RTÉ REPORTER AND presenter Philip Boucher-Hayes has said he was “punked, good and proper” by his Crimecall production team after he bravely stepped in to stop a mugging.
However, things weren’t quite what they seemed.
The incident happened during a shoot for an episode in Dublin’s Docklands.
Boucher-Hayes told Turbridy on 2fm this morning that he had previously spotted a man milling around the area, but thought nothing of it, assuming he was a local.
While I’m standing there being filmed looking at the sunrise or whatever, I saw him out of the corner of my eye take the bag and run off.
In the clip below, Boucher-Hayes is seen running towards the assailant and tells him to ‘put it down, Sunshine’.
Video not working? Click here.
In the heat of the moment, Boucher-Hayes said, he did wonder for a second why no one else has taken off running, as the two plain clothes gardaí were among the production team that day.
He realised it was a set-up when someone with a walkie-talkie emerged from where the man had been stopped.
“The whole purpose of the exercise was, they wanted to do a piece on this new facial recognition that the cops are using,” Boucher-Hayes explained.
They wanted me to see something in the distance, three or four seconds of this guy’s face, and then go and use the technology to reconstruct it.
“What they hadn’t planned on was howiya here chasing off after him.”
He said the incident had “beaten every last little bit of chivalry” out of him.
We think Philip should look on the bright side, it could be the beginning of a new career for him…
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