The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Jaackmaate: The Untold Story Of My Battle With Health Anxiety & OCD

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

Jaackmate is the host of the popular Happy Hour podcast and a youtuber with over one million subscribers. From humble beginnings in Norwich to one of the largest internet personalties working in Britain today, Jack has had a hell of a ride. But more thought goes into Jack’s comedy and its targets than you might think. Because Jack doesn’t just mock anyone, but is always interrogating himself as to whether he’s mocking the right targets, and whether there’s a sufficient ‘why?’ to everything he does. His ride to the top hasn’t been easy either, and Jack has had to overcome challenges he never expected along the way. From anxiety to dealing with criticism, Jack gives us the truth about inventing, and then reinventing, yourself on the internet. Follow Jack: Twitter - https://twitter.com/Jaack Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0BjnjltT8FEZyN3Iw5mN0Q  The rapper NF that Jack Refers to - https://www.youtube.com/c/NFrealmusicvideos/videos Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to amazon music who when they heard that we were expanding to the united states and i'd be recording a lot more over in the states they put a massive billboard in time square um for the show so thank you so much amazon music um thank you to our team and thank you to all of you

that listen to this show let's continue people know jack mate for being the guy to slag stuff off and that's funny. And then when the content dried up, well I've now got to go and look for someone who's doing something wrong. You can only do that for so long before you just hate yourself. Didn't really get on with my mum. She would do and say things that I don't think any mum should really do. Things would happen at home and I'd have a mark on my like from someone that shouldn't have given me that mark. I made a video reacting to Zoella's advent calendar. That changed the game for me and

the upload before that I was going to quit. I struggle with health anxiety and OCD. There's probably 15 to 20 times a day where I actually convince myself that I have cancer. So you're too fearful to go and get a health check done? If I go there and the doctor's like, yeah, you're ill, then that's the end for me. What do you mean that's the end for you? Jack, give me the, uh, give me the context on your life you know I sat here yesterday with Israel Adesanya and he told me about his childhood um and there was hints of that that really kind of felt similar to the experience that I read you've had as a young man as well and then also I think

the other one where I could see real distinct similarities and I think you might have listened to this podcast is Jimmy Carr yeah yeah what a man yeah what a man right he's I didn't realize he was, he was going to be such a philosopher. One of the things he said to me was, you know, when someone becomes a comedic figure, which I consider you to be in many respects, I think he says that instead of asking, because there's, you know, there's this kind of stereotype that the person themselves is struggling with something and they're trying to make other people laugh. He said to to me as you might have heard he said you've actually got to ask them which one of their parents they were trying to please or to to make happy does that resonate with you at all um yeah i mean upbringing didn't really get on

with my mum i don't think she truly understood the potential in youtube whereas my dad always did so when i was sort of like like we're I guess how old are you Steve 29 29 okay so I'm 29 in like two weeks time so like we cut we were kind of like the first kind of content creators in a way like we we kind of like paved the way if you will some people did well people like Charlie is so cool like did and I just followed them I guess but um yeah my mum didn't really get she might she might argue this point I don't know but I don't think she really saw the um the potential in what I was doing so I was just some kid in my bedroom just talking to a camera just waffling not getting a real job sort of thing and um she has she has her issues and stuff with

alcohol and whatnot ended up kicking me out long story short um I was kind of at a crossroads at some point quite early on maybe like 18 19 where I was living in my uncle's box room at his at his um flat which isn't the nicest environment in the world I think you wouldn't mind me saying and then I kind of thought okay I have to try and take this YouTube shit serious and at that time I didn't know what the YouTube shit was. So ever since that moment, I think the pivotal moment for me was I bought a whiteboard. I bought a whiteboard and that changed that. Yeah, that changed everything. And because I never took YouTube serious, like a job, like a nine to five, it was always something that I would just,

just do just, just moan about something or take it, do a funny take on something or whatever so i bought a whiteboard chopped it up into a month and wrote my plan and then i think it was in like 2012 i had this thing where i was like i'm just gonna say yes to anything that comes in my inbox and i just for 365 days just did and then ever since then it's just felt like i'm on this weird kind of like i've still not worked it out. Like you've got your shit together, Steve. No, I haven't. No, I haven't.

Look how many cameras there are. It doesn't, I think cameras isn't, yeah, an indication of having my shit together, but okay. You're a dragon. It's mad, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Just the word dragon, like that's mental.

It is, it is crazy. You've just reminded me of how much i resonated with what you were saying because i had a really um what's the right word i had a real issue with the fact that my mother was so different right and so challenging at times like as i write about in my book showing up to my school in her lingerie when I was maybe seven years old yeah and things like that right and I've always really wanted to have a normal family and a normal mother yeah that kind of thing and I kind of I kind of got that from reading your stuff and there's a couple of things where you talk about some of the challenges you think she has which I also think my mother has

oh wow really okay bipolar I think my mother's bipolar Oh, wow, really? Okay. Bipolar. I think my mother's bipolar. Yeah. And I think she's actually started to talk a little bit about that. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah, I don't know if my mum's ever been diagnosed with it because there's always been kind of like rumours and that, that that's the case. And I've, because I've not been a part of her life

in the past eight, nine years. I don't know. Oh, you haven't? No, not really. I see her at like my nan's at Christmas time and stuff but there's always a very awkward kind of vibe where now it's kind of just like nodding terms and for someone who's your mum that's a weird that's a weird thing to be yeah it's just it's just yeah growing up it's just you hit the nail on the head there when you said about your

mum like she would do and say things that I don't think any mum should really do and it's hard now because at what point do you at what point is it water under the bridge like at what point do you go okay I'm just gonna make up with her sounds very like juvenile and stuff but when so much has happened in your past how when is the day when you go okay I'll accept you again now and she sees that because she'll text me every now and then but my worry is that because she's always struggled with alcoholism she'll text me at half 11 on a Saturday night I want to get that text message at 10 30 on a Tuesday morning I don't want to get it at 11 30 on a Saturday night so I won't reply and then she'll just assume that there's a lot of animosity still there and I guess there is but yeah it's funny because I sat here actually I think yesterday with my sister and I don't see

my sister much I think I see my sister once a year right and my sister really wants me to kind of like reconnect with my mum and like get back on good terms with her but um for the exact for the I think this sounds like pretty similar reasons to you I was trying to explain to my sister that like I need to have boundaries with everybody in my life not just like my friends but also with my family and at some point you've got to protect yourself yeah from going back around the fucking yeah you know like taking them back in forgiving them for whatever they might have done for you done to you and then getting sucked back in because you know you're you've fallen for this trick once almost yeah oh mate I've fallen for it too many times yeah and and I really got my life together and I started on this kind of trajectory where I am now once I left home that was when it was kind of like okay you need to

make this work or you you're just done you're just in your uncle's box room forever sort of thing so if it weren't for my mum I wouldn't have bought that whiteboard yeah what a pivotal moment yeah what about your dad I heard that story about watching the world cup and that was yeah my dad's quality my dad is quality because he's been through a lot of stuff in his life so I don't know if you know but my dad went to prison for manslaughter when he was young very young um yeah got in a got in a fight with um with with some some bloke outside a pub, got in a dispute and hit him and the guy fell and passed away. And that plagues my dad now because they're just two kids

fighting in a pub car park. So he went to prison. He came out and he's just a grafter. That pains him inside. He has to live every day with that. Obviously, it's not right what he did, but I'm never going to say that. But he's brought me up with a lot of morals and has taught me if you ever get in any fights, you run away.

