THEGAYUK

Author: Jake Hook

  • Four Cheeky Tips To Get More Leg Room On A Flight

    Being crammed into a space not much bigger than a shoe box for hours on end isn’t fun and is not the ideal way to start your holiday. We’ve found 4 cheeky hacks that could get you some much need extra inches.

    Momondo’s have come up with 4 hot tips to get a little bit more leg room:

    Be seat savvy

    If you want the most legroom it often pays to choose the front seats or seats at the emergency exits in the middle of the plane. These have the most legroom, and this is the same pretty much no matter which airline you travel with.

    To sit by the emergency exit though, you’ll be required to be healthy and mobile, so you are able to help open the doors in case of an emergency. With some airlines you can choose your seats for free when booking the flight, whereas with others you can select a seat for a small fee.

    Prices for choosing seats vary depending on which company you go with, and how far you fly.

    Again, arrive early

    If you have not selected a seat in advance, we recommend showing up at the airport early to check in. The seats are often allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, and you can be lucky enough to get a seat with more legroom.

    Try DIY check-in

    Some automatic airport check-in machines allow you to pick your seat for free at check-in time.

    Aisle be back

    If you want to stretch your legs during the flight, it’s always wise to choose a seat near the aisle too, where it is easier to get out – and take a walk around the cabin.

     

    ALSO READ: How to get an upgrade on your flight…

  • TRAVEL: Top Tips On How To Get An Upgrade On Your Flight

    If you’re looking for a cheeky upgrade then travel search site Momondo.co.uk have a few recommendations.

    how to get an upgrade on your flight

    Choose a regional hub

    Firstly, fly from a smaller airport, as you are less likely to get an upgrade from a larger airport, especially if that airport is your carrier’s main hub.

    Don’t fly in the week

    Next, choose weekends to travel, which naturally attract less business travellers, leaving the premium cabins with more free seats.

    Join the club

    If you aren’t a member of a frequent flyer scheme then join one. Points can easily be turned into upgrades.

    Dress smart, look sharp

    Many people also recommend dressing smartly on the day, to get upgrades.

    You got mail

    Getting closer to departure, flyers should check their emails too, as many airlines may offer heavily reduced upgrade offers prior to boarding.

    Be an early bird

    Check in early, as if the plane is oversubscribed, your chances of being upgraded rise, if the flight is overbooked.

    Talk nuptials

    Lastly, mention the wedding! Airline staff are renowned for offering new brides and grooms upgrades and even complimentary champagne on board, to help celebrate their big day.

    What if that didn’t work?

    Hansen continues: “If travellers are cheeky, they can also cheat their way to a good seat on board the plane, without paying for an upgrade.”

    Perhaps just ask at the check in desk if there’s any chance of an upgrade – but don’t hold your breath!

  • Flying LongHaul: Tips From The Top

    January, long nights and short grey days we’re finding ourselves spending more and more time on Expedia dreaming up the perfect winter sun holiday. Let’s be honest we’re done with the cold and shorter days. We’re longing for some well-needed vitamin D and cocktails by the pool, with a good book.

    The world’s longest flight is Cathay Pacific’s 16 hour and 50-minute time sucker, from Hong Kong to New York. The longest direct flight from the UK is London to Buenos Aires that takes 13 hours and 45 minutes.

    There are some great long haul destinations but you have to be careful where you’re planning to stay as an open LGBT person. The middle east is a no go area if you’re gay and much of the far east also offers little protection for LGBTs. Towards the Americas, many of the Caribbean islands frown upon homosexuality and is illegal on some.

    Take a look at our long-haul anti-gay holiday destinations which might surprise you.

    FLYING LONG HAUL

    Flying long haul can be an incredible experience, especially if you can afford to turn left on entry and be seated amongst the rich and well healed, but even if you’re slumming it in coach, entertainment systems on the world’s renowned airlines are becoming second to none. Long gone are the days of the one bulkhead screen for an entire cabin and an entertainment system that had 1 hour of music on repeat.

    THE EYES HAVE IT

    The long hours in the recirculated air at 41,000 feet will definitely take their toll on your eyes, whether you wear contacts or not. You’ll find that your eyes will dry out quickly, so using drops might be a quick fix for you. Optrex optician Nick Atkins advises, “It is always advisable for contact lens wearers to remove their lenses when travelling on a long haul flight to avoid unnecessary discomfort from lens dehydration due to the very dry air conditioned environment of the cabin. There is also the possibility of falling asleep with the lenses in which might be an issue with some lens types. If lenses must be worn then the regular use of a good moisture retaining eye drop will help. In fact such a drop will also provide comfort and relief to non-contact lens wearers alike. One tip for CL wearers is to put a drop into the ‘bowl’ of the back surface of the lens for prolonged relief.”

