Coronavirus: Comedian Nazeem Hussain pulls off epic April fools prank

Comedian and I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! star Nazeem Hussain may have just won April fools pranking in isolation.

I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! star Nazeem Hussain may have just won April fools pranking in isolation.

Sharing the feat to his 55.3k Instagram followers, the Melbourne comedian revealed he managed to convince his mother he was self-isolating with a live tiger – a nod to everyone’s new Netflix obsession, Tiger King.

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Posting screenshots of a family WhatsApp chat, Hussain’s conversation with his mother might be the most endearing thing to exist on the internet, complete with mum Hussain heading off to the supermarket to grab some mince meat for the deadly pet.

Several pleas to “keep it well fed and close your bedroom door”, and even a voice note suggesting it might be a good idea to lock the tiger in the bathroom are also real corkers.
“OMG so you really got a tiger at home?” Hussain’s mum asked, clearly alarmed.

“It’s safe. Not a lethal one. He was trained,” the former reality star assured his mum, adding that it’s “lonely in self-isolation”.

“So long as I give him his daily medicine he shouldn’t bite anyone.”

His mum pointed out: “Why do you take chances in your life. You can die!! He can bite you.

“What happens if the tiger gets mood swings?!” she added.

The conversation escalated when Hussain’s family members began to chime in, making outlandish suggestions while clearly in on the joke.

“Make sure you wipe (his) paws if he goes outside. He might carry corona inside the house,” one relative joked.

“Make sure he doesn’t eat all your food when your(sic) sleeping,” another said.

Eventually, his mother asked if she could come and see the non-existent tiger and drop off some mince meat she’d bought for it.

You can read the full conversation below, complete with a voice note in which Hussain is instructed to lock the fictitious tiger in the bathroom.

Hussain included a moving image of a 3D tiger in his lounge room from Google's Augmented Reality app, which casts objects directly from search into the room you’re in.

According to Google’s website: “Now you can use AR to place 3D digital objects right in your own space directly from search or from websites on Chrome. Learn more about everything from NASA’s Curiosity Rover to human anatomy to animals like hedgehogs, penguins, and sharks, with a greater sense of context and scale.”

Clicking the “view in 3D” button generates a 3D model users can spin around and inspect on their phones.

The animal also moves around, sniffing and scratching while being watched.

While impressive, it’s a far stretch from looking like an actual jungle animal, which just makes the prank even more hilarious.

Nazeem Hussain's self-isolation tiger. Picture: Instagram.

No stranger to a cheeky joke, the comedian got himself into rather hot water last year while impersonating a lifeguard in Manly, resulting in a ban from Sydney beaches.

Of course, beach bans have become a reality for all Sydneysiders under strict social-distancing orders.

Hussain was shooting a sketch on Manly Beach while wearing surf lifesaving gear for his Channel 7 show, Orange Is The New Brown.

“I was telling people to swim back to where they came from if they didn’t have their (immigration) papers,” Hussain told News Corp in March last year.

“Then a real lifeguard came up to me, and asked: ‘Are you a lifeguard?’ And, ‘which club are you from?’

“Then he got on the radio and all the beaches in NSW blocked me. We tried to do the sketch at two more beaches and the lifeguards were like: ‘Nah, we’ve heard about you. Get out!’

“I was like: ‘How did you know?’ And one of them said: ‘There are no brown lifeguards. There’s only you’.”

Hussain’s Netflix special Nazeem Hussain: Public Frenemy began streaming worldwide in 2019.

The comedian is currently riding out the pandemic with a host of celebrity interview guests on his podcast Survivor's Guide to Coronavirus.