You don't need to be the big man like he was. And he's always had my back from day one, and he's like my best mate. So, for example, when I first got my first YouTube check through, I think it was like $60 was the threshold that you had to get back in the day. And I think I got paid, so it was like 45 quid or something and um I'm from a I'm from a council estate never had any money and I got that 45 pounds and instead of giving my mum any money I just went to top man bought some t-shirts like you remember them old sort of t-shirts with a color with the little buttons down here oh my god i wanted every color yeah the collar was different

color to the top yeah and the buttons were different colors yeah and i got a couple of those and um i was i was in my room and i remember my mum coming in and having a go and being like oh you should give me like half of that or whatever and then she went and you've just wasted on fucking t-shirts and i had done that that is literally what i'd bought but my dad i remember my dad coming in and going he needs those t-shirts because he can't be wearing the same stuff in all of his videos and it was like he didn't know if that was why I was buying them or not but like he'd literally just made up a reason to apply it to my youtube channel and justified why I was like why did I have to justify at that age why I'm buying t-shirts but my dad just knew from the off I guess none of us

really knew the potential in youtube back in the day. We were all just sort of testing the waters and just having fun. But I feel like my dad kind of had an idea that I'm, he, he, he trusted that I saw something in it, even if he didn't. So I owe him a lot in that respect. And now when I see him,

if I've been doing good in my life, bad in my life, if I've, yeah, I'll tell him everything and he'll just give me the best advice ever. And yeah, it's just, I'm glad I had him because he was very much the the counterweight I really vividly remember the moment

when my dad called me to the kitchen table and basically said I don't know I don't love your mother right like I can almost remember what I was wearing and I remember from reading about your story that there was a moment where your dad basically said I'm going to leave after this football match yeah yeah during the world cup final 2006 i think it was when ellie won on penalties and so dan did that yeah yeah um yeah so my mom would always kick him out yeah she'd always just when she'd had enough kick him out and it was very much a case of i think my dad loved my mom more than my mom loved my dad and my dad was i think he'd admit he was like the the kind of like lapdog that would come running back my mum would kick him out and he'd come back and it'd be I'd see it I'd see it as a kid like them having an argument it'd be kicked out so unfairly

like and I just I wouldn't be able to work it out but I kind of understood it because I was on the receiving end of that kind of judgment and and stuff sometimes so I remember he would always kick him out he'd go around his friends and I'd go and visit him at his friends. And again, he had a little box room as well. And he hated it. And he was a proper grafter working all the hours under the sun. So one day he just went, she's going to kick me out again.

And I'm just gone. And I'm just going to go. And luckily he didn't travel to the other side of the world. He just went to a town 30 minutes up the road. But yeah, we was watching a football game world cup and i thought i better enjoy this because it's going to be different after this and i think it was a bit different after that because i think if if home life was ever bad he was always the one that i'd be able to chat to about it and that

and then after after that it's a good job it was a good football game otherwise that would have been shit wouldn't it was there um was there a point you got to where you kind of wanted your parents to separate for because i i fought it for a long time and i was like i remember crying my eyes out as a kid at the prospect of my parents separating and then i remember i think maybe getting to like 14 or 15 where i was like i'd actually prefer you guys to not live in the same place. Yeah, I think that's accurate to me. Yeah, I don't know if I'm just looking back and seeing it differently, but I don't think I gave a shit really when it happened. I think I'd always see them break up and get back together and break up and get back together.

And I think like I'd see my dad like stay up all night writing my mum love notes and stuff. And she'd wake up not not be asked get rid of him and I'd see that side of it as a kid I don't think that should have been a side that I I did see necessarily um the the rejection from from her for someone that she's supposed to love so when he when he was gone I was kind of like yeah go fly yeah yeah and then he met his his new partner who's lovely and then ever since then that's been a little haven as well just going around there and just venting and stuff so did you ever figure out why why she was the way she is did you ever try and figure it out was it like a generational thing

that was her parents or something or something had happened to her i don't know because her mum my nan is the loveliest woman in the world so i see my nan all the time i've got her tattooed on me there um so i don't know where it came from i just think she's had she just has or she had she might be completely different now but she definitely just had issues and i don't know whether that's drink drugs whatever that may be um maybe i haven't given her enough time to actually think about why she's like that really i don't know and she's never had help or anything like that not that not as far as i know no not as far as i know but my life has been richer and mentally i've been a lot healthier with without her in my life which sounds

horrible um but that's the that's the truth of it maybe one day we'll be able to sit down and talk it all talk it all through but not not today and probably not tomorrow what about school you in school what were you like uh just a little i was quite short actually little ginger um twat really i was all right i was all right yeah i just i would just show off to the cool kids i'd want to be i'd want to be accepted a lot so i'd show off to the cool kids and i remember i used to always like say what i think were funny little one-liners and not get a laugh. And then once I put a ruler in a fan and it went and I got the biggest laugh ever. And I thought, what is this?

What am I doing? So I just became a bit of an idiot in the last few years and was just trying to make the cool kids laugh. So there is a lot of regret for how I was at school as well, because I wasn't a bully. I'd never say I was a bully, but I was a bit of a prick to teachers as well and there was one teacher in particular I'd just go in her class and I just wouldn't be asked and I would just never listen and she'd try I wonder if in a in a weird way that she'll stumble across this video and uh Miss Chapman was her name English teacher and I'd love to reconnect with her and just apologize because i mean we all were but that was no justification for me individually but i was just a bit of a prick i

would never listen and i guess being ginger and everyone's got things that people like get picked on for as a kid but you you try and you try and fit in so i i tried to fit in by being the class clown the funny one and that's such a cliche and i hate when people say they were the class clown because what that translates to is you were just a bit of a dickhead and that's but that's what i was so yeah miss chapman if you're if you're watching this i apologize you were great i hope she is i hope she is was it just because you were ginger though and you're being picked on a little bit that you were trying to like find a way for them to appreciate you was that you think that was it yeah i discovered bleach bleached my hair and i relaxed mine so it was straight no i'm just i'm just called this short

afro thing right yeah well yeah i yeah i discovered bleach and then i remember just going to school the next day like that scene in bruce almighty where i'm like look you're flying on me and i was yeah i was a different person then um yeah and then and then but then I was predicted all the top grades like I was predicted like 12 GCSEs or whatever it was like top marks in everything and I just completely fucked it really and got like five just scraped it so um yeah I was a bit a bit of an idiot really I only sort of took life serious after school when thank god I found YouTube because god knows what I'd be doing if I didn't was was there a connection in your view when you look

back between your home life and your school life I think because you said it was at year 10 or 11 I can't remember that things kind of went downhill for you I wondered if there was there was a link at what with in your mind of what was going on at home and what you know your school performance decline um maybe maybe maybe I could I could sort of blame home life but I I probably wouldn't I'd probably just say it was more a case of wanting to fit in discovering at an early age I wanted to be the funny one I've always been the center of attention as well or wanted to be the center of attention I should say so as soon as I discovered oh self deprecating works and putting myself down works that gets a laugh I'll do that and then you're invincible then because if people are calling you a ginger twat

if you call yourself a ginger twat before them disarming yeah now I've got the cards yeah yeah so I don't think the home life that the home life my home life affected school probably the early years in in high school because like not to go into too much detail but like things would happen at home and I'd have like a mark on my face like from someone that shouldn't have given me that mark and I'd go to school and say the cat done it and I didn't have a cat so so it's like that really I think that really affected me there's little things as well like I remember like I had these ornaments Snow White and the Seven Dwarves no I don't think I've even seen the film but I love these ornaments and then I'd done something at home that was naughty or something stayed up too late or played the PlayStation too much and then someone came in and threw the

through the shelf down and smashed those ornaments. And I remember as the shelf was on the floor, I was only a kid. I was probably like 10, right? And the shelf was on the floor. There's a big standing bookshelf. And I remember thinking, please, please don't say those ornaments are broke. I love them for some reason. And I remember lifting it up and they were all broke. And that was the moment where I was kind of kind of like I fucking hate this shit so I remember going to school and having to deal with stuff

like that um but in in the later years when I kind of had YouTube and found my feet a little bit more and who I wanted to be I found it a bit easier even if I was pissing the grades up the wall so to speak do you ever worry because I something I as I've gotten older I think as we get older sometimes the like, some of the earlier things we learned about love or relationships or how you treat people or how you respond or your temper, they can sometimes surface.

