The students who managed to fool the world

A viral video of a student finishing an assignment in a nightclub was fake news.

A group of students produced the fake video in order to mislead the media for a project backed by their university.

The film, featuring 21-year-old Lawrence Kemp, a second year business management student at the University of Gloucestershire, went viral after it claimed he was finishing an essay at MooMoos nightclub in Cheltenham.

It turned him into an overnight hero for many students who often struggle to meet their deadlines. And we learn that he got a first for the 2,000 word essay.

• Watch the viral video in all its glory

The video got millions of views and fooled media organisations around the world.

But it was all all part of a project by film students at Gloucestershire University, who say they were surprised how easy it was to create fake news, and how quickly it spread.

Danny Cotter, who is 22 and in his second year of his film production course, said it should be a wake-up call.

The students' lecturer says the film "fulfilled the brief" and when asked what he thought about the undergraduates deliberately fooling the media, this was Film Studies Lecturer Mike Prince's response: