A FORMER Crewe Town Council clerk has been caught up in a social media storm after a clip from a parish council went viral.

Jackie Weaver oversaw a stormy meeting of Handforth Parish Council, a video clip of which has gained more than two million views overnight.

Councillors, who represent the town near Wilmslow, were seen shouting at Mrs Weaver and questioning the legitimacy of the meeting.

The video, posted on Twitter by Janine Mason, was taken from the council's December 2020 planning and environment committee meeting.

It featured two councillors, Aled Brewerton and Brian Tolver, and the clerk engaged in an angry exchange.

It culminates in Cllr Brewerton angrily shouting at Ms Weaver: "Read the standing orders. Read them and understand them!"

That followed the decision to place Cllr Tolver in Zoom's 'waiting room', after the chair of the council told the clerk: "You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver. No authority at all."

The video was posted on Twitter by a teenager from East London who told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: "In my spare time, I watch random videos of council meetings because, one, I have a massive interest in policies enacted by local authorities, and two, all of these videos are usually absolutely hilarious — from old councillors struggling to use zoom and amazing arguments, but none have ever matched Handforth.

"This one caught my eye because the bloke who posted it put hilarious wordart on the cover image, so I decided to give it a watch and it was utterly hilarious.

"I'm really amazed [it's gone viral]! We all got a proper laugh out of it before it went viral and we had the likes of Michael Fabricant and Richard Osman talking about it!"

Since the video was uploaded, multiple parody versions and memes have been created.

Mrs Weaver, who lives at Burleydam near Wrenbury, is the chief officer at the Cheshire Association of Local Councils and served as interim clerk at Crewe Town Council in 2013.

She was involved in supporting the set-up of the council as a new tier of local government in Crewe and said at the time: "We are proud to have been part of the creation of a new council for Crewe and the recognition from central government of the importance of these new councils is just the icing on the cake."

As she was thrust into the limelight today she spoke to Radio 4's Woman's Hour and insisted "99.99% of council meetings are just not like that", while referencing the problems with "bullying and bad behaviour" in local government.

"They (meetings) are often less exciting that we might hope they were and in fact...most of the time I'm trying to get people involved in parish councils to raise their profile. I guess the plus side of this is it's certainly done that," she said.