And you, because I'd have moments where I'd see parts of my parents and myself that I maybe didn't love. Have you ever seen glimmers of that home life that you think in yourself when you go fuck I don't want to be that person that's that's such an amazing question that is like that's so that me and my sister have discussed this as well because I have I have because I because I

separated from my mum so to speak at quite quite an early age just after after school I think I've lost all of her her traits that I had in me because they were such negatives to me I really noticed them like her biggest negatives like stood out like a sore thumb so I actively had to not take them on myself um whereas my sister she had she had quite a few of her my mum's negative um traits and we've spoken about this now as adults and she's like yeah I have to actively like whenever I think like mum would think or do something mum would do have to try and get rid of it I have a lot of my I give my dad all the credit I have so a lot of how I am

is because of my dad but I also have my dad's negative traits as well which I think he would say and my dad not so much now but especially after what I told you about his upbringing, anger was his thing. So, and I have that. Not luckily, I have it under control. It's never going to affect anyone else or hurt anyone else. But like, for example, if I'm editing and the software shuts down, I'm like, fuck. Like instantly, I'm so angry inside. And Fiona will have to be like, Jack, just chill the fuck out.

Like, this isn't that deep and then I'm like okay as long as I remember where I got this from and what if I can pinpoint it on something I'm a lot I'm a lot better um luckily that's never got me into any trouble if I'm out and someone says anything to me I don't get that I get it through over trivial sort of like trivial things but yeah um I definitely do have some negative traits about me from my parents. Have you ever gone to like therapy or spoken to anybody to try and understand these patterns or to spot them or anything? Or is it just from like self-reflection that you've noticed? I did anger management classes at school.

Oh, really? Yeah. But they put me in them for something i didn't do i remember walking in the library once and i was at the bottom of these stairs and this guy just gets thrown down the stairs at my feet and the teachers come in and seen it and i had to do 12 weeks angle i swear i promise you i've done a lot of like mad shit at school but that was not one of them i didn't know how i could throw him and then be down there before him he was on my feet so it didn't make sense um so yeah i remember doing 12 or six weeks anger management um but i kind of needed them so even though i didn't actually

i probably would have been the guy to maybe do that one day had i not had them i can't remember anything we spoke about in those lessons but yeah that's the only time I've really debated it does that does it does it not ever crop up in your professional work like anger issues with uh like colleagues or with I don't know with people no I think I think over the years I've mellowed out so much I've I think I've matured so much as well and I think that shines through in like my old kind of like main channel content, because I made a name for myself on YouTube by being kind of like the anti-YouTuber. Yeah. And like slagging off other YouTubers.

But I remember turning on the camera and putting on such a fake anger, because I was talking about things I didn't care about. Oh, Olly White's got some new 30 pound t-shirts. Let's moan about that. Mainly because I knew I'd get a million views from it. Not that I cared. So I got really good at turning the camera on and putting this kind of like faux like anger like fake out like I guess because I was pretending to be angry all the time I was very alert when I actually was angry and I could keep that keep that under control so do you regret any

of those videos as you've matured you say you've melded out and matured now and you, and you even spot that you were doing them from like a, not an authentic place, right? Do you regret them? Uh, there's some, I definitely do regret. Yeah.

The majority I'd say no. Um, obviously we, we, we both know that I'm a big fan of Ricky Gervais and he always, one of his mantras is there needs to be a why in comedy. Why are you doing something? If you're targeting someone, why are you doing something if you're targeting someone why are you doing it like um and a lot of my early main channel content like

for anyone who doesn't know like i made a video reacting to um zoella's advent calendar everybody knows it's got like six million views isn't it yeah crazy it did all right that changed the game for me in terms of youtube i was I was going to quit the the upload before that I was going to quit and then I upload that video and it changed the game but like when I look back on videos like that I have no regrets because it was funny it the comedy almost like it wrote itself like there was a reason why I was doing it it was it was a sketch that's all it was but there would be times when I fell into the trap of like okay people know Jack mate for being the guy to slag stuff off and that's funny whatever and then I'd find a few things that naturally did piss me off

and I could draw humor from it and then when the content dried up it was kind of like well I've now got to go and look for someone who's doing something wrong and become this kind of like sort of white knight of of the internet sort of thing and it was like it's never who i was so i did i did my first ever video with ricky gervais and and and that was the biggest moment ever for me and then i remember uploading the video and the interview was brilliant and the top comment was this is good jack but ollie white's released some new t-shirts that you haven't spoken about and i thought fuck me so i've got now that's what you want from me is that so then i'd go i didn't go out of my way to go okay zoella in the title bangs views what is she up to oh she's released the book now that book there was nothing wrong with that book but i'm trying i'm actively trying

to pick flaws in it that i can dissect on my channel and it's like there that's kind of like the stuff i i i regret i remember ksi and joella they did their when i was trying to be edgy boy edgy boy jack mate they did their first press conference for their fight and that was in in manchester i think it was and and because i was the black sheep of youtube i would never get invited to them so therefore therefore, by default, the jealousy would take over. And I'd be like, this is shit. I want nothing to do with it. Where deep down, I knew that I wanted something to do with that.

That whole YouTube boxing scene. I'm a boxing fan. I'm a YouTube fan. So why would that not appeal to me? And they did a press conference. And JJ, he said something about Joe Weller's medication, which I don't agree with. But in the context of a press conference,

you say anything you can to get the upper hand and I remember just turning on my camera straight away I was like KSI needs to be cancelled blah blah blah because I knew it would bang views but JJ's a hero of mine as I'm sure he is to any YouTuber any content creator now Joe Weller I was I used to watch every single one of his videos I I love Joe Weller so they're the ones I regret when I wasn't being authentic and not even really being funny just actually trying to go in on someone because i wanted that check at the end of the ad revenue to be higher that month when you were doing that so when you jj mentioned the medication thing you hit record was it like i can make some money here or is it i can make some money and get attention?

Probably a bit of both. Yeah, because they go hand in hand, don't they? Especially on YouTube. So probably a bit of both. It's mad that you're so self-aware about this. And you're just like, you're really good at diagnosing exactly why you did it from a psychological incentive perspective. You're like, I wanted this, so I did this. I wasn't true to myself, I did it from like a psychological incentive perspective you're like I wanted this so I did this I wasn't true to myself I did it and and that suggests like you've done a lot of kind of reflecting and soul-searching and maturing in what is actually a very short space of time

because this was only this is not you know a lifetime this is not a decade ago that video was probably four and a half five years ago yeah tops yeah yeah it's because it was I realized a couple of years ago it wasn't who i wanted to be i was probably i i recently did a brand trip with cal freezy and and the burnt um the burnt chip and i was speaking to them out one night and i'd never done a trip with another youtuber i was always youtubers are very clicky and they're all in their groups um and i was always on the outside of that i was always this boy from norwich just have my normal mates and they surround themselves with youtubers and i remember saying to them one

night i think the main reason why i used to go for him is because i wanted to be him i i i'm i'm one of the ogs i really am i've been doing youtube probably around this to the the same month that jj uploaded his first one like we would have been there at the start and Cal Friese, Calix, all of these lads, Mini Minter, and I probably, I see them become a collective and I was like, why am I not part of that? Like, and now I don't give a shit.

