Bizarre Handforth Parish Council Zoom meeting goes viral after descending into chaos

'You have no authority here': Handforth Parish Council meeting clerk, Jackie Weaver, trended on Twitter after the meeting went viral

A Zoom town council meeting has gone viral after descending into chaos, with footage showing councillors trading insults and removing each other from the call.

The surprise hit video of Handforth Parish Council meeting was uploaded to Twitter and shared thousands of times. The original footage was originally uploaded on the Cheshire council website.

One of the meeting's participants, Jackie Weaver, trended throughout Thursday evening.

The meeting on December 10 was the second time chair Brian Tolver had been removed, having previously been evicted from the earlier 7pm Planning and Environment Committee.

The 7.30pm extraordinary meeting began with an unseen councillor mumbling "f*** off" under their breath.

Read more: The history of the Handforth parish council feud

Mr Tolver refused to recognise the legitimacy of both meetings.

He told meeting clerk Jackie Weaver, from the Cheshire Association of Local Councils, to "stop talking" and "you have no authority here".

In response, Jackie Weaver removed Mr Tolver from the Zoom call and placed him in a virtual waiting room.

Following Mr Tolver's eviction, vice-chair Aled Brewerton, joined by an older unnamed gentleman, proceeded to yell at Ms Weaver to "read the standing orders".

Parish clerk Jackie Weaver during a meeting of Handforth Parish Council which has become an unlikely internet sensation (PA)

When fellow councillor Susan Moore calls for civility, the meeting erupted into semi-hysterical laughter and two further councillors, Mr Brewerton and Barry Burkill were removed.

Then followed was confusion over Mr Tolver's Zoom username, in which he had labelled himself the 'clerk'.

Ms Weaver said: "The chairman simply declared himself 'clerk' and notified everybody of the case.

"There is no way of stopping him from calling himself clerk. Please refer to me as Britney Spears from now on."

Those remaining voted to not allow the three men back into the meeting, with Cllr Cynthia Samson likening one to a "laughing hyena".

The clips and YouTube video quickly became a hit, with more than five thousand retweets and 32,000 likes.

Additional reporting by PA