Ever since American Niall Horan fans have been cancelling Dustin the Turkey on Twitter we have been waiting for Niall to respond. As a Mullingar native and fan of The Den we knew Niall would not have been offended by Dustin’s jokes on last week’s Comic Relief.
In case you missed it, last week he performed on The Den as part of RTE’s Comic Relief. Mid performance Dustin The Turkey butted in to stop Niall from continuing on with his performance, joking that they actually wanted Harry Styles to perform instead.
Now, anyone familiar with Dustin The Turkey and his antics would look at that scene and see absolutely nothing wrong with it, you’d giggle, in fact. But, Niall Horan fans across the pond in America didn’t exactly see the funny side of things, and took to social media to tear down Dustin and Ray, demanding that they and the Irish public respect Niall.
Finally the 1D star has spoken about the hilarious campaign online to cancel Dustin after some fans didn’t quite get the joke. Whilst being interviewed on Sirius XM, the star was asked if he was “in a fight with a turkey” and he responded by laughing.
“Oh yeah this has kicked off big time. So there’s a few characters that did an afternoon TV show in Ireland for years, like puppets, and one of them is known to be quite brash but in the most Irish way possible.”
“So my fans have completely retaliated against the Turkey and it’s kicked off… and he’s like our national mascot so I’m kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place where I don’t know whether to tell the fans that like it’s a puppet, and to also realise that our national treasure is Dustin the Turkey.”
This comes after Ray D’Arcy also responded to Niall Horan fans, who have been sending angry messages to both him and Dustin The Turkey over the last week.
Probably sick of the hate he’s receiving, Ray D’Arcy has spoken out about the incident, assuring everyone that Niall is respected and was absolutely on board with the skit.
Speaking on his Podcast, Ray said:“I doubt that any of them [Niall’s fans] are listening to this but if they are… firstly, Niall will tell them himself, it was pre-recorded so we weren’t being rude to him live, and we had a very limited amount of time.”
“Niall, more than anybody, is up for the craic. He wanted to do The Den, he really did because he was given anything, he could do anything.”
Continuing on to say that Niall had free reign of how he wanted to appear on the show, Ray added: “They [the producers] actually went to him and said, ‘Niall Horan you are a planetary star. We are so proud of you. What do you want to do?’”
We knew Niall would be in on the joke!