I'm so happy and content with where I'm at and I've built my podcast now. But as a kid, even as an 18, 19 year old, a young man growing up seeing that feeling left out it probably goes back to how i was at school as well i thought okay if if if you if you can't join them slag them off become the darth vader of youtube so to speak um yeah and then in recent years people started to discover that other people that i really respected like will any people on you and then even though Will was my friend,

like still is my friend, like he'd call me out publicly when I'd be slagging someone off and go, have a day off, mate. And I would be so angry because it was accurate. And I'm like, I'm sat there like, so right. And I'm like, no, I'm not bothered, mate. Like that kind of thing.

So yeah, yeah. I was speaking to Cal Friese about that. And yeah, I've got a lot. I've got nothing but respect for him now. You not only did the whole YouTube thing, but you also provided this like online commentary, almost constantly about how you were feeling about it. So you're one of the sort of rare YouTubers that like in real time would say, I've lost motivation for this. I'm going to try and find my motivation for this. I've lost motivation for doing this kind of thing. I'm doing it. You know what I mean? And you were very open. So try and find my motivation for this I've lost motivation for doing this kind of thing I'm doing it you know what I mean and you were very open so

even for me I as I logged into Twitter I could kind of see where you are on this journey obviously I've seen that change a lot with the whole podcast and Spotify thing which feels like you really found something that you do find that really enjoyable but with your main channel I watch you go through these waves of enjoyment and then seeing you say right I'm gonna try and commit to it now and then that didn't really work and then so tell me about that journey with youtube and and what you learned about yourself from that oh god it's really good questions it's got to be said like wait till you come on my podcast your favorite sandwich i genuinely have watched it and this is why i kept trying to you know message you about come on my podcast because that watching that journey taught me so many things and it really reconfirmed a lot about for me that I've been

reading about in psychology about what keeps people motivated and when they're not doing things that are in line with who they are or they're doing it for a check I remember reading this study which said if you love doing something and then they pay you to do the exact same thing you lose your motivation so the minute it goes from being a hobby i'm doing for the love of it to a hobby that i love doing but now someone is paying me for there's this weird thing that happens in the mind where people lose motivation for the exact same thing going off that and i'm not sure if this answers your question but i found this really interesting i couldn't really work out myself i spent my whole youtube kind of main channel era like just saving up all my money just saving up

all my money like the only thing i was i had the blinkers on i was like buy a house buy a house buy a house buy a house and last may i paid for my house and bought it outright. And that was the last time Bar won. That was the last time I uploaded. Really? Yeah. It was like, it's called a rival fallacy, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Tyson Fury had it about when he beat Klitschko

and became the heavyweight champion of the world. The next day he was depressed. Israel Adesanya sat there yesterday and said the same thing. Really? He said, the day after I won the UFC title, I went to my hotel room I was depressed yeah I said it last night on stage at the Palladium I said 80% of Olympians when they get the gold medal they they report depressive symptoms yeah it was the most proud proudest I've ever been over

anything and paid paid it off and then me and my partner Fiona we we moved in in September and I just I remember just I was drunk one night and I remember just walking around my house when Fiona was asleep and I just I just didn't care for the for where I was like it's a beautiful house and I'm so lucky and it's everything I'd worked for but it was like what do I do now then like what do i where like what i'll sit on my sofa or going go in my kitchen like i just know i'm not any happier than when i was renting or it was it was weird so have you figured out why you felt that way no i know i nah i don't know i don't know it's it's because it's because the journey is way more fun than the arrival.

It just is. The most fun I've ever had is probably the first time I got a viral video, or the first time I got to present for this company, or the first time I got a brand deal, through all the stereotypical YouTuber things, The first time I felt like a YouTuber, they're the best moments. And I'm not complaining. I'm not sitting here and whining and I'm so blessed and so lucky. And yeah, it is a tough one. It's a tough one.

But like I did, my kind of like soundbite that I always sort of say is I did YouTube for seven years without earning a penny. And then once the Zoella video kicked off and the ad revenue went up always sort of say is i did youtube for seven years without earning a penny and then and then once the zoella video kicked off and the ad revenue went up and i earned money i would never i could never dream of earning that that was no more fun than when i was doing it for for free and it's funny because the i guess the the liberating thing to know is that everyone i've sat here with says the same thing so it's not a you thing it's a

human thing and so you go okay if it's a human thing what does that mean and why is that one of the things because i was writing my show for the palladium i i encountered was that the reason why we're here is because our ancestors struggled forward and their desire to keep striving is the reason they built these empires and overcame so i say to the crowd i say is it conceivable that they left a message within our genetic code that says, you too shall struggle forward. And they've kind of like predisposed us to like forward motion. And also this other point, like our ancestors, our ancestors that had a real sense of what really liked forward motion, struggle and purpose were the ones that survived and passed on their genes to us. So we've inherited this real desire to have forward motion and a sense of purpose.

And one of the things they say is causing the life expectancy to decline in the Western world is specifically they point at men and say there's an epidemic of purposelessness as the world is starting to change. And AI and things like this are, I'm pointing at the little robot that's moving around the room on its own, are taking purpose from people. And so people are now becoming more addicted and depressed and therefore their suicide has become the single biggest killer of men under the age of 45, which has caused the life expectancy to decline for two years in a row. And it's because of, they think, this epidemic of purposelessness. So when you lose your sense of purpose, because you reach the point you're aiming for, that can be so disorientating and confusing as it was for me at 25 when someone came along and said we'll buy social chain off you for 50 million

and i go home and i look at the the mansion on right move in the lamborghini on auto trader and i feel totally fucking lost i can i completely i completely agree like i i wouldn't change it for the world it's everything i've i've always always wanted but like because because I I think I think money does money does buy happiness and I think if people say otherwise I think they're talking shit like in a way like well I well maybe I should rephrase that to to money buys freedom yeah and freedom is is happiness and that's what what I have now i have i can do what i want when i want the best feeling i i get now as a 28 year old soon to be 29 year old is when i sought my family out and like my granddaddy's still working he's 20 he's 70 um 77 20 imagine that he wishes

he's 70 he's 77 he's a big fat lump from Norfolk and he still does building and demolition and walks on roofs and stuff and he's not got a penny and then like I went to see his parents grave with him in February um last year and uh he goes there every week puts new flowers on he's been doing it for like 50 years and it's like and I could see he was he was wearing these beat-up boots and this disgusting tattered jacket and I just went home and I just got his bank card without him knowing from his side of his car where his hand breakers and I got his bank and I just transferred him five thousand pounds and for me that was like that was just everything that was like that was uh everything I'd worked for was justified in that moment and

I got more out of that than I did when I bought my house and like just little things like my sister's type 1 diabetic so she has like a thing in her arm that constantly pricks her and finds her her levels and I can I can pay for that shit and yet last night my dog died and the dog that I'd had for 18 years. And literally like found out just before I went to sleep last night. And it's little things like this that might not seem like a lot, but it was the first time I'd spoke to my mum in ages.

