English writer Oobah Butler shot to infamy last year after he managed to turn the garden shed he was living in into TripAdvisor's top-rated London restaurant – by creating a fake website and getting his mates to write fake five-star reviews.
When the documentary he made about the prank won an Online Media award, Oobah sent an impersonator to collect it.
Now he's about to release his first book How to Bullsh*t Your Way to Number 1.
Oobah tells Kim Hill that 'Oobah' is his legitimate birth name and was originally his elder sister Becky's nickname – nothing to do with ridesharing.
Yet on the internet, no-one is who they say they are anyway.
"On LinkedIn, I look like a businessman and I'm not, in fact, a businessman – I'm a silly man."
Oobah reckons that the reason he succeeded in making up a fake fantastic restaurant – and getting famous as a result – may have been because the stakes were low.
"I'd been a musician before and failed miserably and it was because I cared way too much."
Writer and filmmaker Oobah Butler Photo: Curtis Brown
Oobah says he's always got up to high jinks for his own entertainment.
At 14, he pretended to be his own band's manager – an elderly Cockney man who would have to wear the blame for anything the band got up to.
Later, he was paid to write fake TripAdvisor reviews for restaurants, which is how he got the idea for "The Shed at Dulwich".
When media outlets from very different cultures around the world asked Oobah exactly the same questions about the restaurant stunt, he got curious about whether he needed to be in attendance at all.
"I started to think it may as well not be me that's interviewed.
"I thought with the lines between reality and online blurring so much why can I not do that in real life? So I sent these bettered versions of myself [impersonators] on TV and radio – and it worked!"
Oobah says that his stunts both critique and exploit what a person can get away with in the digital age.
"I think it's funny when you just speak things into existence. So I just say I'm an influencer until I become one."
But there is a critical difference between him and someone like the fraudulent Fyre Festival co-founder Billy McFarland – motivation.
"I'm not massively motivated by money.
"When you're broke you think about money a lot. I guess I'm not broke anymore – that's good – and I don't live in the shed [anymore] – that's good."
Oobah says his family isn't surprised by how he's making a living now – "I've always been like this" – but his mum did find it ridiculous that he didn't pick up his own online media award.
To prove his identity to Kim, he offers a little background on said mum:
"She's called Vicky. She's just given up smoking, actually. So congratulations to Vicky. She's nine days nicotine-free… ten days, ten days!"
