do?
SPENCER OWEN
I’ve had moments. I’ve been amazingly privileged to have played football in front of crowds of 20,000 and 30,000 people multiple times, which I never thought I’d say. And they’re amazing moments. The last Wembley Cup, I played in front of 34,000 people. I’ve put on that whole event – that was my baby. Huge success. Within an hour of the game finishing I’m sort of sitting there thinking, ‘What do I? What’s next?’ And you hear from World Cup winners – a much higher level. They win a World Cup, have half an hour of elation and ‘Oh my God, this is so good.’ And then suddenly you’re thinking I’ve just completed the one thing I had in my life driving me. So I think that it’s really important to stress that it’s not going to solve your problems. If you’ve got problems you need to deal with them wherever you are, whatever you do. I think that so many guys I talk to behind the scenes, hugely popular YouTubers with many more subscribers than I have, making crazy, crazy money, to the outside world have got everything they could possibly need. But they’ve just got no motivation. And you hit a point where you think, ‘So what am I doing it for?’
IAIN STIRLING
I mean, if you’re 20 and you’re jet-skiing in the Caribbean and have a massive big house, that’s cool, but what do you do when you’re … what do you when you’re 30 or 31?
SPENCER OWEN
I’m pretty confident that you weren’t, at the age of 5 or 6 or 10 or 15, saying, ‘I want to be a stand-up because I want to have a big house.’
IAIN STIRLING
I didn’t know it was a thing.
SPENCER OWEN
You wanted to do stand-up.
IAIN STIRLING
But also because of my background I never knew that stand-up was … I mean, I knew there were Billy Connolly and Lee Evans and they were superstars, but I didn’t know you could make a living doing what I do. I did a show in Birmingham, 400 people, sold out the room, and I couldn’t believe it. I’m delighted with that. But if I was selling out the Birmingham Glee on my own tour when I was 22, I’d want to be at Wembley now. You’d drive yourself insane. That’s why I’ve enjoyed it, but I’m glad I’ve done uni and even the kids’ TV thing. It was a bit of fame but it’s not mad.
SPENCER OWEN
Yeah. You also learned the trade in so many ways.
IAIN STIRLING
Yeah. A central London club isn’t letting the guy that talks to a puppet dog in for free to a table with a bottle of vodka, and I’m not getting paid enough money to pay for it myself so I’m not going to those places. But then it comes when I’m 28 and I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s too loud, I want a seat.’
SPENCER OWEN
It’s the same with me. I get a load of plaudits from people, from parents saying they like my channel for their kids or whatever. It’s not that it’s something that deserves praise, it’s just that if I was doing what I do now at 18, I wouldn’t be making those rubbish videos probably, because I made those videos and no one watched them. I didn’t make videos filming a guy committing suicide in a forest, so, as a moral barometer, I’m certainly not at that level of it. But when we’re younger we do make mistakes. And a lot of the other YouTubers have never done anything that bad, but they’ve still made silly videos. I would have done it too. It’s just I never really knew what I wanted to do. Now I have ideas and there’s other things I’d like to go and try to do, but it was only when I was like 23, 24, maybe even 25, and I left full-time employment and deliberately said, ‘Right, I’m going to try and do this.’ Most of the YouTubers aren’t even that age yet. So how can they expect to know these answers? I remember sitting down with my dad when I finished uni, and I actually said to him, ‘What advice can you give me?’
IAIN STIRLING
If I had said that to my daddy he would have crumbled.
SPENCER OWEN
I remember him saying something quite boring – take your time, find what you want to do, don’t rush into anything, don’t rush into getting married, don’t rush into settling down, don’t rush into living in one place or doing one job. Just take your time, which was quite valuable in many ways. So I went and tried things. I did things I didn’t like, I did loads of jobs I didn’t like, some of which were rubbish jobs, some of which were actually good jobs, but I didn’t like them.
IAIN STIRLING
And that’s another problem with this social-media thing. It’s not just footballers or YouTubers, now everyone succeeds so young. You go and watch something like Britain’s Got Talent, and there’s a 17-year-old saying, ‘This is my last shot now.’ What you are talking about? You’re 17. You’ve got a young person’s railcard for another 10 years. You’re fine. The rush to get there almost comes down to that Instagram thing of ‘What’s the point in winning an Oscar when you’re 40 because you won’t even look good in a selfie?’
SPENCER OWEN
I’d much rather win an Oscar at 60.
IAIN STIRLING
Oh, mate.
SPENCER OWEN
Cos if you win it at 20 you’ve been to the moon. Where do you go?
AGE-WISE, WE’RE ALL IN THE ‘SHIT BIT’
In the same way that Spencer had the support of his dad, having a family around me is actually the main thing that has saved me from the fear of growing old and becoming an adult doomed to spend my life sitting on a couch in comfy slippers while struggling to understand technology. I look at my family at their different stages of life and realise that it’s not all bad. The beginning of life is great, we all know. Being properly young, not having a care in the world and more importantly having parents who are literally there to serve you from dawn till dusk. They read books that you tell them to sing to you. Sing! Grown adults have to learn songs and perform them to you like you’re a Roman emperor. A mini Roman emperor who could at any point shit himself.
Parents have a legal obligation to look after you, no matter what you do. That’s mad if you think about it. At the age of three you could just go about sticking marbles up your bum and some fully grown adult would have to say, ‘Well, I guess that’s our day spent sorting out the marble situation, then.’ If I had fully comprehended that notion as a kid I would have stuffed so much stuff up my bum at every possible occasion. ‘It’s pieces of Lego today, Dad. Forget the NHS, I think it’ll be worth going private because this will be happening a lot. And if you do nothing, the courts will get involved!’ For many millennials (particularly myself) this carries on long into your adult life. Well, maybe not the marbles thing – I’ve not done that in months now.
As great as being young is, there is a bit towards the end of life that I properly relish – being properly old, like nearly done, old. I can’t wait to get to the stage when I can go out in public with my family, say something horrific and then just turn to them and say, ‘Well, now that’s your problem.’ Go to the restaurant, scream something politically incorrect, turn to my son and say, ‘You go deal with that and I’ll stay here and finish off my Bolognese … I would probably tip the guy too – I was out of order!’
