Kenyan journalist who convinced world that student duped his way to free KFC meals
A Kenyan journalist on Monday convinced world media that a South African student had conned his way to having free chicken at KFC for year.
Teddy Eugene Otieno took to Twitter and told the story in a single tweet while providing only bare details. The tweet was quickly picked up by world media and soon got a life of its own.
Media reports claimed the student had been going to the fried chicken shops around Durban telling staff he was from headquarters and was testing standards.
KFC on Thursday dismissed the story as fake.
“It would be legendary if only it were true. Fake is as far as it gets with this story.”
Fake is as good as this story gets. As legendary as it would be we can confirm that this is false. We haven’t kept the secret recipe ‘secret’ for this long, only to be duped by a student ? pic.twitter.com/32CE5OXVTA
— KFC South Africa (@KFCSA) May 14, 2019
According to Business Insider, Teddy, who works at Hot 96 radio, is still standing by his tweet.
“[I] got it from a contact in KwaZulu Natal,” he said, and characterised KFC’s denial as “a PR stunt”.
The story was picked by American television network CBS and also ran on South African outlets.