Revealed: The piano-playing 'police officer' fooling commuters across the capital

A street performer who posed as a Metropolitan Police officer and dazzled commuters with his piano playing skills has fooled thousands of viewers after sharing his impressive footage online.

Brendan Kavanagh, 49, from Wealdstone, donned various guises to appear at train stations and iconic landmarks across London to show off his musical prowess.

His latest video which shows him dressed as a police officer in Canary Wharf has been viewed almost two million times on Facebook since it was posted last week.

The footage sparked high praise for the apparent officer’s speedy skills, with social media users seemingly unaware the musician is actually Mr Kavanagh, who goes by the stage name Dr K.

Brendan Kavanagh showing off his skills out of uniform

He told the Standard that the videos were all part of a campaign to get more involved in piano playing.

He said: “It’s great. I think people see it as fake news and there is a lot of this fake news going on.

“It’s kind of breaking stereotypes if you know what I mean. It fooled a lot of people.

“What we are doing is bringing this very niche music to a much wider audience.”

A former teacher, Mr Kavanagh decided to quit his career to pursue his passion for piano playing and set up a YouTube channel.

He first appeared in the spotlight during a performance at St Pancras International while dressed as a traffic marshal last month.

He added: “I decided to leave and do YouTube videos and it has really taken off. I didn’t want to go into another job and I’ve been getting more and more attention from it.

“It’s kind of a social experiment. I’m interested in social conceptions of how people see you.

“When you are dressed up in a workman uniform people look at you in a certain way, people look at a policeman in a certain way.

Brendan Kavanagh was a former Latin teacher before he quite to pursue his lifelong passion for piano
Brendan Kavanagh

“The reaction I get when I play live is great, basically the whole of St Pancreas stopped. I just tell them afterwards it’s a form of street performance."

His latest video appears to have fooled people once more.

Saurabh Kumar posted on Facebook: “He is in the wrong job. I will pay £100 to watch him play. Someone tell the guy.”

But others were not convinced, with Chris Boler posting: “He's not a real police officer. Very good at what he does, but my god why have so many fallen for it?”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in