Lee Nelson Dieselgate protest revs up Volkswagen over emissions scandal at Geneva Motor Show

British activist and comedian Lee Nelson, aka Simon Brodkin, will no doubt make headlines again after he successfully heckled a presentation by Volkswagen board member Jurgen Stackmann at the Geneva Motorshow with a Dieselgate protest.

Dressed in a VW overall, he was able to fool security into thinking that he was part of the show. As Stackmann took to the stage at the event to reveal the manufacturing giant's electrically powered new up! models, Brodkin burst onto the platform in Geneva with a 'cheat box', which he then pretended to install under a car.

In Geneva, Brodkin offered to 'fix' the up! model, with the fake cheat device. In response, Stackmann can be seen saying: "It's a brand new car, it does not need fixing." The comedian was taken away by security guards.

Brodkin is known for his very public protests, having showered former Fifa president Sepp Blatter in dollar notes at a televised press conference in 2015 to protest the now-infamous scale of alleged misconduct within the organisation. The comedian previously climbed the stage at the music festival Glastonbury during rapper Kanye West's performance.

Volkswagen's share price has dropped more than a third since the Dieselgate scandal first came to light in September 2015, when the Environmental Protection Agency in the US discovered cheating emission software had been installed in certain vehicles.

The software effectively lied about the emissions, showing them to be in line with environmental limits, while the emissions were much higher in reality. Although it will take VW some time to recover, after several probes investigators found out the number of cars affected was much smaller than initially expected.