Alfie and Zoellas Shocking Split from Josh Pieters

Three years ago, Josh Pieters had more than earned his reputation as one of ’s most successful pranksters.

At the time, he had just released his latest video stunt poking fun at pressure group , a video that has now been viewed more than three million times.

The tongue-in-cheek film saw South African-born Pieters and his close collaborator, long-time friend and aristocrat Archie Manners, disrupt a banquet organised by the activists by sending in helium balloons fitted with piercing alarms, which caused deafening chaos when they floated out of reach.

It was designed, they said, to give the activists ‘a taste of their own medicine’ at a time when the group had been blocking motorways and interfering with cultural and sporting events. And thanks to the headlines it generated, it only added to the duo’s notoriety and internet fame.

Other elaborate public pranks had targeted celebrities. Controversial commentator Katie Hopkins was flown to Prague in 2020 for a fake lifetime achievement award, and they successfully punked the staff at the vs fight in in 2019 into believing an lookalike was the globally famous Shape Of You singer himself. That video garnered a staggering 14million views alone – earning the pair significant amounts of money.

But after the Just Stop Oil prank, the videos stopped abruptly. And last year, Pieters and Manners – who is a distant cousin of the Duke of Rutland – dissolved their production company, Snake Oil Entertainment.

They maintained that the split had been amicable, so they could focus on different projects.

But I’m told that, in fact, behind the scenes there has been a significant fallout between the once-close duo.

As my insider confides: ‘Oh, it was a definite fallout. They are not friends any more, there was something to do with money, but it’s all a bit murky.

‘But Josh basically ditched Archie to work on his own stuff, which really hurt him, but it was clear Josh always wanted to be taken more seriously; he never truly wanted to do all the prank content.’

Certainly their paths have diverged rather significantly.

Archie, 33, who attended £60,000-a-year private school Radley College and was previously an activist for the Conservatives, has since gone on to do social media for Reform leader Nigel Farage, and now presents MTV’s comedy show, The Royal World.

Josh, meanwhile, now makes more serious documentaries.

In an interview with the Click Baited podcast last year, he said of his work with Manners: ‘It was really tiring and just a bit depressing. It felt like I was always trying to look for the negativity in things.

‘I just wasn’t enjoying it any more. I felt a bit trapped in it because I thought, “This is my career, it’s what I’m good at and it gets views on YouTube”, but I think it could have become a really horrible place to be.

‘I didn’t like the way it was going.’

But sources say that, right from the beginning of Josh’s career, there was always scepticism over whether he was truly passionate about his work – or whether it was just about cultivating notoriety.

It all began when Josh was on the sidelines of the Brit Crew, a group of ten 20-something content creators who were the first influencers, and who shaped the internet as we know it today.

This group included YouTubers Caspar Lee, also from South Africa, and Wiltshire-born Joe Sugg, who went on to become a finalist on Strictly and has a baby with his professional dance partner, Dianne Buswell.

Sharing a combined following of 25.6million people, the best friends shared a flat in west London. And it was Caspar’s fame that inspired Josh – a childhood friend – to start making videos himself.

His first YouTube clip, Josh Pieters Draws His Life, was shot in Caspar’s living room, and attracted a modest number of views.

But he was unable to properly crack into the Brit Crew and was considered by many as a ‘hanger on’ because – as I am now told – several members believed he was disingenuous.

‘Josh always wanted for bigger and better – it was kind of felt he wasn’t in what they were all doing for a shared love or passion, just for the notoriety,’ my source tells me. ‘So that’s why some kept him at arm’s length.’

One of the projects Josh has gone on to make, a two-part documentary called What Happened To The Brit Crew? which tracked the rise of his former friends, inadvertently exposed a schism.

Tellingly, his one-time collaborators, couple Alfie Deyes and Zoe Sugg – Joe’s sister – refused to take part in the film after learning Josh was behind the project.

Across both episodes, Josh, who admitted he was considered a ‘hanger-on’ in the early days, repeatedly outed Alfie, 32, and Zoe, 36, for blanking requests to participate in the project.

‘They just weren’t interested,’ my source has revealed. ‘It’s all ancient history for them but they felt Josh was disingenuous behind the scenes.

‘It was felt he was a social climber and was doing YouTube because he saw the heights they reached and wanted it for himself. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it just doesn’t align with them.’

After all, Josh, who is engaged to his long-time girlfriend Eleanor Butler, has finally managed to shift into the more serious side of content creation.

‘He has been angling himself to be the internet’s Louis Theroux-type character,’ as one industry insider put it.

Explaining his shift from the traditional YouTube genre of pranking and personalities, he said: ‘Being able to just talk to people in a natural way without having to be an exaggerated version of myself, I really enjoyed.’

But his work, as with most content on the internet, has not gone without its controversies.

He was slated for making a film about Only Fans star Lily Phillips, which followed the model as she challenged herself to sleep with 100 men in a day.

It has, to date, had 13 million views, and went viral for a scene showing the 24-year-old woman shaking with exhaustion at the end of the 24-hour challenge.