We spoke to the viral Tik Toker who posed as a Covid Marshall in London halls

You might’ve seen that Tik Tok going around where a couple of London students grab Morrisons high vis jackets and go around a university halls pretending to be Covid Marshalls to freak people out. It’s golden content.

The creator behind this viral video, Husnain Asif, has now had his Tik Tok account banned for “multiple Community Guidelines violations”, but not before posting some incredible London content that got very popular.

The Tab London reached out to Husnain about his Tik Tok success, the viral Covid Marshall video, and the legendary Liverpool trial rave that he attended, and this is what he had to say:

The 22 year old from Middlesborough studies Accountancy and Finance at Queen Mary, and says he “started making Tik Tok content as soon as the first lockdown hit, purely because of boredom”, with an automatic hit with his video on “how to get a free nose job from the NHS because I broke it.

“I woke up the next morning to over 200,000 views, so from there I just started uploading more and more on Tik Tok until I had a load of reliable followers who loved my content as well as random people on FYP.”

I asked where exactly the Covid Marshall idea came from and how he managed to pull it off, to which Husnain said: “The Marshall thing was just to scare the other students because we could see them breaking Covid rules and getting scatty about it from our accommodation windows – we thought that if we put on high vis and acted professional enough they would believe us.

“It didn’t take any prep at all really – aside from the Morrisons logo I scratched out at the back of the high vis jacket and the YouTube radio transmitter effect, we just thought of the idea on the spot and then winged it. Most of my Tik Toks are like that to be honest.”

To all those who never had the pleasure of watching Husnain’s Tik Toks, a few still remain on his Instagram page and they are iconic British content to say the least. From reminiscing on festival season, outrapping Dappy (who then proceeded to block him) and sharing some precious yet trashy memories from his hometown Stockton, Husnain is a controversial character, but a funny one.

He told us that the presence of Covid Marshalls in university halls is actually pretty unnerving, saying: “After our own experiences and the look of horror in people’s faces when we were pretending to be Marshalls for the Tik Tok, it’s safe to say that they’re not welcome around student accommodations, and rightly so.

“We’re all young students that have been trapped inside the same building, without our family and often without anyone at all if we’re isolating, for over a year. It’s just not fair that we’re pushed aside like that and made to abide by rules that don’t make sense.

“If you add the intense pressure that you get from people watching you and making sure you don’t interact with other students around you, obviously students feel even more trapped mentally and physically. It’s been really damaging to mental health.”

Now that lockdown is starting to ease, things are looking brighter for students living in halls in the the future, and generally for student life. One thing that Husnain mentioned in our interview was the trial rave that took place in Liverpool, which he was lucky enough to attend.

3000 young people went to the warehouse rave, without masks or social distancing rules, and were tested before and after the event. For the rest of us, it’s hard to believe that a) Liverpool got to be the lucky (or very unlucky) ones, and b) that clubbing and dancing may be within reaching distance soon.

Husnain said that the event was “mental”, and that he “missed having a naked chin – I can’t believe I was dancing around maskless.”

Unfortunately, the Tik Tok Gods that be have banned Husnain’s account for the foreseeable future, which means that there’ll be no Liverpool rave content, or anything London, for a while.

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