The mysterious new horror film Backrooms hasn’t just been a hit at the box office and with critics, it’s also one of the most talked-about films in the world right now.

Kane Parsons’ directorial debut stars Chiwetel Ejifor as a disillusioned man who stumbles upon an alternate universe through the basement of a furniture store, and tries desperately to get his therapist, played by Renate Reinsve, to see things his way.

Backrooms has a completely distinct visual style that has made it immediately iconic, and considering how many people on both sides of the Atlantic have been flooding cinemas to see it, many will no doubt be contemplating exactly how the movie came to be.

Here are 17 facts you probably didn’t know about the making of Backrooms…

Rather than being an adaptation of a book, TV series or even video game, Backrooms started life as a viral photo.

Back in 2019, 4chan members asked fellow users to submit “disquieting images that just feel ‘off’”, with one response featuring an image of an environment similar to the one seen in the film Backrooms, showing a sprawling empty space in the back of a furniture shop.

Shortly afterwards, an anonymous user in the same thread submitted a potential origin story for the space, which read:

“If you’re not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms, where it’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in.
“God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.”

The photo and accompanying text then became widely shared across message boards like 4chan and Reddit, becoming its own “creepypasta” (a term that basically refers to a viral meme that’s more scary than funny).

People then began putting their own spin on the concept of the “backrooms”, with Kane Parsons starting a hugely successful YouTube series created using the design software Blender, which is how he caught the eye of production company A24.

One other key adaptation of the “backrooms” trend came in 2024, when an episode of the stand-alone anthology series American Horror Stories brought the concept to the small screen.

“Initially, the hope on my end was TV,” Kane told YouTuber Patrick Tomasso.

He also shared that the “TV show I would have been pitching is not at all the same narrative that this movie is”, and made it clear that he’d still be up for pursuing that previous idea for a series in the future.

First designed using Kane’s go-to tool Blender, the production design team then put together a veritable maze of generic, mono-coloured rooms that spanned a whopping 30,000 square feet.

“I always maintained that I want to go as practical as possible, and we did,” the director told Interview magazine.

“So the vast majority of what you see in the film is built sets. Anytime a character is physically walking on the floor, it’s a real floor. Anytime they’re physically touching a wall, that’s a real wall.”

He added: “Most of the time, if you were on the set, you could stand in the middle of it, do a 360-degree turn, and not see any blue screen and not see anything that breaks the facade of actually being there.”

Production designer Danny Vermette compared the process of piecing each of the rooms together on set to a game of Tetris, telling IndieWire: “We had to go in and measure every square inch of all four sound stages to make sure that we had the room to build and then figure out the Tetris plan of how those sets are gonna fit.”

Danny told Architectural Digest that when Kane sent his original Blender plans over “it was something like 100,000 square feet”.

“It crashed my computer,” he then admitted.

“We wanted it to be awkward and to throw our actors into a world of discomfort, in a sense,” Danny told IndieWire. “Whether it’s crawling through a small space or crawling up a ramp and really sell that we’re in the middle of levels, that there’s multiple levels.”

Clearly it worked, with Chiwetel telling Playlist that being on set was “a kind of psychological torment”.

“You can definitely feel that disconnect with reality and that creeping dread when you’re in there, and that sense that if you were in here endlessly, just what that would mean to your mind,” he recalled. “It’s not a place that is very forgiving for your psychology.”

Chiwetel told YouTuber John Feitelberg: “We had a huge set, and we were wandering around, getting lost, trying to figure our way through it. It was great to have it as a physical space.”

In his IndieWire interview, Danny also recalled: “On some of the stages there’s five or six sets. So, it was day to day. It wasn’t just the first day people getting lost.

“They’d been out shooting in the real world, and then they come in [on the sound stage], and the sound guy hadn’t been there, and the camera crew hadn’t been there. And sure enough, you hear ‘Hello? Hello?’. Like, the sound guy’s lost, and he went in the wrong entrance…”

“We did a lot of tests there to make sure we were getting the general tone that people expected [from] Backrooms,” Kane admitted to Creative Bloq. “We did 50 wallpaper tests to get the right shape of yellow.”

