Some travelers have had to tighten their buttocks when landing at Paris Charles-de-Gaulle airport in recent days. Not far from the landing strip, a huge tarpaulin welcomed them with the words “Welcome to Beauvais”. Certainly, Beauvais airport (Oise) is also called Paris-Beauvais airport, but it is still located more than 70 kilometers from Charles-de-Gaulle, and more than 80 kilometers from the capital. Often to the great dismay of certain travelers, who are hardly motivated by the idea of going to the Oise and traveling so many kilometers to take the plane. Fortunately, the pilots did not take the wrong route, and landed at the correct (air)port. It was a simple joke, quite successful it must be admitted.
A hoax by Tiktoker Théo Audace
This little prank is the work of a Tiktoker, who goes by the name of Theo Audacefollowed by more than 1.3 million people on the social network. His credo is to carry out “pranks” (hoaxes), each more daring than the last. “When we find ideas that make us laugh and that don’t hurt anyone, we implement them», he tells us afterwards.
His main feat of arms: having trapped Cyril Hanouna on the set of his show Touche pas à mon poste. With his friend who calls himself Iroy, Théo spoke in the middle of the broadcast. “I would like to thank youhe then said to the host. A year ago, I had a very serious accident that completely paralyzed me, but thanks to you I was able to survive. Every day in the hospital I saw your show, it gave me the strength to continue. And one day, after several months of training, I was finally able to stand up, walk, and finally turn off this shit show on my own.” Mission accomplished for Théo Audace. On TikTok, the video has nearly five million views.
@theo.audace Replying to @Theo Audace How we pranked TPMP with @iroy, it’s clearly the biggest prank of our career, I hope you liked the threats 🤣, subscribe #prank #tpmp #missionoftheday ♬ original sound – Theo Audace
A few months later, he managed to hold up a large tifo bearing the image of Olympique de Marseille in the middle of the Parc des Princes, the stadium of Paris-Saint-Germain.
Inspired by a previous joke made in London
This time, the joker wanted to make the passengers disembarking at Charles-de-Gaulle believe that they were in fact landing in Beauvais. “Basically, we were inspired by Max Fosh, an English YouTuber who did this in London», says the young man. In 2022, the Englishman had in fact installed a large tarpaulin mentioning “Welcome to Luton” – translate “Welcome to Luton” – a stone’s throw from Gatwick airport, located… 112 kilometers from it. Like Théo Audace, Max Fosh simply wanted to make people smile.
But this joke, as funny as it was, still required a minimum of preparation. “It took us two months of preparationexplains Theo. We had to get the tarpaulins, cut them up to make the letters… But the most annoying thing was having the authorizations. We had to call the town hall to get the land register of the plot, then we had to find the owner, it was a crazy investigation! Luckily, we came across a seriously cool guy who was kind enough to rent his field to us.»
1,200 sardines to hold the tarpaulins
It took two days to install the message. “We used 600 sardines to hold everything together at first, but we had to add 600 moresmiles the prankster. The letters were still eight meters by three.» On November 18, the message was then visible from the window of planes landing at Charles-de-Gaulle.
On X (formerly Twitter), several photos of this prank circulated, were taken up by several accounts with a large audience, and viewed several million times.
And to go further, Théo contacted several local media, posing as a certain Lucas Morel, Beauvaisien having taken the plane, seeing this by chance while looking out the window. “I saw that people had already done it, so we thought we could use that to make it happen.he explains. We sent the photos to a few media outlets so that articles could be written on them. It was funny. We’re happy that it caught on Twitter, it made people laugh, it’s cool.»
Little scare for some travelers
Even if some people still had a real scare when they discovered the message inside the plane. “They had a bit of stress at the time, but that’s all, we didn’t want to panic the airport either», Slips the prankster.
Paris Charles-de-Gaulle airport, in fact, recently removed the “à Beauvais” to leave the “Bienvenue” according to the Tiktoker. “They asked the owner of the field what it was, he told them he had given permission», he breathes.
Théo and Iroy will soon go and collect their tarpaulin – which will have cost them between €4 and €5,000 with the rental of the field –, surely to reuse it in a few months and trap new people. A “Welcome to Paris” message installed at Beauvais airport could perhaps startle more than one person. Or not.
