£3m Strictly star aged just 26 who’s got your teenagers dancing to his tune
He’s the YouTube sensation no one over 40 has heard of. But as Joe Sugg gets ready for the TV ballroom, meet the ...
CAMERA switched on, there is a cosy familiarity between the two young people in front of the lens. With a conspiratorial glance, they stuff as many marshmallows as they can fit into their mouths.
Voices barely intelligible, they drool and double up in laughter as they take it in turns to describe a celebrity for the other to guess. the resultant nine-minute video is as bizarre as it is long-winded — but has been watched an astonishing nine million times.
Welcome to the weird world of Joe and Zoella sugg, the first brother and sister duo of social media, who earn a living uploading clips like these to the video platform Youtube.
the chances are that if you’re over 40 you’ve never heard of them, yet these baby-faced siblings with their puerile antics now do more to mould our children’s minds than any pop star or politician. their mind-boggling success illustrates the breadth of the generational gap between traditional TV audiences and those raised on social media.
so it’s no surprise that Joe, 26 and with a £ 3 million fortune, has been announced as a contestant on this year’s strictly Come Dancing — the first ‘Youtuber’ on the BBC’s flagship saturday night show.
Having made his name by filming himself getting slapped in the face with a dead fish and drinking undiluted orange squash concentrate, his main Youtube channel now has 8.2 million followers and his twitter account 5.7 million subscribers. it’s this army of young online fans that BBC bosses are doubtless hoping to scoop up for strictly.
Joe and Zoella, 28, who made her own £3 million wealth dishing out beauty advice, have more than 25 million internet followers between them and are key figures among the new breed of multi- millionaire ‘influencers’. so how have they become so influential — and could Joe be strictly’s most shrewd investment yet?
A CHARMED CHILDHOOD
BROUGHT up in the national trust-owned village of Lacock in Wiltshire by their property developer father and nail technician mother, the bizarre careers of Joe and Zoe (as Zoella was called before she became a teen icon) began with their parents’ camcorder.
For Joe, childhood videos entailed ‘trying to do stunts on scooters and bikes — basically hurting myself a lot.’
in 2009, aged 19, Zoella launched her beauty tutorial ‘vlog’ (video log) on Youtube, instructing fans on everything from eyeliner application to creating an artfully messy hairstyle. Joe, meanwhile, became an apprentice thatcher for his uncle. He says he ‘genuinely loved’ the job and, should his Youtube career stall, ‘i’d have no trouble getting back on the roof’.
it was Zoe who suggested Joe make a video, too. He launched the Youtube channel that cher Joe in 2011, playing tricks, accepting dares and doing impressions. By 2013 he had 1.6 million subscribers ( subscribing to a channel is free, with a simple click of a ‘like’ button).
He insists he doesn’t see his sister as a rival: ‘i just like acting like an idiot on camera and having a laugh with my friends. And being able to share that is great.’
THE INTERNET PRANKSTER
Joe moved into a flat in West London with fellow Youtuber Caspar Lee, 20, and the pair embarked on a series of filmed pranks. the jokes Joe has played on Caspar have included dressing up as a baby to frighten him and covering Caspar’s toilet with clingfilm. Puerile, perhaps, but amusing to fans sick of airbrushed Hollywood perfection.
other stunts have featured eating pineapple with the skin on, trying to fit his hand inside his mouth, or filling a bathroom with mousetraps and a bedroom with balloons.
His most popular videos, however, are those he and Zoella make together. one where Zoella does Joe’s make-up has had 18 million viewers — twice the average for strictly Come Dancing.
‘ When we started, mum would say: “Why don’t you go out and get a proper job?”’ says Joe. ‘now it’s become a full-time job, she’s like: “stay in your room. Keep working!”’
Parents graham and tracey have also become online personalities: graham has 180,000 followers on twitter, while tracey has 312,000 on instagram.
A-LISTERS FOR A NEW ERA
STRICTLY’S latest contestants have been criticised for lacking A-list star quality — but when you compare the show’s audience figures with Joe’s online followers, it is strictly that comes out looking decidedly ‘D-list’.
Joe will promote strictly to a young audience who otherwise think of mainstream TV as horribly passé. one wonders whether the BBC also tried to woo Zoella, who is even more successful than her younger brother, with 16.4 million Youtube subscribers and 13.4 million twitter followers.
Above all, though, the arrival of internet star Joe on mainstream TV will give parents an unparalleled insight into the minds of their children.
experts say teens are drawn to the way Youtube vloggers interact and listen to their followers, creating a sense of friendship rather than the distant adulation reserved for conventional TV stars.
A recent survey by google found 70 per cent of teenage Youtube audiences are more likely to be influenced by Youtubers than traditional celebrities because it’s easier to relate to them.
THEIR GANG OF TRENDY PALS
so how does one young man gain so many fans?
Joe and Zoella belong to a somewhat incestuous group of British Youtubers who share each other’s videos, so expanding their fan-base and their commercial power.