“We started cannibalising parts from other sets and reshaping one of our main stages and adding extra walls,” Kane told Interview. “So it took on a new form and a new layout.

“By the last day, most of the sets were butchered and a lot of the walls were gone and it was in disarray.”

Conversely, other rooms never got used in scenes at all, but they were still important as they would loom in the background, adding to the overall eeriness of the piece.

“There’s definitely areas in the sets that are not used, although technically, each set is at least somewhat shot,” the filmmaker revealed to the horror outlet Dead Meat.

“By and large, what you see in the film is what it felt like to be there,” he told Interview.

“The only places where we do run into VFX would be the stuff that is obviously impossible to build, some of the massive spaces and whatnot.”

He added: “I do love VFX, so I don’t consider it a weakness to leverage them to a certain extent. And then, in the found footage sections, a decent bit of that was done in Blender.”

“I would never lean in a generative AI direction, and I’m personally in opposition to the use of it in the creative workforce, outside of automating menial tasks,” Kane relayed to Interview.

Elaborating further to Variety, he claimed: “[Like] most well-adjusted people […] if I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would. Creatively, I get no enjoyment from using those tools. It defeats the purpose entirely for me.”

Some viewers have suggested that parts of Backrooms are actually an analogy for AI, though Kane has never made this intention clear directly.

Well, it turns out it was more practical than you might have realised.

“We have a portal for the camera and a portal for the actor [and] we have a plug that goes back in, so once the actor’s through, the wallpaper plug goes back up with a seam,” Danny told IndieWire. “It’s fixed in post, there’s seam repair there…”

He continued: “And to rotoscope that, when their hands are going through, moving at a slow pace, that’s incredibly challenging, but they did such a great job with it.”

By the way, “noclipping” is a gaming term that refers to a glitch or cheat code that allows users to pass through walls and other obstacles, which is featured in the original backrooms “creepypasta”.

During an interview with BuzzFeed Canada, Kane claimed that “the zoning” of Vancouver made it a unique setting for his film.

“I don’t know if ‘liminal’ is the right term for Vancouver, it might actually be the opposite,” he said. “I find [the city] very compelling and interesting [visually], but also horrible when it comes to casting the location as Southern California, when ever single building in the suburbs is a completely different architectural trend and design.

“There’s no consistency in any given neighbourhood for the most part. So, you get a brick castle next to a 2016 YouTuber mansion next to just a cube.”

He told Dazed that being in the 90s makes Backrooms feel “far away in time”.

But also, on a more practical level, he needed it to take place in a pre-internet time, because “it would be far easier to uncover the nature of this place” if the characters had access to iPhones.

Kane told Patrick Tomasso that he and his team “do authentically run [what they’ve recorded] through a VCR” to give it a 90s feel, but “it’s all digital”.

“There’s a version that exists where it’s all crystal clear, 4k high quality,” he revealed. “But then after the fact, we reconform the footage to become more fitting of the actual vehicle.”

Elsewhere in the interview, he shared: “Generally speaking, the conversion process is true to the camera – I would never go and do a VHS filter on top of things. We colour grade a lot before and after the conversion, to play into the cultural expectation of that media.”

Speaking to Dead Meat, Kane noted that “because the backrooms is obviously a pretty public concept”, there are “a lot of different interpretations”, some he feels are not as “effective” as others.

He particularly takes issue with the “inclusion or over-reliance on non-euclidean geometry and whatnot”.

Kane explained: “That’s a preference – you can pull it off and it can be great, but I feel as though there’s something I like quite strongly about the backrooms feeling like a building built by people and then it’s just the certain construction choices that don’t make a lot of sense.

“[That could be] a hallway that’s slightly too narrow or a crevice that you couldn’t even fit a desk in, so why is it there in the first place? Stuff like that. It [should get more] absurd and impossible through your continued exploration and probing of it, rather than an immediate ‘walk this way and walk back and shit this is a different room’.”

“I think it’s scarier to me thinking that you end up getting lost in there wandering for a while, knowing that you can backtrack,” he continued. “I feel like if the environment is immediately changing all around you, you lose the game too quickly.”

Forbes has pointed out that in the olden days, seagulls were considered a bad omen among sailors, and that it was particularly bad luck to kill one. This, of course, plays up to the sailing iconography scattered throughout the film, most notably in Clark’s furniture store.

