How Eddie got his placement
When Southern Rail let a teen take over its Twitter, a social media star was born. Radhika Sanghani reports
When 15-year-old Eddie Smith came in for his fortnight of work experience at Southern Rail, his main goal was to do more than make tea. He never expected that, just 10 days into his placement, he would end up a viral Twitter sensation, labelled a national treasure and hailed as Southern Rail’s “saviour”.
The Croydon schoolboy became a social media star this week when he was given a chance to take over the railway company’s Twitter account. After a few days of answering sensible train-related questions, on Tuesday, eager Eddie was granted permission to post: “Hi, Eddie here! Here on work experience and ready to answer your questions!” Smiley face.
Within hours, the GCSE student had more than 6,000 likes and questions had flooded in. From the banal, “Shall I have chicken fajitas or chicken Thai green curry?” (“It has to be the fajitas,” replied Eddie); to the practical, “Can you drive a train?” (“No, not yet. I am 15”). Eddie, it seemed, had an answer for everything.
There were the diplomatic ones
– “I like both trains and Twitter, so I couldn’t possibly say which I like better” – and the feminist – “I don’t think [there will ever be a boy born who can swim faster than a shark] but you never know, there could be a girl that can.”
His responses won over thousands of disgruntled commuters, and soon #Askeddie was trending across Twitter.
“It’s been absolutely crazy,” says the teenager, who finished his work experience yesterday. “At first I was excited because I didn’t know what would come my way. ‘Nervous’ wouldn’t be the word, but I was intrigued. I had a feeling they wouldn’t all be serious, but I didn’t know it would be quite like that.
“But it was amazing looking at all the tweets and thinking if I hadn’t put out that first message, nothing would have happened. It has taught me that if you can be yourself, everything will sort itself out.”
His Twitter takeover has granted Southern Rail – the train line labelled Britain’s worst and whose poor performance saw its parent company Govia Thameslink Railway, fined £13.4 million this week – positive publicity, and many have speculated as to whether it was all a stunt, or if Eddie even existed.
But the teen, who got his placement through a family friend who works at the company and with help from his brother, who works for Network Rail, dismisses the notion that it was staged.
“We even got a tweet saying that I was a Russian hackbot, which I thought was a bit excessive,” he says. “I don’t even know any Russians. I’m a person, I’m 15 years old, I’m here, and I don’t think a Russian hackbot would like Doritos.” The Wallington County grammar school pupil could not help but tackle every question that came his way with humour.
“I just answered like my friends would,” he says. “I have a lot of banter at school. It’s definitely excited me for adult life because it shows I don’t have to change that much.”
Right now, Eddie doesn’t have a girlfriend – “I’m focusing on my GCSES, but you know, if there’s anyone out there…” – but he did receive several marriage proposals during his Twitter takeover.
“People were trusting me with their lives,” he says. “I got one question that I didn’t answer because it stumped me. It said: ‘My wife’s just left me – how long do I have to wait before I join Match.com?’ I was worried if I said something too soon, his wife might be concerned. But if it was too late, he might be.”
As a Southern Rail passenger himself, Eddie has direct experience of their late-running services, but is diplomatic: “I understand that people on their morning commute can get frustrated, but I can now say for a fact that everyone in that office works their absolute hardest.”
With his natural gift at handling tough questions, it’s no surprise that Eddie now wants to pursue a career in PR. “The past two weeks have been a real eye-opener and I’ve had a lot of fun. I even stayed two hours late, until 5.30pm, on Tuesday. I missed my train.”