For five years, Zoella has been in a relationship with fellow Youtuber Alfie Deyes, 24. the photogenic pair, dubbed ‘Zalfie’, share most details of their lives. Fans know they’re in no rush to get married (but refuse to rule out live- streaming the wedding ceremony) and sometimes ‘want to punch each other in the head’.
in addition to Alfie (5.4 million Youtube followers) and Caspar (7.6 million), the suggs’ network includes beauty vloggers Louise Pentland and tanya Burr and tanya’s Youtuber fiance Jim Chapman, whose older sisters sam and nicola run a successful make-up blog called Pixiwoo.
until last november, when Joe and Caspar left to set up their own agency, margravine management, the group shared the same management company.
unlike his sister, Joe keeps quiet about his private life. ‘i’m very clear on what is OK to share and what is not OK to share. For example, relationships. i don’t share that on social media, so that’s going to be a nice shock for people one day!’ he says cryptically.
He was said to have dated Little mix singer Perrie edwards in 2016, although neither of them confirmed the relationship.
THE VERY TASTY DEALS
INEVITABLY, the sugg siblings’ influence over millions of fans goes hand-inhand with extraordinary commercial power.
Joe has promoted restaurant chain Wagamama — he is apparently one of three celeby
rities to own the ‘Silver Chopsticks’ keyring entitling him to free meals for life.
The makers of Original Source Mint Shower Gel sent him 200 bottles alongside a dare to lie in a bath filled with their contents during their # PackMoreIn publicity campaign.
Meanwhile, Zoella has produced a beauty range for Superdrug and a home decor collection. Last year, they jointly released Sugg Life merchandise, including £19.99 hoodies, £14.99 T- shirts and a £12.99 calendar for which they recreated childhood photos.
Zoella appeared in the BBC’s celebrity Comic Relief Bake Off in 2015 and both sang on Bob Geldof’s Band Aid 30 single in 2014.
Some enterprises have attracted controversy. In 2015, the siblings caused outrage after charging fans £70 for a meet-and-greet alongside other YouTubers, and last year Zoella was criticised for selling an advent calendar for £50 when the 12 products inside cost only around £21.57. She claimed the price had nothing to do with her. Then there are the book deals. In 2014, Zoella’s first novel, Girl Online, about a teenager whose blog goes viral, sold 78,000 copies in its first week to become the fastest-selling debut ever, ahead of JK Rowling. It later emerged that despite her name appearing alone on the cover, Zoella had ‘help’ from a ghost writer. This October she releases Cordially Invited, which divulges ‘hostessing tips’.
Joe, meanwhile, has put his name to three ‘graphic’ comic-book style novels. So hotly anticipated was the first, Username: Evie, in 2015 that he sold out Arsenal’s 60,000capacity Emirates Stadium for book signings in just four hours.
Perhaps mindful of the furore over his sister’s first book, Joe was quick to credit the illustrator and the writer who helped him, referring to them as ‘the Sugg Squad’.
‘Obviously, there’s a full-on team involved,’ he conceded.
‘My initial plot for the book was so long that we had to get a professional in to tighten it up and make sure it had a start, a middle and end.’
REAPING THE REWARDS
DESPITE their down-to-earth appeal, such influence comes with vast financial rewards. Their sizeable personal fortunes mean both Joe and Zoella can live increasingly extravagant lifestyles.
Somewhat disingenuously, Joe declares himself ‘ useless at business’. ‘My Dad controls all that,’ he says.
The majority of his income is likely to come from YouTube advertising revenue, via ads that pop up before his videos. Experts predict YouTubers with more than five million followers can expect to earn at least £500,000 a year.
Then there are paid endorsements. A single mention for a product can pay thousands of pounds, although Joe says it pays to be picky. ‘I turn down about 85 per cent of sponsorship deals, because if it’s a product like toilet cleaner, why would my audience care?’
Their lucrative careers mean luxurious homes and endless holidays. Joe has filmed from California, Thailand, Dubai, Croatia and New York, but says that he is never really able to relax because ‘part of the job is putting your life out there.’
‘YouTubers,’ he says, ‘don’t really have holidays, even at Christmas, as people want to see what you do on Christmas Day.’
He recently got a mortgage on a London flat, while last June Zoella and Alfie moved into a £1.7 million mansion in Brighton.
THE PRICE THEY PAY? NO ESCAPE
ON THE upside for worried parents, both Joe and Zoella are known for their squeaky- clean living. ‘I never post pictures of myself with alcohol and I never do drugs,’ says Joe. Zoella goes further: ‘I don’t drink. Or take drugs.’ In fact, she’s up at 6.30 am to crack on with her to-do lists.
Joe admits he finds it ‘hard to escape’. Perhaps surprisingly, given his endless exposure to public scrutiny, he is sensitive to others’ opinions.
‘I’m always conscious of what other people — people that I know — would think of what I’m doing,’ he says. ‘I wish I didn’t care.’
Zoella has confessed to having suffered from panic attacks and has weekly therapy sessions. ‘Over the years, I’ve grown a very thick skin but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t difficult. There are definitely times where I’ve thought, “Wow, I don’t know if this is worth it.”’