Offering a more vague explanation, Kane told Polygon: “I would say there’s a significance to picking seagulls. Birds evoke a certain kind of imagery that we wanted to be evoking.

“But without explaining the thought process fully — logically, there’s nothing that would prevent anything from getting in there. Logically, literally anything that could walk through a wall could end up in that place. Birds and flies and humans just so happened to be some of the more unfortunate ones in this film.”

“The implication inside the film — I’m not going to be cute about that for a second — the implication when we see the birds is yes, they came from outside,” he added, although he added it “very well could be” a backrooms creation, too.

Unfortunately, Kane just doesn’t feel like sharing it right now.

“It was a pirate from the beginning,” Kane told Dead Meat. “I won’t say more, but I think people will dig into it. I think symbolism can be a crutch a lot of the time, and I wouldn’t ever lead with it… but there’s some specific reasoning behind the pirate steering wheel and ocean and all that.

Backrooms is in cinemas now.

Pete Hegseth has been condemned after he used a D-Day commemoration to accuse Nato countries of not doing enough to tackle illegal immigration.

The US defence secretary was branded “an absolute bum” after saying “European beaches are [being] stormed by different, dangerous ideologies”.

Critics said his comments, at the Normandy American Cemetery in north-west France on the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day landings, were disrespectful to the memory of those who died in the Second World War.

Nearly 4,500 Allied troops were killed attempting to liberate Nazi-occupied France on June 6, 1944.

Hegseth said: “Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different, dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive.

“When will European capitals do something about that invasion or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not.”

But his comments sparked a furious backlash on social media.

Former Labour MP Jamie Reed said Hegseth was “a bum with wet hair and a suit that doesn’t fit”.

The row comes after US vice-president JD Vance sparked anger by blaming “the mass invasion of migrants” for Henry Nowak’s murder.

The 18-year-old was handcuffed and arrested by police as he lay dying after being wrongly accused of racism by his killer, Vickram Digwa.

Digwa, who is Sikh, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 21 years at Southampton Crown Court last Monday.

Responding to Vance’s comments, a No.10 spokesperson said: “In recent days we have seen people trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets.

“The Nowak family are grieving after Henry’s horrific murder. They have said they do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension. We should be respecting their wishes.

“Our politics should bring people together even in the most terrible of circumstances. That is who we are as a country.”

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I love a good cooking hack, whether it’s the Gordon Ramsay-approved technique of removing the slimy middles of cucumbers for your salad or Mary Berry’s semolina coating for extra-crispy roast potatoes.

Which means that for years, I salted my aubergines before cooking them. I grew up hearing that it took that bitter taste from the veg and improved its texture.

But on Nigella Lawson’s site entry about her At My Table beef and aubergine fatteh recipe, the chef’s team recommended skipping the step.

After a deeper dive, I learned that everyone from Nigel Slater to Ottolenghi avoids pre-salting for the majority of aubergine dishes.

There are a few reasons people do this, including:

1. Removing their bitter flavour,
2. Drawing out moisture for a crispier/less mushy result.

We’ll deal with these one by one.

Nigella’s site reads: “Some people recommend salting the aubergines before cooking, to draw out any bitter juices. However, most modern aubergines do not have this problem and are quite mild”.

Culinary publication Food and Wine agrees. They write that aubergines date back to 50BC, when the plant was indeed very bitter. They argue that the practice of salting them may have started long, long ago (we don’t know who by), and passed down even though farmers have been growing select, less-bitter veg for generations now.

“Today, most eggplants available at the grocery store and farmer’s market are bred without bitterness,” the publication shared.

In case you needed any more convincing, chef Nigel Slater and cooking bible Larousse Gastronomique agree it doesn’t make the plant less bitter. “The process of degorging [salting] is no longer necessary as commercially cultivated aubergines are not as bitter as they used to be,” the iconic cooking book said.

Verdict: salting an aubergine is not likely to make it less bitter.

Salting very moisture-heavy veg, like courgettes, is undeniably useful when prepping them for e.g. fritters. Salt draws moisture out of the produce, which you can then squeeze through a muslin cloth for a drier, crispier fry; I did this just yesterday for some mucver.

