The creator of a Cornish spoof online video that has gone viral told the Packet this week that the response had “astonished” him.

Colin Leggo, from Budock Water, is the man behind Grand Theft Cornwall, a satire of video game Grand Theft Auto that sees the character on a hunt for pasties rather than stealing cars.

Rather than shooting people he speaks to them in a Cornish accent and moans about parking – although the game’s infamous violence remains to some extent, as one man who insults Trago Mills gets taken to the ground. Another who prefers a different pasty maker to Falmouth’s Tickle Yer Tastebuds meets a similar fate.

The four-minute video, uploaded to YouTube under the tagline “If GTA was set in our beloved county,” has already been viewed almost 179,000 times and been shared by a motorbiking fraternity in the USA and the WWE wrestling association. 

Falmouth Packet:

Mr Leggo, 35, said: “I’ve had a huge response from the Cornish audience, but on top of that lots of gamers and people around the world enjoying it because it’s to do with their game.

“I was totally unaware of that phenomenon, but really pleased I stumbled across it.”

It is not the first time that Mr Leggo has achieved online success for one of his Cornish-themed videos. Last August he received just short of 13,000 views for The Cornish Elements, a montage of him visiting 96 of the county’s towns and villages over just one minute and 41 seconds.

However, while that video took hours of planning, this video was created over the course of just one afternoon.

“It was a bit of an accident this one. There wasn’t much planning involved in it,” he said.

“I’m not much of a gamer but my friend had lent me his Playstation and I just found the game quite ridiculous and aggressive. I was entertaining myself by making them talk about things that people wouldn’t really have an argument about. I thought, ‘That’s quite funny, someone might enjoy that’ so I put it together just with these voices in the afternoon – it totally surprised me, the response.”

Mr Leggo revealed he was in the process of putting together a follow up video, this time related to a popular sporting game, which would be up online soon.

Watch Grand Theft Cornwall below. (Warning, contains swearing, and a hunt for pasties)