If you, like me, have been feeling pretty smug all week about the poor Parisians rattling about in their bedbug-infested city, you’re about to be severely humbled. Because the cheeky little buggers have, unfortunately, hitchhiked their way to the Victoria line. BRB while I set all of my belongings on fire.
Infiltrating Paris over the past few weeks, experts believe that the infestation has been due to summer tourism, and bedbugs travelling into the city with visitors. And now, London locals believe those very bedbugs have made their way over to the UK. Of course, they could just be British bedbugs, but Tiktok is on fire right now, nonetheless.
Racking up a whopping 1.9M views (and counting) on the video-sharing platform, user @lassogold shared a clip of what appears to be a bedbug casually climbing up their trousers, much to viewers’ horror. Other clips show the pesky critters allegedly chilling on the upholstery inside a tube carriage.
Check out the footage below:
Naturally, the comments have been pure gold, with viewers’ commenting plenty “See it! Say it! Sorted!” jokes, and even threatening to put themselves “in quarantine”.
Of course, Tiktok isn’t a reliable news source so we can’t take this footage as gospel, however, Mayor Sadiq Khan has acknowledged that it’s a “real source of concern” for Londoners, and has been consulting with TfL to ensure that cleaning protocols are up to scratch to help avoid a similar infestation to that of Paris’.
He said: “I want to reassure those listening TfL have one of the best regimes to clean our assets on a nightly basis and we’re speaking to our friends in Paris to see whether there are any lessons to be learned.
“We don’t think those issues will arise in London, but no complacency from TfL.”
Experts have also claimed that bedbug sightings increase every summer in Paris due to the uplift in international visitors, however, “each year, the seasonal increase is bigger than the last one”.
Anyway, I think I’m gonna work from home for a while.