TEN STEPS TO YOUTUBE STARDOM
Ben Kelly is an UCL English student from Northern Ireland, who'sYoutube renditions of popular music have secured a viewership of over 200,000. In our continued quest to become somebody, we decided to chat to him about how to obtain Youtube stardom and deal with the consequences. It is tough up there after all, just look up SuBo. Actually don’t, she just can’t cope with all the hits.1. PISS OFF YOUR FAMILY: I've been singing and performing my whole life, much to the annoyance of my family, but I didn't start playing piano until I was 10, which is a bit late compared to all the whizz kids I went to school with. Then I started writing songs when I was 14, and I've just been putting it all together ever since.
2. ...LISTEN TO YOUR LITTLE SISTER: It was my little sister's idea to start the YouTube thing - it was basically just to share with everyone else the kind of stuff I do in my free time at home, and also to gauge a sense of whether people would like my style or not.
3. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE 'POP FACTOR': My musical influences come from all over the place, in almost every genre, but the biggest ones are Michael Jackson and Madonna for the pop factor, Stevie Wonder and Prince for the r'n'b/soul/funk sound, and for their excellent piano playing. I also love David Bowie for his eclectic style/the whole Ziggy Stardust thing.
4. DABBLE IN EVERYTHING. What!? No, put down the drugs and just listen:The music I write, which I hope to get recording and put out there very soon, is very much a fusion of all my influences - essentially it's piano-based pop, but it dabbles in dance music, jazz, soul, all sorts really.
5. BRAIN WAS TALKING SENSE WHEN HE TOLD PINKY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD: The response on YouTube has been phenomenal - I couldn't have wished for better. In 6 months I've had nearly 200,000 views, and especially over the summer that started rocketing up. People's comments have been fantastic, I have a lot of support all over the world now, which really helps for trying to get myself launched out there. The dream is to write, record and perform all over the world, entertaining as many people as I can - that's not too ambitious now is it?
6. DO A DEAR, A FEMALE DEAR, RAAAAAAAAAY A DROP OF GOLDEN SUUUN: I think I'm more influenced by contemporary music, but musicals are a major influence on me - I've been watching and starring in them my whole life - I'm even doing Into The Woods at the Bloomsbury this December. That has been really key to my style, not just from a theatrical perspective, but throughout history some of the greatest music from various eras have been represented through musicals, from music hall to cabaret, rock and roll to disco - they're bursting with imagination, and everyone loves them.
7. HAVE SOME BALLS: I've been on the stage my whole life - although at the beginning, I was terrified of audiences, and there were a few incidents of little Ben fluffing it in competitions or crying at drama class, but when I got to secondary school I did big parts in shows like Singin' in the Rain and Oklahoma and that worked wonders for my confidence. They can't get me off the stage now. That's where I am right now...
8. …ON THE SECOND DATE: I'm quite confident, but I don't think I'd be ballsy enough to serenade on a first date...maybe on a second!
9. GO FORTH AND CONVERT: My friends are late converts to the Ben Kelly fanbase - they didn't take me seriously for quite some time, but I think they're coming round to the idea now that they see other people actually enjoy listening to me.
10. A DIVA IS A FEMALE VERSION OF A HUSTLER, A DIVO IS A MALE VERSION OF DIVA...ERR, THAT MAKES SENSE RIGHT?: I have never been called a Divo backstage - only at home with my family.
And on that note, we’ve come back full circle to Ben pissing off the folks. Now you too can become a YouTube star…or you could just see Ben instead because he’s probably a better singer than you and we always recommend living vicariously.
EXTRA FACTOR: Become a true Ben Kelly fan by watching him perform on stage. He’ll be playing some Monday nights at the ISHbar on Great Portland Street so drop by. And once you’ve been converted you can follow him to Ireland where he will be supporting folk singer Mickey Coleman. For more details join the 'Ben Kelly Fans' group on Facebook.
MK,BK & CF
Alex Zane on Student Life: "Gosh! This is going to be terrible. All my stories are going to be about masturbation!"
Some people are too cool for school. Two-time drop out Alex Zane tells us how to befriend Welsh weirdos, give back-chat to lecturers and generally laugh in the face of higher education.
ON UNI HALLS:"Honesty exists on a multitude of levels"
Jethro, Alex’s welsh friend from Max Rayne Hall at UCL back in 1998 created a big bang. “He used to throw things out the window that shouldn’t be thrown out of windows. We had a lovely garden gnome in the kitchen that was thrown out the window. Someone had a beautiful pot plant that they’d been growing for years – Jethro threw that.” His needs to launch gardening accessories out the sixth floor window stemmed from his deep-rooted rage issues following a traumatic freshers experience that would confuse even Freud: “We were all playing a game where you tell stories in which we felt we created a very safe zone in which honesty was the policy . Sadly many of us were aware that dealing in the currency of honesty only leads to trouble so you always deal in a certain kind of lower honesty- a degree of honesty but not honesty in its purest form and Jethro, however, was new to the idea of honesty existing on a multitude of levels and consequently told us a story about how he personally chose to masturbate on his side while laying out a toilet roll in front of him to catch material exiting his body, the matter if you will, and we called it the Jethro Sidewank.” Don’t worry. We can assure you that Jethro hasn’t been smuggled into a Welsh mental hospital; Alex Zane still facebooks him.
ON MIND-ALTERING SUBSTANCES: "The nice man in Camden was in fact a drug dealer who made the girls cry."