    HYDRATION

    Don’t forget to keep yourself hydrated whilst your up in the clouds, also if you suffer a bit of traveller’s belly once you get to your destination, don’t forget to drink plenty of bottled water from a reputable source to keep your system hydrated. O.R.S Hydration tablets could also help you keep your fluids up.

    EAR, EAR

    Are you one of those people whose ears are affected by cabin pressure? When on a long haul flight, there are two factors to be taken into account. Firstly, there will be changes in cabin pressure that can affect our ears and hearing. Secondly, there will be noise from the aircraft’s engines that may encourage higher volume settings when listening to music or on-board entertainment using headphones or ear buds. Although cabin pressure is well controlled in modern aircraft, the changes in atmospheric pressure outside an aeroplane during the ascent after take-off and the descent for landing will cause cabin pressure to change. There can also be quite rapid variations in cabin pressure if air turbulence causes significant fluctuations in an aircraft’s altitude.  Normally, there are no adverse effects during the ascent after take-off as our middle ears adjust more easily when cabin pressure reduces a little. However, when descending for landing, cabin pressure increases and middle ear pressure does not self-adjust so easily. Passengers will usually feel pressure in their ears and experience reduced hearing but, in healthy ears, this can be quickly cleared by swallowing a few times or even yawning to open the Eustachian tubes thus allowing air into the middle ears to normalise the pressure and for hearing to return to normal. The same applies if air turbulence causes quite rapid changes in an aircraft’s altitude.middle ears adjust more easily when cabin pressure reduces a little. However, when descending for landing, cabin pressure increases and middle ear pressure does not self-adjust so easily. Passengers will usually feel pressure in their ears and experience reduced hearing but, in healthy ears, this can be quickly cleared by swallowing a few times or even yawning to open the Eustachian tubes thus allowing air into the middle ears to normalise the pressure and for hearing to return to normal. The same applies if air turbulence causes quite rapid changes in an aircraft’s altitude. How to protect your ears and your hearing from cabin pressure changes

    HIDDEN COSTS

    Obviously cost is a big factor in the long haul market, a search for prices of tickets to say San Francisco in the second week of November showed prices for £604 direct return, however prices from the 22nd of December, during Christmas week and the school holidays showed prices starting from £922 each way.

    Apparently, Tuesday is the cheapest day to book a flight, Friday is the most expensive. Afternoon flights are also pricier whilst red-eyes – those flights that travel at night are the cheapest. So plumping for a Tuesday night flight could save the pounds rather than a Friday afternoon flight.

    LEGROOM

    Legroom is like the gold of long-haul, cramped up for hours on end can make even the sanest of us looking at that emergency exit and thinking “go on… pull it…”

    Momondo’s have come up with 4 hot tips to get a little bit more leg room.

    Also tired and heavy legs might become a problem stuck back in the economy. Padma Circosan is a licensed herbal medicinal product, produced in Switzerland according to a proven recipe of Tibetan medicine, used for circulatory disorders including Raynaud’s, tired heavy legs, pain, swelling caused by minor venous circulatory ‘disturbances’ and calf cramp, it has circulation-stimulating and anti-inflammatory effects with many showing it to be effective in improving peripheral circulation after just a few weeks.

    It is available from UK pharmacies and health stores nationwide priced at £28.95 for 120 capsules or online at www.healthy2u.co.uk.

    GETTING OVER JET LAG

    Jet lag happens on journeys where the time difference is over 3 hours, so it is possible to get jet lag on intercontinental journeys from east to west, west or east across vast countries like, Canada, USA and Australia. However, you won’t get jet lag from north to south flights – say London to Cape Town in South Africa. Of course, you may still get general aircraft fatigue. Read our five tips on beating jet lag.

    AIR SICK?

    Still feeling nauseous from the motion of travelling? Try The Ginger People’s new Gin Gins CARAMEL – Tasty ginger and caramel sweets. They contain a massive 30% ginger per sweet. Working mainly in the digestive tract, ginger helps to boost digestive fluids and neutralise acids, making it an effective alternative to anti-nausea medication, without the possible unpleasant side effects. Call it a little traveller’s insurance! Gin Gins CARAMEL costs £1.55 for a 31g box and is available from Holland & Barrett stores nationwide.

    ALTERNATIVE ENTERTAINMENT

    Even though most airlines offer a substantial entertainment system the likelihood of finding LGBT programming on board is highly unlikely. In the airline’s quest to cater for every passenger in their entertainment choices, you might still be left unsatisfied with the offering, but you can always bring your smartphone or tablet on board packed with your favourite programming. If you’re into podcasts, acast is like Spotify but for Podcasts where there are many amazing series to listen to. From comedy, real life stories, factual entertainment to true crime, all of which will keep you entertained on long haul flights.

