18-year-old.
‘The attention on my end honestly was atrocious though.’
He says he is still owed £250, but has little hope of ever seeing that money.
Put off from acting, he now works a 9-5 job and has even saved enough for a mortgage.
He is still friends with the girl who played The Unknown, recently attending her 18th birthday party.
Despite time passing, he says he can never truly escape the event.
He said: ‘It feels almost impossible to fully move on since it’s a huge inside joke in my friend group. It still pops up on social media from time to time.’
As for Mr Coull, he initially went to ground when it came time for refunds and later apologised for the failure.
He said: ‘My vision of the artistic rendition of a well-known book didn’t come to fruition. For that, I am absolutely truly and utterly sorry.’