And she was like, oh yeah, we're going to get Diddy's Ashes, cost 200 pound. There's the 200 pounds. So it's like that kind of shit is like why I owe everything to this online world and people that have given up their time to watch me and brands that have trusted me and stuff. yeah that's the best feeling I think you nailed

it when you said that I'm sorry about your dog by the way I have a dog and I really that really I can't imagine it's shit it's really shit even the thought of it is just terrifying she was 18 years and four months which is quite old but when they get to that age you just assume that they're always gonna crack on yeah yeah um no you I think you nailed it when you said that freedom is the thing that ultimately does make you happier because i remember not having i remember getting the bailiff letters and then not being not knowing how i was going to eat or knowing that the landlord was going to come and ask me why i didn't pay the rent in four months and the pressure that of course that like weighing on me and the freedom of just like not looking at how much things cost when you go into

top man i want to buy one of those t-shirts yeah that kind of thing or what you want to go somewhere so freedom definitely makes you happier but obviously at this point i've come to realize that if you gave me more money the fundamental happiness levers of my life won't change like you're right like my sister's been a little bit sick recently she um um and being able to help her i said to my team this week I was like that's the moment where I see the point of this just being able to like pay the hospital or like get a checked get a proper health care those kind of things um my parents got broken into and being able to buy them like new locks for their doors so that they wouldn't get broken

into again is is one of those things where you go that's what this is for yeah that's what that's that was the feeling yeah it makes it all worthwhile doesn't it completely do you do you ever feel again name drop but i spoke to gervais about this because i was really i was really something that plagues me whether it's right or wrong is i feel guilty about having money i feel i feel this sense of guilt where it's like and i don't have I don't have crazy money like my situation is I paid off my house I have a bit more in the bank like that's what it is but I because because of my upbringing and where I'm from and I see my dad wake up at 5am every morning go work in a factory for 12 hours and then still struggle to buy Christmas presents and then I'm

like you just said I go online I don't look at the price of things anymore and I just buy it and then it's like what like this doesn't make sense I'll tell you a quick story three four years ago my dad's dad my granddad he passed away he he got um bone cancer or some kind of shit cancer they're all shit I guess and um he I went to his funeral went to the wake had a few jars went back home went on a night out and I was in the place called the waterfront in Norwich which is where I always I always go uh I go there because I'm comfortable because everyone knows me there now so I don't get the dickheads come over and whatever but so they've if if jack mate's in there they've already seen jack mate 100 times so it doesn't matter and this guy and I and whatever. But so if Jackmate's in there, they've already seen Jackmate a hundred times. So it doesn't matter.

And this guy, and I was gone and I was not in a good place. And this guy came up to me and said, I'd never met him before. And he asked me how much I earn from YouTube. And I think it's such a rude question, but I can understand the intrigue in it because it's a world that people just don't know. It's a new world.

I barely know it. And he asked me and I just told him for the first time ever I was like this is what I am I said what about you what do you earn and he told me and it was like 10 10 percent of what I am and I said and what do you do he said I work in the cancer ward at the hospital and I was just like and I weren't saying what do you do to be rude I was just throwing that back at him and I remember just thinking it just hit me just got a lump in my throat and i thought why why do i do i deserve this what i have when there's these people that are like they're the fucking angels they're the ones walking around doing that like i just yeah

i struggled to then wrap my head around why a brand would pay me 30k to do a video like it doesn't it to me it's weird so i guess you could argue why don't you give it all to charity well i'm not gonna do that but i will give it all to my fucking family and i will give it all to my fucking kids and that's what makes me proud is there this is like a wider point about imposter syndrome is it i i think so because um because i've never struggled with the idea that i didn't deserve what i'd created and i think so i'm asking myself why you would really struggle with that why you might struggle with the thought that you're making money and other people are potentially having to because i i mean it's a reality of the world even if you go back to where i was born in africa people in the fields for 18 hours a day picking tea leaves in the baking sun

get paid nothing and in the western world some people can just play around on their computer and make billions yeah from the stock market or the markets or something but for some reason you struggle you struggle with this and other symptoms of imposter syndrome from what I've read. Maybe it's, because I think I've spoke positively about YouTubers and my peers and stuff, but there's still a lot of them that are pricks. And growing up and seeing,

I'd used to go to YouTube events and see my YouTube heroes and they'd come over, how many subscribers you got? It's the first thing I'd say, how many subscribers you got it's the first thing i'd say how many subscribers you got my name's jack nice to meet you dickhead like so i guess i guess maybe it's connecting that i'm now a youtuber i'm now i now make my money in the same way that alfie days make made his money ollie white makes his money i'm that guy and because i've seen a lot of youtubers take it for granted and just assume that that's their right to have these things it that's maybe where i get my guilt from i never want to lose lose touch of that and and you really come from a

working class like household where you've watched your dad work really really hard and everyone around you it sounds like work really really hard wherever you've looked and it's almost like you found a bit of a cheat code or you know yeah i might feel like life has given you i don't know but you've you earned it i mean you bought the whiteboard yeah right yeah it was intentional yeah yeah what shows that you but you know you planned it out obviously moments of luck for all of us appear when we we start we carry on carrying on but you realize that you've earned it right yeah you do you hesitated you don't do i i i do and i but not to the level in which i've got to now not to like yeah i get i i guess i guess i i i have i have i have a talent i can do i'm a personable

person i can make people laugh but yeah i don't i don't know i don't i really don't know how to answer it i get i've thought about it a lot i've racked my brains a lot about this what does your brain say to you when you rack your brain don't know it's just maybe maybe i don't but then like it's it's it's cool things like this like Stevie White my my podcast co-host was working in boots nothing wrong with that it's a respectable job um just a nine to five he didn't particularly enjoy it um so I call him up one day and say let's do a podcast a year later he's interviewing Ricky Gervais, Johnny Knoxville, Rob Brydon he's left his job he's doing it full-time Fiona my partner she was working at a supermarket i was telling her for years bin it off i'll teach you how to edit you become my editor

a couple of years go by she bins it off she's now working for me there's a few examples of people in my life that can now have an easier life because of the foundations that I put in seven years ago. That's what I love. And that's when I'm like, I deserve this. And the people around me deserve it. Does that make sense? Of course it does. Once again, you said that, like, the most fulfilling thing for you is helping others, right?

You said that about your family. Yeah. And now also for professionally, it's like giving those people opportunities to live a better life. Yeah. We're just a fucking team. We're just a fucking team we're just a team they help me as well it's not just me going look i can help you do this i showed them that there's a there's a different world out there because people like us we've been in this world for so long we've seen the opportunities but they probably didn't so

yeah i wouldn't be able to do what i do without that that kind of the the team in the in the background or sometimes in the foreground with people like stevie but yeah um that's a fucking cool feeling everybody um everybody it sounds like it feels like everybody that's not a youtuber and i say everybody because there's gonna be people listening that are driving up and down the country right now as they're listening to this or you know doing the dishes whatever and perfectly happy with whatever they're doing but a lot of young people want to be youtubers and the thought that you had this like big main channel with like how many subs does your main channel got now it's like 1.4 or something yeah 1.4 million yeah um that you

would like lose motivation to do it it's quite a difficult concept to understand for a lot of people you have 1.4 million people that have subscribed to get videos from you. And you're like, can't be asked. Yeah, it's not so much can't be asked. It's just, it's not me. It's just, it's just not me anymore. It's people, I'd open up my inbox and people would be emailing me about some YouTuber from France who has sold a pen for a bit too much money. And I need to be the guy that calls them out.