    COMPS TO COMPENSATION

    If your flight doesn’t go to plan you’re gonna need some help… Professional help. Here are our top tips.

    UPGRADE BABY

    Want to upgrade that cattle class to First? You’re going to need to take in these tips!

  • 11 Things You Won’t Miss By Quitting Booze

    11 Things You Won’t Miss By Quitting Booze

    I drive a Prius, I’m a vegetarian and I voted Liberal. I am your worst smug nightmare. I thought that life as I knew it would end, the parties, the laughter the falling over in the ditch… but it hasn’t and in fact, I can still outstay my welcome, be the last to leave a party and fall over at any time as required. It wasn’t the booze after all. Here are the 11 things you won’t miss if you go sober.

    1) White wine guilt.

    You know the feeling when you wake up after a heavy night and you think back to the conversations you had the night before and then it hits you, you started calling everyone a c**t for no particular reason, except for, at the time, you were passionate about particular cause and it seemed like the only word that fully explained the cause – and then you realise that “everybody” included your boss, mother, local vicar and the street cleaner.

    2) Lengthy debates about shit that doesn’t matter

    I like to debate and I’ll happily argue a point, even if I don’t agree with the point that I’m debating. If the person opposite is a good sparring partner I’ll even argue that Trump is the planet’s saviour. Being sober, of course, I’ve realised that I don’t need to take the debate to its natural conclusion of a 5AM-we’ve-drunk-everything-let’s-start-on-the-Archers-cause-there’s-nothing-left, drunken dribbling train wreck. I can just leave it now.

    3) Saying too much.

    I was a bit of an over-sharer – I still am to a certain extent. And it surprises me how much people, especially in business will give away when they’re drinking. Secrets and inside info are traded away for another glass of Blossom Hill. Next time you’re out on a do with a client, just ask a few probing questions, they’ll open up about all sorts of stuff that ultimately, sober, they’d never tell and you know what, it all leads to point 1.

    4) Having spent the best part of a week’s wages on one tragic Saturday night.

    Dear god when I look back at how much money I spent buying rounds over the years, I could have bought a house, a yacht and a reasonably sized pony. Now a Diet Coke (£2) and I’m anyone’s (not really). What did spending all that money get me? Nowhere. And in the morning when I wake and I look into my wallet, I don’t feel point 1.

    5) Grey saggy skin.

    Honestly, I’ve not aged. People always assume I’m still in my twenties and I’m happy about that. I don’t get Champagne face anymore. That look as though you’ve stood with your face too close to a Corby Trouser Press for too long.

    6) Repeating myself, repeating myself.

    Have you ever notice how dumb people who drink sound. First off we’d get irate about something and then we’d bulldoze our beef into any conversation and repeat, repeat and repeat until we pass out. We never listen to advice and we just keep on repeating…

    7) Night buses

    I take my smug car everywhere – I never have to endure a chip stinky N91 night bus ever again. Sure I’m missing all the dramz, the light petting and Camden, but I can get all of that on LBC on the wireless.

    8) Spending a fortune on cabs

    I no longer have to spend a mortgage on a cab getting back to wilds of north London. Are you hating me a little now, I would I’m sounding really self-righteous.

    9) Piling on the pounds

    Before, when I was drinking, I just couldn’t seem to lose weight. Pounds just seem to be constantly piling on, no matter how much I ran, went to the gym or ate less cheese. I’ve lost over a stone and excitingly the weight hasn’t crept on again. When you consider a bottle of wine has 600+calories in it and you drink maybe 3-4 in a week – you’re looking at 1800-2400 extra calories a week – a full day’s worth of calories extra. Over a year that’s 93600 -124,800 extra calories that you’re probably not burning off.

    10) Apathy

    Come wine o’clock – which could be from 5:30 PM in our office, I just wouldn’t get anything else done. My mind would literally shut off after the first sip and then after a glass, I’d become something of a less evil Jabba the hut crossed with an average British voter (completely apathetic). Goodbye, no energy and goodbye to the excuse monster.

    11) Depression

    For me, the greatest thing about not drinking anymore is less anxiety and general depression. I couldn’t work it out. Every few days, I would get an uncontrollable bout of depression. Really deep and out of nowhere. It wasn’t until I released that it was always 2 days after a bender of a night that I realised my anxiety and depression was being brought on and exacerbated by alcohol. In the year that I’ve stopped, I have two, manageable down days – as opposed to two a week.

     

  • MARGARET CHO | Joan Rivers Called Me Fat

    MARGARET CHO | Joan Rivers Called Me Fat

    Speaking to THEGAYUK comedian Margaret Cho reveals the close ties she had with Joan Rivers.

