Andrew Tate is being compared to Lorraine Kelly for claiming he plays a 'character'

Controversial social media figure Andrew Tate has drawn hilarious comparisons with TV legend Lorraine Kelly after his lawyer claimed he is playing a “character”.

Tate, along with his brother Tristan, has been imprisoned in Romania since their arrest in December and is being held on suspicion of organised crime and human trafficking.

In the latest twist in the tale, Tate’s lawyer, Tina Glandian, has claimed that her client plays the “Andrew Tate character” and says controversial things simply for “entertainment”.

For pop culture fans with long memories, Tate’s lawyer’s rather weak defence of the serious crimes he is accused of has drawn comparisons with Lorraine Kelly, who famously said she is “in character as Lorraine Kelly”.

Kelly’s defence came about in 2019 when the TV presenter was engaged in a legal battle with ITV over a £1.2m tax bill. Kelly claimed that she was a freelancer and appeared on her eponymous morning programme Lorraine in character, so she herself was not employed by ITV.

On Twitter, many pointed out the comical similarity between their two defences and the unlikelihood of two such very different people being compared.

One person joked the news was, “The Andrew Tate / Lorraine Kelly equivalence you never expected to find”.

Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter

Another commented: “It’s quite funny that Andrew Tate’s defence tactic can accurately be described as being previously used by both conspiracy theorist and InfoWars owner Alex Jones, and daytime television presenter Lorraine Kelly.”

Someone else wrote: “Things you could never predict: Andrew Tate deploying the Lorraine Kelly ‘theatrical artist’ defence.”

“Who knew that Lorraine Kelly and Andrew Tate had so much in common?" someone else asked.

One Twitter user remarked: “Ah, the universally respected Lorraine Kelly Defence.”

In Kelly’s case, a judge agreed that she was a “self-employed star”, arguing: “All parts of the show are a performance, the act being to perform the role of a friendly, chatty and fun personality.”

As for Tate, his situation looks much more dubious after losing his latest appeal against a judge’s decision to extend his arrest a third time.

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.