And it was just like, I was was never I was never really this guy so yeah I guess I guess I just transferred all that energy that I was putting into the main channel into the podcast and that's where my passion is now and doing stuff like this getting to sit here chat to you and yeah that's I get what you mean like if you'd have asked me two years ago am I just going to leave a channel with 1.4 million subscribers stagnant I would I'd call you all the names under the sun I'd be like you're an idiot of course i'm not going to do that but it seems that i have done it i'll use it every now and then like in january i uploaded a video about boris johnson and i saw a dope video all over the newspapers really really cool video

thank you creatively culturally relevant it really like hit and it was fast you were very quick to act on that moment so it was uh that i guess i guess for you probably is that how you're seeing the use of your youtube your main channel now like when you genuinely feel you want to do something yeah yeah yeah when like when the the why is there when there's a clear and obvious why i'll i'll do it um and not just for a quick buck now i'm very thankful i don't need to do them anymore it's hard to sustain something when it's not in line with who you truly are yeah it's hard to like sustain it for a long period of time in the short term you could probably do it but it tends to be the case when i say it with people that at any point in their lives where they were living outside

of themselves like living someone else's life or kind of like fern cotton said it like she had to like go on radio and be this happy and um almost play a character jake humphrey said it to me as well like because he was a presenter having to kind of like put on the mask eventually it becomes a really heavy mask to wear and they all have eventually it seems kind of choose to throw it away and just rebound and that seems similar to what you're saying 100 yeah i i i told this story last night to someone i can't remember i'd i used to turn the camera on i used to go i'd be sat there and i'd turn the camera on okay right guys hello it's me jack may oh zoella oh what dickhead oh she's done this done that turn the camera off just sit there and i couldn't tell you anything

i just said in the last 20 minutes i'm just looking down at my script she said this in her book about how out of touch is it and it would just be like right that's the ad revenue sorted for the month fee let's go to weatherspoons yeah so it was like you can only do that for so long before you just hate yourself there is an element of that in me. The advent calendar video. I've done some videos I'm really proud of, funny videos when it was justified, but there's also ones, it's not so much.

I've been doing recent sort of commentary videos over the last two years. My recent ones are like videos I've been doing with my friend Alfie Indra, who's a musician. We've been like sort of taking kind of comical pokes at people like um jeremy lynch from the f2 and people like that and and i people think i'm jeremy lynch oh really you didn't you don't want to be you don't want to be that guy you can be billy be the other one he seems all right but um but the thing with those videos i'm really proud of them still. And I guess you could argue, well, you're that same kind of like scathing commentator.

Yeah, but I believe that those people I'm going for, they're justified. Zoella, not so much. Let her crack on. No? What would you say to her if she was... Have you ever met her? Never met her.

I don't think she wants to meet me. That'd be an awkward one wouldn't it is there like is there any because that video did really well yeah and i think if a video about me had gotten six million views um i think i'd have a pretty shitty month i was gonna say week but i think it lasts longer because that video did really really well i remember like sometimes someone would write like an article about me and i try and be this tough guy i don't give a fuck whatever whatever but i'm still at like 1am in the morning it'll like it's hard to get it out of my mind so i think if a video had got six million views about me criticizing something i'd done yeah it probably been quite hard to take mentally yeah do you have does that ever like cross your mind like ever yeah i'm not saying

what you did was wrong because i watched the video and i actually thought it was really funny so it's like was there comedic merit in someone that's super successful selling a advent calendar of that nature for that price yes i understand it like when you talk about the wine the gervais like philosophy i get it but does has that crossed your mind as well yeah yeah um like that's just another reason why I stopped doing it um it's hard to I'm not articulate enough to describe how I feel about it but yeah the the calendar video was funny there was a clear error on her behalf and I just ultimately I I wasn't really saying anything nasty

about her it was just this product whereas when you do a follow-up video and a third video where's the where's the line where do you draw the line is it becoming bullying now like that's not who I want to be I want to be a comedian so so that I definitely as I've gotten older and I guess maybe I was immature for a long time. I should have realised this at a way earlier age than I did. But you do start to consider others. And I'm the same as you, mate. I'll read a comment about me on Twitter and I will clap back. And I still go back to them now.

And Fee's there going, what are you doing? And I'm like, fuck him. Like, I just, like, that's a bit of my dad as well. And I'll just, I'll spend hours arguing with football Twitter. Oh, the worst. Yeah, yeah. They've all got, like, a football player as their display picture. Yeah, yeah.

They're called, like, Fantastic Four Nows or something like that. He doesn't know who you are. Fucking hell. Yeah. But I get a bit of a rush from it, really. I worry sometimes. Because I say to myself, I'm trying to reply to a troll to try and disprove their point

or because it's fun or whatever. But I think sometimes it's because it's like, hit me in the ego. Yeah. And I don't want to admit to myself that that person's actually pissed me off. Yeah. So I kind of use the guise of,

no, it's funny or like, no, like to justify it to everyone else. Like, I'm not bothered. You know what I mean? Like, I really, I really, you know, the internet is not a good place to be if you haven't got control over that. Cause you'll get dragged around

by trolls with egg emoji accounts. Like, yeah. Yeah, I, like I said, Fee's always telling me not, don't shit, I'll be in bed like that, hungover or whatever, Sunday morning going on. And Fee will be like, just leave it. They're fucking idiots. And just leave it they're fucking

idiots and ultimately i know they're probably just jealous of whatever it is like i'll get like a good podcast guest on and like the other day i was in um i was in wales with gerwin price he's the number one darts player in the world and um put a picture up of me and him just put uh in beautiful wales throwing a few arrows with gerowan price and gowan price is this panto villain i don't know how much you know about darts but he's like the panto villain it's a welsh one yeah that when he wins always like then he's like the bum it goes like this yeah biceps yeah yeah yeah yeah um and and and so he's i'd heard for a while that he's always he's very lovely off camera but or off the stage but when he's up there he's a panto villain i was like that's

pretty much like the jack mate of darts in a way so i put up this picture of him i was like never judge a book by its cover like i know this more than i know this myself because i always did it's just just this guy replied to bellends as well but he follows me just follows me so it was like i i will reply to him and he's like why are you bothered like that must just be jealousy like why else are you, well, you follow me and you're doing that? Like, it doesn't make sense. But I kind of like,

I like to think that I'm very, very honest online. So why would I not reply? Why would I not try and think of some pithy remark to try and put him down? Like, yeah, because I'm meant to be a professional and i'm in this world and i'm working for west ham but really i also think you're a bit of a dickhead right and i'll tell you do you think that because you are very like um i imagine if like boris johnson and like i don't know another politician uploaded a photo you'd probably quote retweet it

and say two bellens so like do you think there's a chance because i i don't think anyone would ever tweet me that like do you think there's a because you've cultivated a younger male audience that are comedic and they're like they use kind of kind of colloquialistic funny language like bellends yeah you're also now at the mercy of them attacking you with the same language in that situation i'm just wondering why no one would ever tweet me if i uploaded a photo to bellends i just my audience just don't speak like that wait until this episode goes down and then you're having to deal with that because i get what you mean yeah but then maybe they see a bit of because because i yeah they think you maybe like that as well they think oh you know because he follows you and you know he clearly

looks up to you if he's following you and that's true it's true it becomes more real when you like when like someone some there'll be people out there that will defend me on that thread and they'll say you don't know him and he'll go well he looks like a prick look at his trousers and then it's like personal yeah it goes a bit it goes a bit deeper then but like you are right because i i would always do um an event called summer in the city it was the only time i'd ever i'd ever get out of like norwich and go and meet the fans and they'd put you in a pen and there'd be all these youtubers in this big hall at like excel and you'd be in a pen and then fans would come up one by one. And I'd meet like 13-year-old girls. You might want to bleep this, I don't know.