    Promoting her latest show in London, Margaret Cho confessed in an exclusive interview with THEGAYUK, that the late Joan Rivers called her “fat”
    Talking about the close relationship she had with the veteran comedian before she passed away aged 81, Cho, 47, said,

    “She was my champion for a quarter of a century and I’ll never get over the loss of her, even though she said I was fat.”

    Joan Rivers died in a New York hospital in 2014, during what should have been a routine procedure.

    Cho added, “She was my mother in entertainment and I am now … Melissa Rivers and I are still suffering and dealing with our grief daily. I just saw her (Melissa) yesterday. You never get over the loss of somebody so important, historically and personally.”

    Recentlly Margaret Cho revealed that nothing was off the table for her current show in London, even saying that it was never too soon to joke about terrorist attacks in Paris last month.

    Margaret Cho is performing in London at the Leicester Square Theatre until the 20th December.

  • Meet The Man Who Has Given Up Sex For Charity

    Meet The Man Who Has Given Up Sex For Charity

    How far would you go to raise money for a charity? A fun run? A bake sale? How about giving up sex? Well that’s exactly what Merseyside man Andrew Franchitti is doing… We catch up with him to find out how’s it going.

    (more…)

  • 10 UK Queens Who Would Slay In RuPaul’s Drag Race

    Imagine if you will, that there was a British Drag Race… Oh, how wonderful would that be. Well, there’s such a wealth of drag talent in the UK we’d be spoilt for choice, well here’s our top 10…

     

    10) Meth

    Slightly amazing… Beautiful to boot. A real contender for winner if there was a British Drag Race.

     

     

    9) Sassi Afrika

    Warwickshire’s number 1 drag queen – has released a number of tracks from her album Shockalolic our favourite in the office is Pink To Make The Boys Wink. Take a listen you’ll soon realise why it’s genius. She’s not working… She’s working it.

     

     

    8) Mary Mac

    A powerhouse Scottish queen, whose vocals are second to none. Was a part of the Supreme Fabulettes before going on to front her own show at The Admiral Duncan.

     

     

    7) Crystal D’Cantor

    This fabulous queen is what British Drag is all about, getting down with the crowd, wearing the biggest wig you can find/afford and animal print. Always animal print. You could write what this queen doesn’t know about backcombing on the back leg of a My Little Pony.

     

     

    6) Sandra

    There probably isn’t a club, bar, backroom or toilet that Sandra hasn’t performed in. Having been on the scene for over 15 years – Sandra has sworn, blown and bitch slapped her way to our top 10 ten. All hail the Whore Of Hampsted.

     

    5) Dave Lynn

    Ah Dave Lynn… In a career that’s spanned 35 years Dave Lynn knows how to control an audience like a wireless vibrator. She rose to fame after entering a competition at the now defunct Black Cap and the only queen to have appeared on The Weakest Link with Anne Robinson (praise be) 4 times.

     

     

    4) Dusty O

    Described as queen bee of Soho, you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of Dusty O once she’s up on stage, with mic in hand.

     

     

    3) Titti La Camp

    Basically RuPaul would have no idea what hit her if Titti was in the house – it’d most likely be a chicken leg. Titti La Camp’s routine, is, well the stuff of legend. The audience knows what’s coming up and loves every moment of it. From Michelle McManus to Karen Carpenter.

     

     

    2) Regina Fong

    Regina Fong is fondly remembered by those on London’s gay scene. She coined the phrase Her Imperial Highness. Sadly Fong died in 2003 from Cancer aged just 56.

     

     

    1) Paul O’Grady as Lily Savage

    Possibly the most famous drag queen the UK has ever enjoyed. Although Paul O’Grady is unlikely to don another pair of heels, we think Paul O’Grady could teach even Ru a thing or two about Drag.

     

  • INTERVIEW | Not Vlog Standard… The Out And Proud YouTubers

    There’s a new class. Class of YouTube.

    YouTubers are some of the hardest working creatives out there.

    With a combined (some of them have multiple channels) audience of around 1.2 million, or the same audience figures as a regular programme on a smaller UK broadcaster, we meet six out and proud YouTubers, who aren’t leaving their careers in the hands of some out of touch station programmer or network exec. YouTube blogging, or vlogging, if not the future is definitely about the now.

    It seems the world and their video cameras are up on YouTube making videos. The promise of book deals, crossing over to mainstream media and millions upon millions of fans, or subs as I’m told they’re sometimes referred to, seems tantalisingly easy to achieve. After all where’s the talent in turning on a camera and talking for 10 minutes about anything and everything?

    In this new age who is now the sieve. In days past network execs, focus groups and critics used to be the sieve, weeding out the crap ideas, the weak scripts and the wooden presenters. There was a system, and much like the music industry of past, those charged with commissioning had control over what, when and how you watched it.

