A REVELLER has been caught on video giving a masterclass on how to do the country’s most famous traffic-cone-on-a-statue trick.
The Equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington on Royal Exchange Square in Glasgow has become infamous for having a cone placed on the Duke’s head.
Now a video has captured the danger, skill and cooperation involved in pulling off the legendary stunt, which city bosses have tried and failed to ban.
Matthew Meechan, 23, recorded footage of a reveller putting a cone on the huge statue in the early hours of Sunday morning, following the Scotland vs England match.
He uploaded his 65-second-clip with the title: “Back where it belongs,” and it’s since been viewed 151,000 times with over 2,500 likes and a further 357 comments.
The clip starts as a man in a black t-shirt and jeans climbs up onto the monument with a cone before placing it on the horse.
He then struggles to make it up onto the statue before eventually scrambling up the front but inadvertently knocks the cone, causing it to fall back down onto the pavement.
Thankfully, however, a woman passes the cone back up onto the monument where another woman passes it up to the man who successfully managed to place it onto the statue’s head.
Speaking today (MON) about his clip, Matthew said: “It happened in the early hours of Sunday morning at about 1am after I’d been out.
“I was walking down from the Queen Street station direction and saw some sort of commotion down by the statue.
“When I got down there, a couple of boys started to climb it. People started coming out of the pubs nearby to see what was going on.
“I thought it was brilliant. I’ve walked past there hundreds of times but never actually seen someone climb up to put the cone there before.
“The video has taken off, my phone’s been buzzing non-stop with notifications, I wasn’t expecting it.”
In 2013, Glasgow City Council wanted to spend £65,000 to raise the effigy of the Duke of Wellington by 6ft to prevent people putting a cone on his head.
They said it gave the city a “depressing” image but over 10,000 people signed an online petition to say that the cone had become an integral part of the city’s landscape.
The statue outside the Gallery of Modern Art was created by Italian artist Carlo Marochetti in 1844 but jokers regularly place a cone on the Duke.
The council claim it costs £100 a time to remove the cone.
