Probably. I went up in a Piper Tomahawk once with a friend who worked at an airfield. We were mucking about for a while and I was having a fly of it. When he said we were going to land I said "I can do that" so he said "Go on then" So I did the approach. Didn't quite land it but got just over the trees before he took control.
I think I'd have panicked and fluffed it. Someone on the radio today implied this passenger may not have been as unable to fly a plane as the story suggests because the ATC told him to do something with the transponder which he did without asking what or how. That may be fake news of course.
>>> the ATC told him to do something with the transponder which he did without asking what or how
The tower controller asked him to set the transponder to the 7700 emergency code, which he did. However he failed to press the 'IDENT' button, to actually initiate the sending of that code, and seemed unable to find it. You can listen to the radio communications in the video I posted at 1853.