Entertainment

London Irishman admits to faking hilarious Metro newspaper Rush Hour Crush confessions

AN IRISHMAN behind some of London's funniest 'rush hour crushes' has gone viral for his hilarious lonely heart blurbs.

Rush Hour Crush is a column in the morning Metro newspaper where readers share their crushes in the hope they can find love.

Séamas O'Reilly, originally from Co. Derry, moved to Hackney east London in 2011 and used the Metro's Rush Hour Crush section as a 'creative outlet.'

"I write a lot now [for publications] but when I first moved over I didn't have many creative outlets, so I began contriving them wherever I could," he said.

"The rush hour crush section of the Metro was a fascination to me since arriving here, I'd check it every single day, as it was such a strange mixture of bleak, weird - and occasionally terrifying - human stories.

"However, some of them were perfect little one act plays, like the guy who had no paper so wrote his phone number on a five pound note and handed it to his crush, only for her to interpret it as solicitation.

"So one day, on my lunch break, I decided to try and contribute one that was as efficient as that."

The writer, who went viral last year for commissioning rude 'Irish names' on Selfridges' customisable Nutella jars, told The Irish Post that he wanted to ensure his submissions were hilarious but still credible.

"The only guiding principle for them was that I wanted them to be both funny and just about barely believable," he said. "It was easy to write something that was one of the above, but very hard to nail both."

"I sent in about 60 and got, I think, 19 or so published in two and a bit years.

"The first I came up with was the one about Mr Chips from Catchphrase," Séamas added. "It got in the next day and I became hopelessly, hopelessly addicted."

You can check out some of Séamas 'Shocko' O'Reilly's Rush Hour Crush submissions on his blog here.