But they'd come up to me and go, all right, you can't. And I'd be like, what have you just said? And then, but then because that's what I'm doing online, all right, you fucking dickhead. But they're there to meet me and they want their thing signed. So they like me, but they think,

but then I wouldn't go up to like i wouldn't go up to dicklam rice and start doing keepy ups around the world all right so you just i just have to be like yeah maybe i am the influencer fuck scary scary notion no one's ever said that to me in a meet and greet um that's so it's really interesting and there's an element of your do you think there's an element of your childhood in that in in the sense of like being triggered a little bit by what people are saying or the criticisms that you know it triggers you maybe because i i definitely i'm thinking about myself i definitely wouldn't sit in bed replying especially now i'm on the BBC like BBC one it's a bit prestigious and I can't really yeah be popping off too much yeah well

yeah probably I probably shouldn't be either do you do you want to be the type of person that doesn't know yeah but I can't Steve I can't like I'll reply to them and then and then fee will be like delete them and then I and then i'll be like no not gonna and then in an hour it's like it's like a come down i'm like all right now i'll delete them and then in an hour later someone else has said something what do you mean i'm so mature on twitter it's on it's a joke there's a real risk they've been like pulled around emotionally there by the external world right yeah i've deleted i've i've deleted twitter off my phone a few times um yeah we went i went out for a dinner with max fosh and um i told him

about he was he questioned it he was like why do you always go back at these idiots i'm like i'll just find it funny or they just get to me and i deleted twitter off my phone and he was like i said i'm gonna do it for the whole weekend and he was like i guarantee that you'll you'll redownload that by the end of the meal. And I did. I was scrolling there, looking through it. So when football Twitter say, we're in your edge, mate,

nine times out of 10, you are in my edge. But I'll try and get back in yours. Do you not think it would be a happier life just to fucking, like... 100%, yeah. Yeah, but I guess I get bored. Is it that? that's your ego yeah

happy hour so this was a really pivotal moment for you where did that start? why did you decide to start doing long form podcasts instead of the other types of videos you were making before? I've always wanted to interview people at college 10 years ago I studied interview techniques really? my granddad was the first person I interviewed before i've i've always wanted to interview people at college 10 years ago i i studied

interview techniques really my granddad was the first person i interviewed he came in and i interviewed him about the war and all that kind of stuff and i always wanted to do it and then in 2017 i had a podcast with my friend tom norris um did i done all right uh but it was just too much too much um we were doing it at the YouTube space and we'd rock up sometimes and they didn't have the cameras in and that. So it fell by the wayside. But then 2018, I wanted to do another podcast.

I said to Fi, I said, who should I do it with? Because I always knew I wanted to do it with every man. So not a YouTuber, because that's not, I'm not a YouTuber that's been friends with YouTubers. I'm a YouTuber that's friends with my mates in Norwich. I'll do the best video ever with the big celebrity come back to norwich and they'll just go yeah we didn't watch it mate not bothered and i'll just be in the pub and that'll be everything i need to keep me grounded so i so she suggested stevie white who's um just um just a mate that lived in bristol and uh i called him up and said you want to do a podcast and he said why

good point and then we ended up giving it a go I started doing it with a guy called I'm Alex who's a who's a youtuber that was very um a comment he was a commentary youtuber so he was calling out people he would do the cookie cutter templates of like x y and z needs to be cancelled x y and z needs to be cancelled x y and z needs to be and he was doing that all the time so originally my show was a youtube drama show to call people out to be an extension of what i was doing on the main channel and then after about five or six episodes i thought this is just poisonous and i don't it's not me why am i trying to do it in a different format so we dropped that and started getting guests on and interviewing people. And I found the love of YouTube again, which I'd lost for a few years.

Was there like a pivotal moment in Happy Hour where you thought, fuck, this is going to be, it wasn't the Spotify, it must have come sooner than that, right? Where you thought, this is, we've got something here. Yeah. Again, it was probably getting Gervais on. Oh God, I remember that day. He was in our first like three guests

and and I'm so grateful that he gave me a chance years ago because I would I genuinely believe I would have none of this if it wasn't for him giving me a shot and I built up a connection with him years ago so he then when I needed someone big to come on the podcast he would step in you know what it's like you get one through the door other people almost then don't judge the show based on me they'll judge it based on who who else is sat in that seat yeah so so i i owe a lot to him so that was probably a defining moment and testament to stevie as well because i've been doing this for 10 12 years i've been around people like gervais i've been very lucky very fortunate and i remember how nervous I was the first time I sat on the sofa with him the first time I filmed with him was the most nervous

I've ever been for anything in my life and then Stevie White has come literally seemingly out of boots the day before and then he sat there with Ricky and he's just just gets it he's just on and he's just the glue and I was like I've chosen the right person here like to do this this journey with and then the money side of things so eventually you get approached by spotify and they offer you um a contract or a deal exclusive deal to do i remember watching your video announcing that yeah and you were very very honest a lot of people no like i think that's probably why people like you so much because you're, I can trust you because you're going to tell me the way you go. Listen, the money is a fucking very important thing here and you've been very overt about that,

which I think is admirable because again, it builds trust. People don't have to like what you're saying, but they're going to trust you. They're going to trust you to always be honest with them. So what was your thinking around the Spotify deal? Because, you know, I don't know, someday Spotify might approach me

and ask me if I want to go Spotify exclusive and maybe you can give me some advice on that. The reason I did it was purely financial. I thought it was going to be a bad idea. And I took some, my network I'm signed to, they wanted it to happen, because obviously they've got a slice of the pie. Did they orchestrate the deal?

Did Spotify go to them and then to you? Yeah. Okay. And originally I saw it as, okay, I'm taking off the full visual episodes on YouTube and just putting them on an audio-based platform, whereas a lot of my audience might be younger kids, and people like me and you we probably consume a lot of just audio when we're on the go and in the car and that whereas I think

younger generations and I'm basing this on nothing you probably know better than I do but I imagine younger kids probably like the more visual they like to watch the usually so I thought taking it off is is is probably going to get a lot of backlash and then Spotify told me how much it would be per year and the potential for how many years and I thought well that doesn't just change my life that changed my children's life who don't even exist so I literally did it because I was financially driven um and I I've got no qualms saying that or admitting that but what I'll also say is I now I'm starting to see the benefits a year in of going with Spotify and they're not they've not got

a gun to my head I can be as honest as I want about it if I thought it was shit I wouldn't have then signed on for the second year but they are now pulling out guests for us um that I would have never been able to pull on my own up until like two months ago I'd booked every single one of my guests personally on Twitter DMs or Instagram or whatever the last few months they've booked us johnny knoxville as part of his jackass um press junkets um rob bryden russell howard um we've got talks of some big the biggest movie stars in the world because of spotify so as somebody who has always wanted to sit down with the most interesting people in the world and pick their brains they've offered they've allowed me that so and they've also said that i can get the full video on spotify if i want and the only reason i'm not doing that is for a few things behind the

scenes that i need to well i can say it can't i it's because i'm earning money on the youtube so it's like you need to give me a little bit more to take to take that off so it needs to be worth your while yeah yes i've actually had a conversation with spotify about that as well about that video thing and i was i was considering it spotify have said um to me do i want to move the video to spotify as well right and again me and jack were trying to weigh up what that means does that because we're not going to get paid for that on spotify but what are would that does that mean we'd lose youtube viewers if we moved it there with people