    Now YouTubers have put the schedule in your hands. You are the sieve. You are now the casting couch. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of vloggers are vying for your attention. However, in this new world, just like the old fame formula, only a few will make it, but for how long is anyone’s guess.

    In amongst the cat and the Charlie-bit-my-thumb videos there are some gems, some really interesting commentators. Activists, psychologists in the making, social commentators and those who would find a perfect home on QVC, but just how influential are YouTubers and in a world of constant, unrelenting distraction, does it pay to lay it all out online? When every second of your life is bared for all to see, every detail pored over by thousands of viewers, what more is there to say?

    Six YouTubers, Miles (combined channel subscribers: 600,000), Will and RJ (combined: 350,000) Nicola (combined channels: 532,000), Ken (41,640) and Jake (73,400) cram into our studio for this month’s cover, cameras are out as they enter the building. It becomes clear that we’ve become material for their vlogs. No doubt within the coming days videos will surface of how we roll and that’s okay. We’re down with being hip.

    After our “Save By The Bell” inspired shoot, we get to it. I’m dying to know the why, the how and the how much?

    So why did you start?

    WILL: I knew when I started it was where the weird kids went to express themselves. I saw a friend of mine making videos. I saw that vlogging was a thing and that YouTube wasn’t just a place for cat videos. That made my mind explode. I decided to give it a try myself.

    MILES: I started because I was bored and had nothing else to do. So I started making videos for fun. I was just having fun with it.

    RJ: I started because I started dating him (pointing at Will)

    In the world of vlogging is there such a thing as over sharing?

    ALL: Yes…

    Who’s guilty of over sharing?

    WILL: I think we’ve all been guilty of over sharing at some point.

    JAKE: I try to keep my personal life as separate as possible. As much as I do all of my online stuff and my YouTube videos I have a personal life that I keep out. I don’t generally post too many photos of me and my friends or what I do for work. But I do talk about issues in my life, the things I’m thinking about. I try to keep that line, because I don’t want to become that person.

    WILL: Depends on the channel really, because what Jake does with his channel is different from what RJ and I do on our channels, because we film everyday, it’s like a video diary. Even then there are things that inherently just should be private. There’s no formula and everyone has different values on what they share and what they don’t share.

    KEN: There are sometimes when you wish you could edit it out

    NICOLA: (Smiling) Oh like there was this one time that I was vlogging…

    KEN: Oh yeah, he thought it would be a good idea to surprise me in the bathroom. I was naked.

    NICOLA: But I thought you couldn’t see it… (Because it was dark)

    KEN: I was like ‘do not upload that…’

    NICOLA: People screenshot it and started brightening it.

    KEN: Brightening the exposure. So my penis is somewhere on the Internet.

    WILL: I did not know that…

    JAKE: I will be Googling that later.

    So what separates vloggers sharing their lives, to Kim Kardashian over sharing?

    RJ: I think one of the reasons why people are starting to gravitate to YouTube, especially the younger generation is because they’re so over saturated with that overly produced crap and they can kinda sense a little bit of the artifice involved. This feels a little more organic and you know for a fact that everything you see is real. For the most part.

    NICOLA: We get to choose what we share.

    WILL: Which makes me so comforted knowing that I’m in control of what’s being shared.

    JAKE: When you get to a certain size (number of subscribers) you become quite accountable. Things you say things you do… you’re impressionable.

    Is the goal then to crossover from YouTube celebrity to Kim Kardashian? To be in the mainstream?

    MILES: Not necessarily. We all have our different goals. Being on YouTube can also be a bridge for that to happen. For me personally it would be to get into entertainment or to act or whatever. For Ken it could be for cooking,…

    KEN: I’m indifferent really. I’m not saying I’m against it. If it happens it happens I guess, but it’s not my goal.

    WILL: The beauty of YouTube is that we’re all here, we’re all best friends and all have such different goals with our channels. There’s different content out there. I don’t think any of us know what’s in store. We just kinda roll and go with the flow.

    KEN: We don’t even know what’s happening five minutes from now.

    RJ: It’s always difficult when you get the questions what’s the point? What’s the goal of YouTube? If and when it actually does go somewhere, you’re like “Okay, I guess I’m going to ride this horse for as long as I can.”

    NICOLA: When you reach a certain goal you’re always making new goals. I don’t really think there’s an end point. There’s always something new to strive for.

    RJ: It’s like fashion. Fashion is never finished.

    So if ABC or HBO got on the phone tomorrow and said: We’re gonna do Gay Friends we want you six to be in it would you be happy to do that, because suddenly you’d go from something you have control of to something that is heavily scripted and edited.

