Thousands of people shared this quite extraordinary story about a confused racist on a Welsh train

Being a bigot rarely ends well.

Twenty-six-year-old Tom Bradbury, from Cardiff, shared the following incident on a rail replacement bus, on his Facebook page on Monday:

The most perfect thing I have ever seen just happened on the replacement train bus service between Newport and Cwmbran:

White man sat in front of a mother and her son. Mother was wearing a niqab. After about 5 minutes of the mother talking to her son in another language the man, for whatever reason, feels the need to tell the woman 'When you're in the UK you should really be speaking English.'

At which point, an old woman in front of him turns around and says, 'She's in Wales. And she's speaking Welsh.'

Perfect.

The woman, who had been wearing a niqab, had apparently been speaking Welsh.

Surely people can't be that stupid?

The post saturated the internet, and several news outlets, including local paper, the South Wales Argus reported what may just be the take-down of the year.

People on Facebook are loving it, and it's been shared almost 20,000 times...

But is the story too good to be true?

Twitter user Mimi Wells pointed out Bradbury's story seemed rather similar to one that took place in the US:

However, she quickly clarified:

Bradbury has maintained its authenticity on both Facebook and Twitter.

Additionally, Guardian reporter Elena Cresci points out that there had in fact been disruptions on the line at the time in question which resulted in rail replacement buses. So at least that part of the story holds up.

Bradbury, who is Welsh but isn't fluent in the language, told indy100:

I'm able to understand the odd word or sentence from what I learned in school but unfortunately not enough to know what the mother was saying. She appeared to just be laughing or joking around with her son, though. Making him laugh.

People [on the bus] that could hear what was going on were a bit shocked, but it all developed so quickly that the old woman's response had everyone laughing within seconds.

And what about people who claim the story isn't true?

I can assure them it's real, although I understand the cynicism.

Since I posted it, I've heard there are lots of similar stories from various places and that doesn't surprise me at all. I'm sure similar things have happened all over the world where ignorant people get called out.

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