'Crazy response' to friends mistaking hotel for Northern Lights
A student who posted a video of himself online mistaking a Premier Inn hotel for the Northern Lights said he was glad it was making people laugh.
Karim Akhtar, 22, and his friend Sully Laurent, 21, were walking home from a night out in Norwich on Friday when they saw purple illuminations in the sky.
In a TikTok video, which has been viewed more than six million times, the pair discover the lights were in fact from a Premier Inn hotel on Duke Street.
Mr Akhtar joked that he and Mr Laurent had visited Iceland in January hoping to see the Northern Lights and were disappointed they had "missed them again".
"The reaction to the video has been crazy. I didn’t expect it to be so popular," the University of East Anglia pharmacology student, from Liverpool, said.
"For sure we thought it was the Northern Lights... you can tell by my reaction.
"It’s certainly a good start to my TikTok career," he laughed.
At the start of the video, the friends can be heard saying "Oh my god" before asking, "how have we been catfished?" - a term used to describe a fake identity.
In response to Mr Akhtar's video, Premier Inn said: "There’s no need to search the skies, Premier Inn is a beacon of light and can bring the auora glow directly to your room, without needing a camera to see it."
The Northern Lights, also known as aurora borealis, made an appearance across the UK during the weekend due to a rare solar storm.
Mr Akhtar said he still hoped to see them one day.
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