Bitter or not, aubergine does not change the nature of osmosis. It’s true that salt always draws moisture from vegetables.

But the question of whether or not that actually makes it easier to crisp up is not as easy to answer as you might think. Food and Wine said that salting aubergines to dry them is a “double-edged sword for the ultra-absorbent” veg.

Drier aubergine may be less able to take on flavours, they say. On the plus side, it could, in theory, take on less fat when frying, which may make it crispier.

However, a Guardian journalist tried the method and said that while the salted version took up less oil at first, both salted and unsalted versions ended up absorbing the same amount of fat when they fried them. They also said the end results were basically identical, flavour and texture-wise.

Sara Jenkins, chef and owner of Porsena in New York City, said that she doesn’t bother when pan-frying aubergine. “I have rarely found an eggplant that is so bitter that it needs salting. I just cut it up, toss the pieces with olive oil, and start cooking,” she told Epicurious.

Her only exception is deep-frying.

A New York Times Cooking recipe shared another, salt-free way to stop fried aubergine from becoming mushy: “Eggplant is known to absorb liquid like a sponge, so here’s a trick: oil the slices (lightly) just before they hit the pan [instead of laying them in fat] to ensure that they are not oil-logged,” they wrote.

For roasting or baking, recipe tester Anna Theoktisto said it’s not worth the extra time, as aubergine that cooks for that long of a time inevitably breaks down anyway. Ottolenghi omits the step for his roasting recipes, too.

Verdict: Salting might make aubergine crispier when frying, though cooks have seen mixed results, and many chefs don’t bother. For roasting, grilling, baking, marinating, and stewing, lots of experts advise against salting.

This year, the UK’s rules for recycling changed under the “Simpler Recycling” initiative.

That means we should now have four standard bins for collection across the UK, as opposed to the previous up to seven bin options provided by some councils.

As part of the new rules, the government explained on their site, “Plastic film packaging and plastic bags will need to be collected with plastic recycling from 31 March 2027”.

That’s because not all plastic bags can be recycled in all parts of the UK at the moment.

“Generally, plastic film and carrier bags can’t be recycled at home, but some can be recycled at supermarket carrier bag collection points,” London Recycles shared.

That means that in some areas, thin, film-like plastic bags and colourful plastic might not be accepted by the council in your domestic waste. Others allow you to put supermarket carrier bags in your recycling, but say they won’t be processed.

And some bodies like York Council have said they don’t accept black or dark plastics as these can’t be recycled yet. “Stretchy plastics”, like bubble wrap or bread bags, aren’t recyclable in that area’s home waste either.

They also don’t recycle food or drink pouches.

These rules might change according to your local council’s rules, so check those before recycling. But across the board, compostable and biodegradable bags can’t be recycled.

“If they enter the recycling system can potentially cause quality issues in the recycled material. These should be placed in your home composting bin, if you have one,” said Recycle.

And dirty or sticky plastic bags or those that have food residue or grease on them can’t be recycled either.

Not all types of plastic are as valuable as others to recycling plants. They don’t all cost the same to recycle, and there isn’t the same demand for different kinds of recycled plastic either.

Others need specialist recycling facilities, which the UK doesn’t have in large enough quantities yet.

Then, there are the bags themselves to consider.

“Plastic bags and film can… cause problems at recycling plants, clogging up the sorting equipment and potentially causing whole loads of recyclable waste to go to landfill”, said Zero Waste Scotland.

Kent County Council said plastic bags and soft plastics can wrap around their machines, slowing everything down.

Some supermarkets in the UK recycle plastic bags on-site. You can find signs on some carrier bags saying whether they can be recycled, and whether or not you need to do so in the store.

David Lammy told JD Vance he was “wrong” to blame immigration for Henry Nowak’s murder.

Eighteen-year-old Henry was handcuffed and arrested by police as he lay dying after being wrongly accused of racism by his killer, Vickram Digwa.

Digwa, who is Sikh, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 21 years at Southampton Crown Court on Monday.

The case has sparked a furious political row, with Reform UK leader Nigel Farage being condemned by Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch for claiming it is proof of “two-tier policing” in the UK.

