‘He runs on carrots’: KU alumnus goes TikTok viral

A KU alumnus has gone viral on TikTok with a video mocking frustrated car owners queuing at a Shell petrol station, while riding a horse, in Thames Ditton. 

Product and furniture design graduate, Gus Lee-Dolphin, 26, strode past the backed-up queue of cars in the video which has currently amassed over four million views on TikTok since last Tuesday. 

Lee-Dolphin, who told The River that he had never ridden a horse before, sang: “I’m on a horse, I’m on a horse, I don’t need petrol because he runs on carrots”. 

The KU graduate had predicted that the stunt would go viral after gaining attention from a similar video filmed at the same petrol station. 

The previous video, featuring a Santander Cycle in place of a horse, was posted on Twitter by one of Lee-Dolphin’s friends and went “semi-viral,” he said. 

“All my mates said that they didn’t think I could recreate it because the bike was so iconic and then on top of that, where was I going to get the horse from? 

“It took me around two hours to find a horse. After meeting it and 10-15 minutes of training, we took the horse through the petrol station, posted the video an hour later, and that was it. It just popped off,” he said.  

Lee-Dolphin has since created a third video in his petrol station series, in a bubble bath complete with candles and a glass of wine. 

The video has amassed over 3.3 million views since last Sunday. 

The petrol crisis in the UK, which paved the way for Lee-Dolphin’s TikTok stardom, has eased slightly after more than a week of shortages. 

However, petrol prices have hit an eight-year high, according to new data from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial strategy.