Meghan Markle getting a kiss on the cheek from a schoolboy went viral on TikTok after he was bizarrely connected to a top-flight soccer star.
The Duchess of Sussex visited Robert Clack Upper School in Dagenham, east London, in March 2020, days before her final royal job.
Meghan asked, “if there is one brave young man in this room who wants to come and say what he thinks the importance of International Women’s Day is?”
Ben Stansall-WPA Pool/Getty Images
And 16-year-old Aker Okoye stepped up in front of his fellow pupils to take the microphone.
On his way to the podium, the cheeky teenager gave Meghan a hug and a kiss before telling the other pupils—and the watching media—that “she really is beautiful. innit.”
The moment caught attention in Britain at the time and won praise for both Okoye and Meghan, who was at the time in the middle of a media firestorm related to her decision to quit the palace for a new life in America.
However, it has now bizarrely won a new audience on TikTok among sports fans who appear to think Okoye reminds them of Manchester United soccer star Kobbie Mainoo.
The video was viewed 357,000 times and liked 46,000 times after it was posted with an on-screen caption joking: “Throwback to when Kobbie Mainoo rizzed up Meghan Markle.”
Mainoo in fact grew at the other end of England, in the northwest, and went to Ashton-on-Mersey School while he was making his name as an under-18 soccer star.
Needless to say, this is not the first time his career as a top flight sportsman has bizarrely breathed new life into Okoye’s 15 minutes of fame, four-and-a-half years after he plucked up the courage to grab the microphone at the school in Dagenham.
A similar video jokingly suggesting he was Mainoo was posted in June and was liked 736,000 times and viewed almost 6 million times.
The saga is a classic example of the strange and unpredictable way in which social media makes stars out of ordinary people for reasons that can seem baffling to outsiders who do not understand the context.
Okoye rose to the challenge after he got to the podium at Robert Clack school back in 2020 and said: “I had to speak the truth there. International Women’s Day is a reminder to everyone that women can do it all and do do it all.
“This is more of a message to all you guys. Maybe this Sunday could be the one day we don’t look at women as objects.”
And he won praise from Meghan who replied: “Well done. Very well said and incredible confidence, won’t you all agree?”
Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.
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