In partnership with

Good morning, Swansea!

Remember when going viral actually meant something? Before TikTok and Instagram, there was Saalah Muhumed - a man who became arguably Swansea's first internet sensation.

This week, let us take you back to 2008, when a simple mistake turned into the kind of absurd spectacle that had the whole city talking - and the internet watching.

Catch you on Sunday!

Andrew.

Go from AI overwhelmed to AI savvy professional

AI keeps coming up at work, but you still don't get it?

That's exactly why 1M+ professionals working at Google, Meta, and OpenAI read Superhuman AI daily.

Here's what you get:

• Daily AI news that matters for your career - Filtered from 1000s of sources so you know what affects your industry.

• Step-by-step tutorials you can use immediately - Real prompts and workflows that solve actual business problems.

• New AI tools tested and reviewed - We try everything to deliver tools that drive real results.

• All in just 3 minutes a day

Join 1M+ pros

A hole lotta trouble

On a quiet summer morning in June 2008, Saalah Muhumed dropped his cigarette lighter, which fell into a narrow hole in the pavement- a freshly dug opening for a new lamp post on Dillwyn Street, opposite the Potters Wheel pub. Most people would have bought a new lighter, but Saalah decided to climb in feet-first to retrieve it.

Big mistake. The hole was just wide enough to let him slip in, but not wide enough to climb back out. Within seconds, he was wedged up to his chest in concrete, legs dangling below street level while his head and arms remained above ground. He was completely stuck.

As a crowd began forming around this bizarre spectacle of a man protruding from the pavement, reports say Saalah cracked open a can of Carling and calmly had a drink.

By 11 AM, more than a hundred people had gathered to watch. Some tried to help, others just stared, and crucially, one - local builder Gareth Thomas - pulled out his phone to record the scene.

 “He was wedged in so tight we'd have pulled his arms out of their sockets if we'd pulled any harder,” Thomas told the press. “He was stuck fast, right up to his chest. We were all standing around this unfortunate man having a right old laugh. God knows how he even managed to squeeze in the hole because it was less than 40cm in diameter.”

After nearly two hours, emergency services arrived. The fire crew couldn't simply pull him out without risking injury, so they used straps under his arms to slowly winch him up. When he finally emerged, onlookers say he seemed more dazed than relieved.

Going Viral in 2008

By that evening, the video and story had spread far and wide, and a video titled "Man stuck in hole, Swansea!!" was live on YouTube. This was 2008 - before smartphones were everywhere, before TikTok, before chasing viral fame was a thing. But the clip had everything: a bizarre situation, crowd reaction, and visual comedy.

Within hours it had thousands of views. Local papers ran headlines like "I'm in a Hole Lot of Trouble," then national outlets picked it up, followed by blogs and international oddity sites. As one article bluntly put it: "He got stuck in a hole for two hours - just for a lighter."

Clips like the above are available to watch in unlimited numbers in our social media feeds today, but Saalah’s is a time capsule of a moment in time just before the birth of viral stars became celebrities in their own right.

What became of Swansea’s first viral video star? He did revisit the scene of the event for some press photos, but there’s no indication that he capitalised on his fame any further - brand deals with Carling or Zippo, perhaps… 🙂 

Catch you on Sunday!

Andrew

Sources

• Pistonheads: Somebody kindly explain this please

• Daily Mail: I’m in a hole lot of trouble

• The Telegraph: Man stuck in pavement hole for 2 hours

• The Sun: Drunk in a hole lotta trouble