A woman who livestreamed Kneecap’s Glastonbury festival set to 2 million people on TikTok has described the “obscene” abuse she says has received in the aftermath, including people calling her a Nazi.
Helen Wilson, a Swansea-based yoga teacher who also runs the Ground Plant Based Coffee cafe, said she had been sent a lot of personal insults, but that she had received “hundreds and hundreds times more support than negativity”.
It came after she held up her phone in the crowd to stream the set by the Irish rap trio last Saturday, which the BBC refused to show live, over what it said were efforts to ensure it “meets our editorial guidelines”.
The BBC later made an edited version available on iPlayer, though the broadcaster did not respond to the Guardian when asked what had been cut out.
Wilson said: “I just thought, I’m just going to livestream it because the BBC aren’t showing it. And I really disagreed with that. I did not think for a moment that over 2 million people would see it.”
It was only her second TikTok live stream on her handle HelenWilsonWales – her first, about her weight loss, had no viewers at all – and initially she had not realised how many people were watching because the sun was shining on her phone screen.
“But I could see that when you’re doing a live stream, loads of messages pop up and people can talk to you. So the screen was going mental. People were just like ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping.
“And I was like: ‘Oh, my god, something’s happening here,’ and so I just knew I had to carry on. People were saying to me: ‘Please keep going, do what you can, please keep going.’ And then that was it,” said Wilson, who grew up in Somerset and was working at the festival.
The stream was spreading through word of mouth, as viewers sent it to their friends and family, and Wilson found out later that at one point it was playing on a big screen in a pub in the band’s home town.
She told the Guardian: “I have had a lot of trolling. When you rang, I was just in the middle of deleting some obscene comments off my business Facebook page.”
“There was somebody on Instagram just saying he sent me a message saying: ‘You’re just a wrinkled old woman looking for attention.’”
“[In a tabloid newspaper] I’ve been referred to as a middle-aged woman. Like, what has that got to do with anything?” said the 44-year-old.
She said: “This is about the genocide in Palestine, and this is about the failure of our government to act, to do anything about it.”
Wilson added: “More people need to know what is going on in Palestine. And we shouldn’t be censoring bands under freedom of speech, full stop. We shouldn’t be censoring anybody who is trying to raise awareness of the atrocities that are taking place.”
Afterwards, Kneecap called her a “legend” and offered her free tickets to any of their shows.
On Saturday, while supporting Fontaines DC in Finsbury Park, the band once again led 45,000 people in chants of “fuck Keir Starmer”.
The band were far from alone in their sentiments at Glastonbury – dozens of acts and figures at the festival spoke out in support of Palestine, including CMAT, the Libertines, Gary Lineker, Joy Crookes, TV on the Radio, Sorry and Paloma Faith.
Kneecap were also backed by Emily and Michael Eavis, the festival’s organisers, with Emily telling the BBC that “everyone is welcome”, before their set.