    JAKE: We all understand how the entertainment industry works. We’ve all dabbled a bit… YouTube kinda does that. We all have a big group chat; we’d literally ask each other “what do we think?” It’s a community, we’re friends and any opportunities that pop up we usually run it past each other.

    RJ: It’s funny you should mention Friends, because when we’re at a YouTube gathering and I meet parents and the parents are “like why are my kids losing their minds over this?” I’m like, “picture Friends but imagine that Phoebe, Ross, Joey – all of them are all real people and everything you see happening is real and better yet, you can actually directly interact with them on twitter or in the comments on videos. How much more excited would you get to watch each episode?”

    KEN: The characters that you fall in love with or identify with are actually real not fictional.

    So are you the new entertainment industry?

    NICOLA: We’re separate.

    RJ: Whenever there’s a new media platform everybody

    always talks about how it’s going to replace old stuff and it never ends up happening. Movies didn’t replace radio, TV didn’t replace movies, the Internet didn’t replace print, it just evolved. Things learn to play together.

    KEN: We have our own playing field, because we don’t fit in yours.

    So how do you take your channel to the next level? To reach the dizzying heights of hundreds of thousands or millions of subscribers?

    KEN: There’s no formula.

    JAKE: It’s like a combination of luck and being charismatic.

    MILES: Timing.

    NICOLA: It also helps if a bunch of your friends also do it.

    RJ: Having a distinct voice. Knowing what makes your perspective unique also helps.

    JAKE: Being passionate. If you’re going to make a video you do it 500 per cent you don’t even give it 100. You go for it and if you want to talk about something you talk about it like it’s the most important thing in the world.

    RJ: If you don’t have fun making videos how do you expect someone to have fun watching you?

    How important are production values?

    JAKE: Ultimately I don’t know sh**.

    MILES: People place importance on it now because everybody has a super HD DLSR camera and it’s not necessary.

    RJ: You can pretty much use whatever works for you… YouTube has democratised the process. You don’t need a big expensive set, cameras or lights just as long as you have a really entertaining voice. I will say this though; once you upgrade you can never go back down. If you just start off with your iSight and you can make it work that’s fine. But the minute you upgrade you can’t go back down and go back, because people will notice and start to complain.

    MILES: I did that once. Fu** ‘em.

    KEN: Even the length of blogs… We used to vlog and they’d be 3 to 5 minutes and we uploaded a 15 minute vlog and they (the audience) were like “Yeah we like this…” When we went back down they were up in arms.

    So YouTube want people to stay longer and longer on the site, you’re part of the cogs that make the whole thing work. Do you get much say in the pre-rolls or the ads at the bottom?

    ALL: Nope.

    Ever seen an ad, where you’re like ‘I don’t want that against my content?’

    WILL: All the time. We get Mormon Singles. Christian Mingle…

    JAKE: I’m like; oh you’re missing the target market here just a little…

    RJ: Romney advertised on my channel, and I was like oh sweetie… No.

    What about private sponsorships?

    NICOLA: It’s really important to like what you’re promoting.

    WILL: People will catch it if you’re disingenuous.

    JAKE: It’s still us, it’s still authentic, the second it changes, not only do we notice but everyone watching does.

    KEN: It feels contrived.

    RJ: No detail goes unnoticed on the Internet.

    MILES: If I don’t like something, I’ll put it up and review it and tell everyone how bad it is.

    RJ: This is why you need to know your brand. Once you know what works for you.

    Can you talk about how it felt when your channel changed from your hobby to your business? The moment the first sponsor called up or when you went from 5 subscribers to thousands.

    MILES: For me it was when my Like Mah Status video blew up. It was all over the place any my current MCN (multi channel network) Style Haul called me and they invited me to partner with them and I, being only 17 or 18 at the time, was like: ‘Okay… Money’, and I signed my life away for two years.

    I was able to fly myself out to VidCon, and get hair extensions for the first time…

    WILL: and a goddess was born…

    VidCon is the largest multi genre online video conference which has been held annually in California since 2010, this year’s conference will take up five floors of the Anaheim Convention Centre.

    PICTURED: L-R JAKE, RJ, KEN, WILL, MILES, NICOLA

    RJ: As far as our channel was concerned when we went to NextUp.

    WILL: We applied for this programme, very last minute, out of thousands and thousands of channels that applied only 30 were selected. We only had like 25,000 subscribers at that point…

    RJ: But you’re taking workshops from YouTube in how to engage your audience, best practices and they are there telling you, “Listen…”

    BOTH: “You Can Do This!”

    RJ: “If you take this seriously you’re on to something”. We were living in Florida at the time and they were like “move to LA…”

    JAKE: For me I was like “How does YouTube know who I am?” they take the time to actually select out the people they think that can really do something with it. They give us advice.

    RJ: It’s a game changer for sure.

    Is there ever a worry that you’re going to piss YouTube off?

