The “Willy’s Chocolate Experience” event held in Glasgow over the weekend was marketed as “the place where chocolate dreams become reality”, with its website featuring vivid images of sweetie-themed fantasy worlds. However, the reality was very different for hundreds of families who paid up to £35 a ticket to attend the event. Instead of the “Enchanted Garden”, “Twilight Tunnel” and “Imagination Lab” promised on the website, they found just a handful of embarrassed actors trying to make the best of some sad-looking props and a bouncy castle. The chocolate fountains and “chocolatey delights” were conspicuously absent and children were only offered a half-cup of lemonade and a small ration of jelly beans. As tempers rose, police were called and the event was abruptly cancelled.
The organisers were House of Illuminati, an events company which specialises in “crafting extraordinary experiences”. Its listing with Companies House reveals it is a limited liability company with just one director, a man named Billy Coull. Last week footage circulating on social media showed a man identified as Mr Coull by actors involved in the event. He was flanked by security staff as he tried to placate angry parents outside the venue, with one woman accusing him of having “scammed children”. He promised them that full refunds would be processed shortly, and has admitted that artificial intelligence (AI) was used to generate much of the marketing for the event.
Billy Coull is associated with other controversial events in Glasgow, including a cancelled Santa’s Grotto and a now defunct website called Empowercity. He is also a self-published author, with one of his books “Operation Inoculation” described as a “conspiratorial journey into vaccination truths”. Since the Willy Wonka event, some of the actors employed by Mr Coull have told how they were offered £500 for working the weekend but are unsure if they will be paid the full amount.
Images and videos of the event went viral on social media, with the story being reported worldwide. The use of AI, both in marketing imagery and writing, appears to be a recurring theme of Billy Coull’s recent business endeavours. But the internet’s fascination with things excruciatingly awful gave the event a profile not even Billy Coull could have imagined. His AI-enhanced online promotion promised “captivating entertainment”. He may have unwittingly delivered just that to a worldwide audience of millions
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