Jethro wasn’t the only one to be lulled into a false sense of security and then regret a freshers transgression. “The thing is we were all so green and you think you’ve got life experience as a fresher. I walked in with this kind of cocky arrogance: ‘seen it all, done it all nothing shocks me, I’m a world weary traveller!’” Alex recalls in true freshers spirit chatting to a random stranger in a “well dancy” club in Camden, taking him back home to flat full of friends only to discover that the nice man in Camden was in fact a drug dealer who made the girls cry.
ON SEX: "must be done in groups..."
Alex is quick to remind us that if you are going to do something bad, it is best to do it in a group. “Thanks to the unfortunate horseshoe shape of Max Rayne (a UCL uni hall), fifteen of us watched a girl’s Italian boyfriend… masturbate into the sink in [her] room through a window. He kept bringing himself to the climax and then stopping for about 30 seconds and doing the whole things again. I was intrigued! Granted, if I had been alone granted with condensation forming on the glass with every breath I took that would have been weird but there was a group of people so there was that kind of acceptable comaradery.”
ON MAKING FRIENDS: "We have nothing but the fact we live together in common."
We’ve all had our Jethro’s and Italian wankers, so just how do you cope with being thrust into a corridor with such weirdoes? Alex advises “It’s important to make friends with the people in your halls or at least be on talking terms because no matter how weird they are you are stuck with them for at least 7 months… You can always go ‘we have nothing but the fact we live together in common. Aren’t these tiles nice in the kitchen? Ooo the windows are slightly cleaner today.’” But remember, this is the guy who befriended a drug dealer and went home with him…
ON CLEANLINESS:"I put a mop through the kitchen wall and then moved a poster over it so noone ever knew.”
We point out that it doesn’t take a fresher version of Magnus Magnerson to smash the paper-thin walls of UCL Halls. A defensive Alex agrees, “That’s what I said to the dean of students as I was being chucked out."
ON EXTRA-CURRICULAR LIFE:"Alright lets do something a little bit proactive"
He spent most of his time starting comedy nights, student radio shows and starring in the only instalment of a UCL Film & TV soc. series imaginatively called ‘The College.’ “Freshers week for me was half getting blind drunk and sleeping with the wrong people and half actually going ‘alright lets do something a little bit proactive’ as a step towards what you might want to do in life…like going on to do Xfm.Potentially!”
ON URBANIA: plug,plug,plug...
But there is more to London than career prospects in the media and my can Alex wax-lyrical about that. “Freshers week in London is ten times the freshers week anywhere else….London is always good. Go check out some comedy. And then there is always First Friday of course- the best indie disco in London at Islington Academy courtesy of Xfm.”
So there you have it: the Freshers Gospel according to Alex Zane. The first commandment: join more societies than there is time in the day. The second: remember drug dealers are not your friends. The third: be honest but not Sidewank honest. for.
Elishka Flint and MK
Harry Potter hottie: Does Freddie Stroma put you in a coma?
Freddie Stroma, the latest edition to the 'Hogwarts set' is the perfect fit for the part of Cormac McLaggen. An outspoken, self assured and dreamy Gryffindor, McLaggen, is the breakthrough star of the most current Potter film, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. In the film, Stroma plays the Quidditch rival to adorable ginger, Ron Weasley, and simultaneously poses a threat to the budding romance between the show's protagonists. According to Stroma, McLaggen is “a bit arroganct” but thanks to his public school upbringing at the prestigious Radley College, the actor found it “not too difficult” to channel his inner nob as “the accent and energy were really easy to slip into.”It came as a bit of a shock to avid fans, myself included, that when quizzed on his Potter knowledge, Stroma decidedly came up short. The actor does not claim to be an expert on the infamous series, having impressively won the casting directors after only read three of the books: “When I heard about the audition I bought the book and researched the character so I’ve only read the first two books as a child and more recently, the sixth.”
When asked whether his fellow actors had exhibited any diva behaviour on set, Stroma thoroughly denied any real life rivalry, describing the cast as “incredibly friendly and supportive”. However, Stroma’s memories of filming are bittersweet and marked with tragedy. Shortly after production ended, Rob Knox, who played a minor part in the film, was stabbed to death in London when he attempted to protect his brother from a knifeman. As a result, Stroma has stayed in touch with many of the cast and crew members who attended the memorial and funeral together: “it was really awful and we were all really good mates with him so we’ve kept quite close. We try to make time for each other. “
The female student body at Stroma’s alma mater, University College London, were well aware of his budding fame and impressive abs for a number of years prior to the film’s release. They can rightfully claim to be his first fans, having set up the popular Facebook group, ‘Freddie Stroma puts me in a coma’, which fortunately refers to the actors' chiselled good looks rather than his acting ability. Stroma seemed humbled and flattered by the amount of attention he has already received but has already experienced some of the more worrying drawbacks of fame: “it’s quite weird, I was expecting something like this because of the fame that comes with being part of the Harry Potter films but I really wasn’t expecting to have facebook fan groups or ‘MySpace’ pages claiming to be me."
With the scripts flowing in and hot wizards looking set to trump unfashionably pale vampires as this summer's most eligable British exports, Stroma has good reason to be optimistic for the future. His studies, however, were clearly important to him and he managed to make time for his Neuroscience degree during gaps in filming.
And ladies, he’s not single, so please don't spend a better portion of the year hanging around UCL's neuroscience building. He's graduated.
Our thoughts: Stalking is for losers but there's nothing wrong with a good old fashioned bit of idol worship. We express our sincere regrets for insinuating that Rob Pattinson's current title as 'hottest cinematic mythological creature' looks set to crumble before his gold...but no, brown...but no, gold eyes.
CF
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