Willy Wonka experience organizer’s life “ruined” as friends & lover leave him

Theo Burman
Photo of Glasgow's Willy Wonka Experience

The organiser and founder of the Willy Wonka Glasgow experience has claimed backlash to the event ruined his life, and caused him to lose friends and his lover.

Organizer Billy Coull, director of House of Illuminati who hosted the event, described the hate he received ever since the Glasgow event went viral earlier in February this year.

The Willy Wonka experience was widely slammed for false advertising, with The Guardian reporting that the experience consisted of a” sparsely decorated warehouse with a scattering of plastic props, a small bouncy castle, and some backdrops pinned against the walls.”

The event quickly went viral on Twitter, with many people commenting on the lackluster props and the AI-generated storyline. It also emerged that Coull was the publisher of 16 AI-generated books, which he sold on Amazon last summer.

In an interview with Channel 5 as part of their documentary on the event, Coull said that his life was “ruined” by backlash to it.

“I have lost my friends. I’ve lost the love of my life. I was made out to be the face of all evil. And genuinely, that’s really not the case.”

He also claimed that the original event was planned within a smaller venue and needed projection equipment which never arrived.

“”I was sick to the pit of my tummy. I was hoping for an event that would be joyful, happy. I wanted people to experience happiness.”

Coull also said he received hundreds of hate-filled messages after the event went viral, and that “the last thing I wanted to see was children to be upset.”

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