In a post on X on Friday, the US vice-president said: “Henry Nowak died the same way a civilisation dies: abandoned, handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him, and accused of hate crimes he did not commit.

“His murder is as tragic as it is enraging. He should still be alive today, and he would be if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.

“Henry was far from the first to so needlessly lose his life, and I fear he won’t be the last. Each time a life like his is lost, the proper response—the only response—is righteous anger.”

Appearing on Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg on BBC1, Lammy – who is friends with Vance – said: “I spoke to him yesterday and I told him he was wrong. This has got nothing to do with mass migration.

“One, let’s be clear that since the early 2000s and post-Brexit, immigration has come down and murder has come down too in our country.

“And two, the you man who perpetrated this crime was a Brit, born and raised in this country. Nothing to do with mass migration.

“We had an agreeable conversation, but we disagreed. We’ve disagreed before on his perspective on western civilisation. I don’t recognise that perspective, and actually western civilisation has always been open to the world.”

I don’t agree with his caricature, he knows that, and we can have that debate and discussion.”

Asked if he thought Vance was being racist, Lammy said: “I reminded him that the family have called for calm. They don’t want division used on the back of Henry’s death.

“And I reminded him also of the online space and how toxic that can become. We had a robust conversation, a respectful conversation. We remain colleagues and friends, we’re able to do that, and he has strong-held views.”

Vance’s comments echoed those of Farage, who called for “pure, cold anger” in response to Henry’s death.

Hours later, police were pelted with missiles by protesters after violence erupted outside Southampton Police Station.

No.10 have also hit back at the vice-president, with a Downing Street spokesperson saying: “In recent days we have seen people trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets.

“The Nowak family are grieving after Henry’s horrific murder. They have said they do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension. We should be respecting their wishes.

“Our politics should bring people together even in the most terrible of circumstances. That is who we are as a country.”

Subscribe to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.

Speaking to HuffPost UK previously, orthopaedic surgeon Dr Pamela Mehta of Resilience Orthopaedics said that “Two of the most common causes of runner’s knee are overuse and muscular imbalances”.

This includes weaker hips, which can lead some muscles further down the leg or closer to the small of your back to work harder to compensate.

Which is why some experts, like online run coach Ken Graham, reccomend runners in particular try the “Myrtl routine”.

In an Instagram Reel, Graham explained “It only takes five minutes but could save you weeks of injuries”.

It’s a series of body weight exercises devised by running coach Jay Johnson, SELF explained. These are designed to strengthen your hips and improve flexibility.

One study found that runners with greater hip strength and balance ran more economically. Another noted a link between weaker hip muscles and overuse injuries in recreational runners.

On his site, Johnson said: “I get asked all the time, ‘Why was it named Myrtl?’ Because Myrtl rhymed with ‘hip girdle.’ I had no idea that Myrtle is the common spelling”.

The hip girdle is sometimes also called the pelvic girdle and involves the hip bone.

Per Graham and SELF, these can include:

1. Clamshells – 8-10 reps each side (we’ve written before about how great these are for your hips),
2. Lateral leg raise – 10-15 reps each leg,
3. Fire hydrants – 8-10 reps each leg,
4. Donkey kicks – 8-10 reps each leg,
5. Donkey whips – 5 reps each leg,
6. Forward knee circles – 10 each leg,
7. Reverse knee circles or hurdle trail legs – 10 each leg,
8. Lateral leg swing – 10 each leg,
9. Forward leg swing – 10 each leg,
10. Bent knee leg swing – 10 each leg.

Graham advised doing the routine three times a week after your runs.

Writing for Runner’s World, Jay Johnson himself said it should be done after your run, too.

“This routine takes no more than five minutes once you’ve learned the exercises. Once you’ve done it a handful of times it will become an easy, gentle cool-down routine,” he shared.

The Government has issued a warning on oak processionary moth caterpillars “ahead of peak season”.

They have said it’s important for the public to “stay vigilant” as the “pest” begins to make its hairy way onto oak trees.

Not only can they harm the iconic trees, which The Tree Council has described as being “under threat” in the UK, but they can also cause irritation “and should not be touched under any circumstances”, the Government said.

They’re the caterpillar, or the younger stage, of the oak processionary moth.

