English folk-rock musician Dolly Mavies is speaking out after she and her band made headlines worldwide for walking out of their own show last month, following rumors that Vice President JD Vance might attend.
Mavies, born Molly Davies, told the BBC that she never expected the story to explode after she posted about it on TikTok. Her Aug. 11 video quickly went viral, earning millions of views and sparking a wave of international reaction.
“This exposure, following her posting about the experience in a now-viral Aug. 11 video on TikTok, led to her getting ‘wonderful comments and support from people all across the world,’” the BBC reported.
“Obviously, there’s an overwhelming sense of support in America,” Mavies said. “I think for a lot of American people there’s a lot of uncertainty, and a lot of people are scared, and it was amazing to feel like they’d been heard.”
While many praised her decision, others accused her of staging the incident for publicity. Mavies rejected that claim outright. “We definitely didn’t do that at all,” she said. “If we were that clever, we would have done something before now.”
Mavies said she became “suspicious” upon arriving at Daylesford Organic, a luxury farm shop often described as “the poshest shop in Britain.” She noticed “a lot of security around, which there isn’t normally, and then a huge convoy of police motorbikes and very big cars.”
“We then clocked that it must be somebody who we weren’t going to be very happy to see,” she recalled in her viral TikTok. “Yeah, that’s right, JD Vance.” The vice president was vacationing with his family in the Cotswolds during August, staying at an $11,000-per-week manor house in the exclusive countryside region frequented by celebrities and royals.
A source close to Vance denied to the BBC that he visited the upscale shop, which is known for selling $1,100 food baskets, though local outlets reported otherwise. Mavies was not alone in her frustration. Some Cotswolds residents told the Telegraph that the Vances’ visit left the area “completely sealed off from the outside world.”
Jeremy Clarkson, the television presenter known for Top Gear and Clarkson’s Farm, also mocked the disruption. Posting on Instagram, he shared a photo of a restricted airspace map. “The JD Vance no-fly zone. We are the pin. So on the downside, no drone shots today. On the upside, no annoying light aircraft,” he wrote.
Vance also faced rejection at The Bull, a 16th-century pub in Oxfordshire, where staff threatened to walk out rather than serve him. Just weeks earlier, former Vice President Kamala Harris had dined at the same pub without issue.