    KEN: Hummm… that happened. I was in YouTube’s Next Chef. I suddenly had traffic coming in my channel and they were saying there were some illegal clicks. I have no clue what that means. So they shut down my channel.

    Is it easy to get reinstated?

    KEN: No. It’s impossible.

    RJ: Did you get click bombed?

    KEN: Yeah.

    So do you have to start again?

    KEN: Yeah, I had to start all over again.

    RJ: I had to start another channel too. There was a hiccup at YouTube and you’re back to square one.

    KEN: You cannot use your name or email ever again to make a channel. You can, but you cannot ever be partnered again.

    JAKE: You’re blacklisted.

    Is it important to be partnered?

    ALL: Yes!

    KEN: That’s basically how you get paid.

    Do you read your comments?

    ALL: Yes.

    RJ: You have to go through your comments. YouTube isn’t just posting videos on the platform; it’s also about building a community with your audience. So you do have to interact with them.

    KEN: There’s also a difference between someone giving you a nice criticism and there’s people who are just awful.

    WILL: As far as our channel goes, I have to have RJ go through our channel and go through all the crap before I can actually go through and respond. As a daily blog so many people tend to pass judgement on the way you live your life. I never realised how upsetting my day-to-day routine has been for a lot of people. The littlest things, the way I set my silver wear on the table… the way that I decide to go to bed… really upsets people.

    RJ: What we eat, how we eat it…

    WILL: How I decorate. I wanted to put blinds and curtains up… my comment section was just filth.

    RJ: YouTube gives you tools. There’s the remove comment button, ban user button…

    JAKE: And you can filter certain words.

    RJ: You can put “faggot” in your filter and as soon as that word is used the comment is removed. There are tools at your disposal. There was one video that just seemed to get a ton of hate and it was really vitriolic. That was when I decided to start blocking people. I noticed, I really only had to block five people. They were the ones that were leaving comment after comment after comment. I just had this epiphany that there are people who are just spending hours upon hours just going through trying to be negative. It’s more of a reflection on them than us.

    KEN: It’s more of a compliment for you.

    RJ: There are people who are like if you block one account they’ll create a whole new account… gurl… come on.

    Will vloggers destroy YouTube in the same way bands arguably helped destroy MySpace?

    MILES: Oh…

    KEN: I don’t know but… Everyone has their own voice on YouTube; everyone has their own audience.

    RJ: I don’t think YouTube is going to become MySpace unless a Facebook type thing comes along and makes it obsolete.

    JAKE: They’re really ahead of the game. If something’s not working they’ll change it. They’re really intuitive and dynamic and on top of it.

    MILES: They’re connected to Google. They’re powerful.

    JAKE: I don’t think it’s something we need to worry about it’s more about us being adaptive to anything they change, we need to fall into, which they’ve done many times in the last year without telling us.

    RJ: Things can change without warning and you have to be able to go with the flow. YouTube pretty much changed the game when it comes to online video. Right now there’s no other platform out there that has the audience.

    In a recent interview with Out Magazine (JAN 2015) Tyler Oakley (6,800,000 subscribers) said there was no hierarchy. That no one is above anyone else in the YouTube community… Is there a YouTube hierarchy?

    JAKE: In a perfect world…

    KEN: I plead the fifth.

    MILES: It’s there for sure.

    RJ: All that can change. Nothing is permanent on YouTube. Just because someone’s the sh** now, doesn’t mean that’s going to be that way forever. The mighty have fallen, multiple times.

    JAKE: I think it’s important for people who rise right to the top to give the people who are smaller advice and pick them up, hold their hand, still talk to them and don’t get too big for your boots. At the end of the day… they started at zero.

    RJ: Everyone starts at Zero.

    JAKE: Tyler Oakley, all of us can agree, nobody works harder. He deserves every bit of success he has, but because he endlessly works.

    RJ: I think all of us are here, partially because somebody who was bigger than us helped us…

    WILL: and gave us a leg up.

    CHANNELS:

    WILL AND RJ

    MILES

    JAKE

    KEN

    NICOLA

    This interview was taken from Issue 12. Subscribe now and don’t miss another issue

  • SINGLE REVIEW: Showbiz Christmas, Simon Gross

    Ahhh… Christmas camp.

    There are three things we want in a Christmas song: 1) Camp 2) Camp and 3) Camp and Big Brother’s Showbiz showman Simon Gross delivers all three in outstanding measure in his insta-hit Showbiz Christmas.

    Gross manages to shoehorn in his well-worn, some may argue genius catchphrase “Showbiz” into 3 minutes and 10 seconds of pure Christmas campness, the likes of which we haven’t seen since Cliff Richard released Mistletoe and Wine.