The Forestry Commission’s Oak Processionary Moth Programme Manager, Dr Edward Straw, said we might see more of these than usual as “The warm weather in spring has led to oak processionary moth growing quicker than in previous years and we may see higher infestation levels”.

They’re about 2-3cm-long caterpillars with a grey body and a dark head with lengthy, white hairs. They usually form a nose-to-tail formation in groups as they travel down oak trees.

They have nests which the Government has said are usually teardrop-shaped or dome-shaped and can range from the size of a 50p coin to that of a melon. These look white at first, but can turn brown later on.

Forest Research said that while the invasive oak processionary caterpillar looks like harmless native species – including the lackey moth and brown tail moth caterpillars – there are ways to distinguish the “pest” from the rest.

They said, ”(The) oak processionary moth feeds only on oak and produces large nests on oak trunks and large branches from May onwards. Hairy caterpillars which are not on oak or are not associated with a silk nest are almost certainly not (oak processionary moths)”.

They’re usually found in the South-West of the UK.

Professor Nicola Spence, Defra Chief Plant Health Officer, said: “I would advise that members of the public living in the South East, Derbyshire and Dorset, avoid any contact with the caterpillar and its nests, as this can cause irritation”.

Firstly, they feed on the leaves of oak trees, which means they can hamper the trees’ growth. This can leave them more vulnerable to disease.

Secondly, the tiny hairs on the caterpillars’ bodies can “cause itchy rashes, eye and throat irritation and should not be touched under any circumstances,” said the Government.

Firstly, don’t touch them. Don’t even touch the nest, the government warned, as this could contain the irritating hairs.

Secondly, report any sightings so experts can keep track of the caterpillars.

“If you spot the pest, report the sighting via our TreeAlert portal. Alternatively, you can email opm@forestrycommission.gov.uk,” Dr Straw said.

The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) also said that “Due to the irritant hairs, control of this insect should only be carried out by professional contractors”.

The government previously said, “if you or someone in your care has a serious allergic reaction, get medical help. For less severe reactions, a pharmacist can provide advice on relief from skin or eye irritations.”

They also say that “if an animal in your care is seriously affected, get advice from a vet”, and warn to “Tell the medical person or vet you suspect it is due to OPM [oak processionary moth] contact.“

Nadhim Zahawi has been condemned over his “disgraceful” attempts to defend a Reform UK ad attacking Kemi Badenoch which has been widely criticised as misleading.

The former Tory, who defected to Nigel Farage’s party earlier this year, insisted there was nothing wrong with the controversial social media post, which was produced following the jailing of Henry Nowak’s killed.

The 18-year-old was handcuffed and arrested by police as he lay dying after being wrongly accused of racism by his killer, Vickram Digwa.

Digwa, a British-born Sikh, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 21 years at Southampton Crown Court last Monday.

Farage has said the case is an example of “two-tier policing” and anti-white discrimination.

The Reform ad showed a quote from 2020 in which Badenoch said “black lives do matter”, alongside a partial quote she gave this week in which she said “I don’t care about white lives matter”.

However, her full quote, which she gave in an interview on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, was: “I don’t want to hear about Black Lives Matter. I don’t want to hear about White Lives Matter. Everyone matters.”

On Sky News on Sunday morning, presenter Trevor Phillips asked Zahawi if someone at Reform “is getting sacked” for the ad.

He replied: “In 2020, she said black lives do matter. In 2026, she says I don’t care about black lives matter or white lives matter. Why? Because she finds it hard to talk about a white boy who bled out on the street.”

But Phillips told him that was “clearly a misrepresentation of what she said”.

“Are you telling me that this is ok,” he asked in reference to the advert.

Zahawi said: “It’s her words, that’s what she said. Why is it so different when it’s a white boy, that we’re all so frightened of upsetting anyone?”

The presenter hit back: “This is not you at all. You’re doing what all the others do. You are inventing your own question and answering it.

“You’re not answering the question I asked you, which is ’is this a fair representation of what Kemi Badenoch said ir not?”

Zahawi said: “I would have more respect for Kemi Badenoch if she said ’by the way, in 2020 I was wrong.”

Social media users slammed the former Tory chancellor.

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