Hello! It’s March 2020 and I’m in my apartment.
Errr yep, I’m on corona lockdown
and that is going to make it difficult to film any travel videos,
so I suppose this might be a good time to do a subscriber Q&A,
but you know the rules,
we’re not doing that until we hit 100,000.
Luckily though, you lot
are a bunch of legends.
Right, before we get to your questions
I’d just like to say thank you to everyone for watching, commenting, and subscribing,
and it’s such a YouTube cliché to say it means a lot to me
but right now it really does.
Because thanks to you I can still work, I've got things to do,
And I've got 100,000 people to chat to. So I feel very lucky.
Alright, let’s get the big one out of the way first.
Tastyworm asks “how are you dealing with COVID-19? Given all the new travel restrictions,
are you having to adjust your plans?”
Yes - I haven’t mentioned this before but I recently moved to France,
specifically to make it easier to travel around the rest of Europe,
and within days of me arriving they’ve closed the borders and shut down the whole country.
So things haven’t quite gone to plan there
but look, they had to do it, and it’s going to be the same in the UK very soon anyway.
We’re on complete lockdown here, we literally have to print out and sign a legal form just
to go and buy food,
and if you want to go out and work you need an extra form signed by your employer,
so if you are for example a self-employed travel YouTuber, there’s not a lot you can
do.
The good news is that I made a couple of trips before the shutdown which I can still turn
into videos,
I’ve essentially been stockpiling the footage,
so those will be out soon.
After that, if travel is still restricted, we might need to get creative,
so if you’ve got any ideas for videos I can make without travelling, please send them
in.
OK now for the questions you most voted for.
Geography World asks “How many countries have you been to?”
Well here’s the map, some of them are a little bit controversial whether they’re
countries or not,
one of which I made a video about,
but it’s between 56 and 59.
Geography World (again), Jesse Mallen and Interfdsa all ask “How many languages do
you speak?”
I speak English, je parle Francais évidemment,
ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch, parlo un poco italiano,
и я говорю очень плохо па-русски.
And if the secret services weren’t monitoring me already, then they are now.
Stevie The Fool rightly congratulates himself on a good question and then asks
“we often see you alone but do you genuinely have no friends?
Are you a complete psychopath?
Should we be worried?”
So if I can I prefer travelling with friends, it’s more fun when you share the experience,
and you’ve got someone to look after your bags when you go to the loo,
but to answer your actual question yes I end up making a lot of video filming trips on
my own
because it’s often midweek, it quite often on the spur of the moment,
and friends aren’t always able to drop everything to go and see a stone in the middle of a field
in northern Luxembourg.
Huh. Maybe I just need new friends.
Dead Inside (and a lot of you actually) asks Where is your favourite place in the world?
So to let you into a secret, I was planning a whole video about this
because a long time ago, I thought if we ever get 100,000 people subscribing to this channel,
I will take my YouTube silver plaque and I will go to my favourite place in the world.
And I never thought that the travel was going to be the difficult part of that but there
you go.
Anyway hopefully one day when we can travel again I will answer that question with a video
– so hang on in there!
Uruhara12Squad, who has been here since the 1000 subscriber special, asks
"How does it feel to be a YouTube celebrity now?"
Ah you know it hasn’t really changed me
Jasper Welsch asks "Where did you learn to produce your videos? They are quite good."
I don’t do anything flashy or complicated in my editing so there wasn’t really a lot
to learn
but if you are looking for tutorials I recommend a Dutch guy on YouTube called Orange83,
he covers the basics as well as some more complicated stuff
and it’s all really well presented, easy to follow, and easy to learn.
Tundra1232 asks "do you button your shirt top down or bottom up?" and somehow gets 98
upvotes.
At the risk of offending half of you it is...
top down.
The only way it’s ever bottom up is if I’m standing on my head.
Devernhansack asks: Are there any YouTubers that were highly influential to your style
of videos?
Yes - I’d say the three biggest influences on this channel are Tom Scott, Geoff Marshall
and Jay Foreman.
I’m lucky enough to have met both Geoff and Jay – hi guys if you’re watching – and
they’ve both been really supportive and just generally lovely blokes.
And I’m sure Tom’s a lovely bloke too, I just haven’t met him.
Anyway when I started this channel I was kind of aiming for a mid-point between those three,
and I feel like I’ve achieved that,
because I’m not as professional as Tom,
I'm not as knowledgeable as Geoff,
and I’m not as funny as Jay
And finally absolutely everyone asks how do you afford to do all this travelling?
So as a British person I am genetically uncomfortable talking about money,
but the short answer is savings.
When I started this channel it was because I had spent 5 years saving up so that I could
quit full-time work for a bit and go travelling,
and even then I was still doing part-time work to support it.
But now we’re getting to the point where YouTube is kind of my main job,
and that is mad, so thanks you all of you for watching the videos and sitting through
the ads, to allow me to do this.
I feel particularly lucky right now because I know a lot of people are losing work and
having a tough time,
so before we end this video I’d like to give a couple of shutdown shoutouts:
(And just to explain these are ideas of things for you to do during shutdown and you’ll
also be supporting someone whose regular work has dried up because of the corona crisis.)
Firstly if you’d like a new podcast to get into, my friend Rich Wilson,
who is an actual proper comedian,
has a great one about men’s mental health, it’s called Insane In The Men Brain
and every Friday Rich invites a guest to come on, and just open up and talk about stuff
both serious and silly.
And if you know the UK comedy scene, you’ll know a lot of his guests.
Obviously all of Rich's regular standup work has been cancelled at the moment so I'm sure
he'd love some extra listeners.
And secondly, if you’d like something creative to do for you or your kids,
my friend Evie normally works as a tour guide but she’s also a talented artist specialising
in illustrations for children’s books
and she’s running online illustration workshops for anyone age 5 and up.
You can book a session on her website, she’s offering them for free with an option to donate.
Links on screen and in the description!
And that’s about it for today, thank you all for watching,
and I know it’s weird to hear this from me but please don’t travel at the moment
unless it’s absolutely essential,
you can literally save someone’s life by sitting on your sofa,
so stay safe, stay indoors, and I will see you soon.