    Move over Weather Girls, Madonna and Wham, we have a contender for the gayest Christmas single ever released.

    If you mix Peter Kay’s Once Upon A Christmas Song, with Britney’s My Only Wish you’re starting to get close to Simon’s Showbiz Christmas.

    Fairly speaking it won’t or can’t match Mariah’s 1994 mega hit All I Want For Christmas, which has entered the UK charts every Christmas since 2005, when chart rules changed to allow digital purchases count towards them, but it makes a fair attempt at giving the UK an alternative to whatever bland winner’s song that Simon Cowell is bound to give the UK as it’s Christmas number 1.

    With proceeds going to Centrepoint, the charity that aims gives homeless young people a future; there’s never been a better reason to change the Christmas number 1

    Available to buy from iTunes and Amazon

  • TV REVIEW: Scream, TV Series

    All you Slasher movie/Wes Craven fans out there Netflix has come up trumps with a new TV series called Scream.

    A Lone girl at home with phone communications coming from within the house… Check.

    Lone girl in a garage with the lights off… Check.

    Geeky virgin guy talking about how the murderers stalk their victims… Check.
    A small town high school is rocked, twice, first time after a video of the non-plastic, emo-y, dark haired girl kissing passionately with another girl goes viral on YouTube, the second time, after one of their prom queen contenders is brutally slashed from ear to ear and left dead in her swimming pool.

    But don’t mistake this for a TV version of the astronomic hit Scream series of films that wowed and scared teens in equal measures across the world in the late 90s and early noughties, the offering is different, think Scream meets Halloween.

    The story, just like the films, is very tongue in cheek, served with the same knowing and revealing gags thatScream (the film) became famous for and spawned the even more popular Scary Movie franchise, however it does feel incredibly dated, very last century. The fact that the creators have chosen a mostly white, blonde, thin, toned, rich-kid cast feels too conceited than a tongue in cheek nod at casting choices of the last century– and the idea that a lesbian – (read bi-curious) kiss could cause such controversy in 2015, in a high school, is a little unbelievable, unlike the uproar it would have caused in the mid/late 90s.

    Although Wes Craven, who sadly passed away in August this year, did not write or direct this series, he is credited as an exec producer.
    Purists of the genre, however, will love the jumps, the gore and the suspense as Lakewood’s series slasher dispenses with rich kid after rich kid, however perhaps a more mature audience looking for a more grown up Slasher proposal might need to look further.

     

  • THEATRE REVIEW: Pam Ann Queen Of The Skies, Leicester Square Theatre

    She’s still got it. Forty-Six she reminds us, and still has lots of wear left in those knees. ★★★★

    And as those noisy punters she had removed from the front row will attest, as feisty as ever. Pam Ann is the unchallenged Queen of the skies and looking around at the packed Leicester Square theatre – queen of the gays as well – with every c*ck joke, every rim job mention provoking whoops of excitement that explode across the small auditorium.

    It’s not hard to understand why the gays have taken Pam under their collective wing for nearly 20 years, in an interview with this very magazine in 2013 she said about the gay community,

    “They didn’t create Pam Ann; they created my whole fking life and my existence. That’s why I have not got married. I have not had kids. I am a fking gay man, 99 per cent of my friends are gay so they can take responsibility for everything. My vocabulary is gay, I speak gay, everything is gay. I f**k like a gay so you know, I say they created my whole existence and Pam Ann.”

    There’s something different though with Pam Ann, perhaps a little more self-aware than her usual, it feels a little Pam Ann 2.0. In this show there’s a lot less “air” jokes and hardly any of her beloved characters, such as Lily, Valerie and Helga. The first part gives way to a full on stand up routine and while much is in the character, Caroline Reid (Pam Ann’s creator and body) is it seems, breaking and aching to get out.

    Don’t get me wrong; she still gets in the ‘ass-like-a-hippo’s-yawn’ gag (it was at 3 minutes and 42 seconds, but who’s counting) and she still flies in the headwind of the PC brigade, using race, religion, heterosexuals and class as her bread and butter material, much to the applause of the crowd.

    While some media outlets will call her shtick out-dated and a product of days past, our community needs levity and moment to stop eating itself from the inside and listen to some of the pearls that fall from Reid’s mouth – and she knows that. With a knowing eye she momentarily tips her hat off to one particuarly hotly contested word – to the delight of the audience.

    But what if Pam wasn’t Pam anymore? Instead we have Caroline… I’m excited about the prospect; does she need to be dressed up in the uniform to still be hailed high as one of the campest comic creations by the gay community? The question is will we let her flamboyant, coked up stewardess character go? Will we let Reid fly, shed the wingtips and become a fully-fledged real person rather than the institution she’s become?

    Pam Ann Queen of The Skies is on at the Leicester Square Theatre until November 30th.