It's been one week since Twitter user Zoli broke the internet with this tweet:
The video appeared to show Justin Bieber and James Corden filming an episode of Carpool Karaoke.
The hugely popular segment on Corden's show features the Late Late Show host driving a car with celebrities while they sing-a-long to songs often from that celebrity's catalogue.
"The worst lie since Santa"
However, Zoli's video — which at time of writing had over 13 million views — upset many viewers because it revealed that Corden was not actually driving his car but was instead being towed.
The Guardian even (somewhat jokingly) branded the revelation "the worst lie since Santa".
Now, Corden has finally broken his silence on the matter in a new episode of his show, with a six-and-a-half-minute clip of him 'coming clean' posted on YouTube on January 29.
"I'm sure many of you have heard, I've recently been the victim of a scandal in the media," said Corden in a faux-serious tone.
"There've been some very very serious allegations made against me and I want to get ahead of everything and address those rumours and assure you, my audience, that these accusations are not true."
Pausing for dramatic and comedic effect, Corden called the accusations "fake news" to rapturous laughter in the audience.
Drives the car most of the time
"I always drive the car, unless we're doing something that might not be safe," he explained.
This includes instances where Corden might be doing a dance routine, a costume change, or "when I'm drunk" he joked.
"I swear to you 95 per cent of the time I really am endangering the lives of the world's biggest popstars.
When it comes to carpool, with very rare exceptions — for safety — I'm driving the cars. And I want credit for it because I was raised driving on the completely different side of the road!"
For the purposes of transparency, Corden furnished a list of all the episodes of Carpool Karaoke in which he didn't actually drive-in.
This included:
- Meghan Trainor
- Migos
- Cardi B
- Chance the Rapper
- Justin Bieber (third time)
In his typical self-deprecating manner, Corden jested that the viral video on Twitter had managed to garner more views than some of his Carpool Karaoke episodes.
Behind the scenes
He also expressed his bemusement at the hullabaloo caused by the video.
"This is a TV show, not everything is real," he said before dropping some other truths about The Late Late Show such as the fact that contrary to the show's name it is actually taped at 5pm.
"We pretend that it's late," he said.
"I hate to be the bearer of even more bad news but while we're getting things out in the open, I don't actually need them to help me get to work, right? Often, I'm at work already."
In a 2016, interview with Radiotimes, one of the producers of Corden's show, Ben Winston, also shared some of the other safety measures taken in the making of Carpool Karaoke.
This included making sure that Corden drove in a convoy — two cars in front and three cars behind him — and limiting his speed to under 20 miles (32km) per hour.
The cameras used in filming the segment are also tiny and stuck on Corden's windshield so as to not distract his view.
Top image from The Late Late Show with James Corden's YouTube channel and Zolihonig's Twitter account