and we kind of concluded that we wouldn't because we think that as you've said they're kind of very different types of people the youtube watcher is not the necessarily the spotify right people seem to be in their habits they're like cycles of how they consume content i don't know i don't know you've been debating that but yeah but then i don't know because if i'm listening to one of your apps i'll put i'll put yeah i'll put the youtube version on even if i'm not watching it same yeah same yeah but then if it was if it was on spotify would i then go to spotify for that like i i don't i don't know i i honestly do not know i like i like the arrangement i have now where people can watch the little clips

on youtube yeah and listen to the full ones on on spotify it's like advertising as well isn't it because that can go like viral on youtube and then that brings people over to watch the full thing yeah for sure which makes a lot of sense what's your big vision as it relates like the next five ten years for happy hour um we i want to do a live show oh really yeah we've been contacted a few times about doing a live show but it just has to be right we actually did like a like a pilot one in london somewhere a few years ago but it was the old show with alex and yeah um so so so i yeah i want to tour it um i want to have a more official chat show i don't know what that means because i have a chat show but is that on television i don't know is it i don't know what that means because i have a chat show but is that on

television i don't know is it i don't know i want a better studio i just want to keep i'm really fucking happy mate so i just want to keep doing what i'm doing and just make it bigger and better and just see what happens every thursdays which is today a day of recording like and my best days of the week like i used to live for the weekend to get pissed and go out with my friends now I live for Thursdays because I love like after this we've got going price on mine and then you're coming on mine as well and like I'm so excited for both conversations like that's so I just want to keep doing it I say it's the most impossible question when people ask me where do you want to be in five years I want to be I want to be here yeah one of the things that um you've also been really open about especially in 2019 i saw you talking a lot about this was that was really

tough year for you right and you talked a lot about your sort of mental health battles and just not feeling so good yeah i struggle with um health anxiety and ocd and i remember that was a time when i was i was really really low um and again I think I've touched on it a few times, but probably going out a bit too much and doing stuff I shouldn't have been doing. And it goes hand in hand, isn't it? You feel shit because the OCD is consuming you. So you go out to get pissed up, to have a break.

But then the next day, anxiety, or whatever they call it now, is twice as bad. So yeah, 2019, I think, was really when that started to get really bad. And I still call it now is um twice as bad so yeah 2019 I think was really when that started to get really bad and I still have it now um it's never going to go away but it's a really weird really weird thing to to deal with health anxiety yeah so when I was when I was 13 I found a lump downstairs and um like I found that like with with certain words like testicles balls stuff like I struggle to say them I physically struggle to say them when I'm talking to Fiona I'll say the t word or whatever and because I remember I was up all night worried that I had the c that I I was panicked and I was so fucking nervous.

I remember going to the doctor and he had to check it out and said, oh, it's fine. It's just the cyst. It will go away. And it never went away. And I still have it now, but the health anxiety, this is how mad it is. I can't touch that part of my body. I can't look at that part of my body i can't look at that part of my body i can't go there there's probably 15 to 20 times a day where i actually convince myself that i have cancer that that's how that's how crazy it is it's coming it comes in it comes in waves the best way i can explain it to people who don't have it is i don't smoke weed i i have done in the past but like I assume you've you've smoked yeah um for me I can't smoke it because I lose my head so you know that moment when your brain sort of floats off and you stop being conscious you're conscious but you stop having your you're not as

alert and then suddenly you become back to reality for a few seconds that's what my brain does with cancer so because I had that that trigger when I younger, that's really given me this kind of disorder, so to speak. And then that OCD has grown and taken so many different tangents. My granddad, who's on this arm, my best mate, and he'll be my best man at my wedding, he got ill with septicemia when I was like 14, and I got home and my mum had told me that he was in the hospital. And I remember I went and saw him, went home.

I had a picture of him and he was holding me when I was a baby on my wall. And my lucky number was 13. And I kissed it 13 times. And then a couple of days later, he got better. So that fucking triggered me. And then I could not go to sleep without kissing it 13 times. I've never been a religious guy. I've actively always spoken about my atheism,

probably because I was trying to be a BTEC Ricky Gervais. But they are my beliefs still now, or lack of. And I made up a prayer in my head. And I knew it was like, it's embarrassing to say it out loud, but it's like, dear God, please look after my mum, dad, nan, granddad, sister, and then I'd name them all, and then I'd have to say it three times. And even though I wasn't saying it out loud, if I tripped over a word, even thinking it,

like I thought of the wrong word in the wrong order, I'd have to go back and do it again. I went to have a seep over around my friends, and then halfway through the night realised, fuck, I haven't kissed that photo of my granddad, so I had to go home. Like, that's how mad it is. And now, luckily, with the numbers and the patterns and the sort of more the sort of more known about aspects

of OCD if you will um the more documented parts of it I don't necessarily have those I obsess over time and sunsets and sunrise which is weird but the cancer thing is something that really consumes my life and if anyone if there's an advert come on for cancer research i have to shoot up and turn it off and it's it's alarm bells in my head ding ding ding ding ding yeah there's been a few times during this this chat where my brain's gone off and it's like things like oh if you you need to write a will or oh how's what people what's going to happen to the channel when you die like all the little things yeah it's a weird it's a it's a strange thing but I spoke about this with Joe

Weller on my podcast and I've had hundreds of people dm me on Instagram saying they have a similar thing and although I don't reply to all of them I try and get my way through as many as I can deep that in it yeah but you know on one hand it was because it's it's it's not a world i'm thankful i'm thankful it's not a world that i that i know but i was sat there thinking oh my god then you can't be the only one that's going through that and i and it's so amazing that you're so honest about that because there'll be people listening to this right now that go that is me and i'm that the concept of health anxiety seems so alien to me but 15 times a day you said thinking about cancer or death and mortality and it's not the prospect of you might have it it's my brain telling me i do have it there's no other outcome it will be i'll be

chatting to you now and then it for a minute my head will be going oh remember you've got remember you you're ill you're yeah oh shit right okay i need to deal with that at some point and then it's almost like a that that moment when you when you're when you're high, remember you're ill. You're, yeah, oh shit, right. Okay, I need to deal with that at some point. And then it's almost like that moment when you're high and then you come back down and it's, what the fuck? And then I'm back in. There's a rapper called NF who struggles with OCD and he talks about them.

He puts it into kind of like, he says they're like black balloons that he's carrying around in his brain. And every now and then one will float away or or come back and i really resonate to that if anyone out there has got health anxiety and and resonate with some of the stuff that i'm saying today i check out check out nf he's got a few songs about health anxiety and ocd in there it's pretty um it's pretty they're pretty good they're pretty accurate how does someone go about um overcoming these things or curing them?

Is it therapy? Is there other resources that they can seek? I have, I've never been able to do therapy in terms of, because I don't truly know if I'm ill or not. I can't bring myself to walk through the doctor's door because if he,

if I get that confirmation, I melt that confirmation I melt down I probably fucking do something silly like I don't know like so I don't want that confirmation so I'm the worst person to answer that because I would actively encourage people to go and if they have a worry like go and get a lump checked out of course why would you not or or if you have if you know you have this health anxiety OCD whatever mental disorder it may be I would actively encourage people to go and talk to someone, whether that be therapy or whatever.

But I can't do it. So I can't practice what I preach. My friend Liz, she bought me an OCD workbook. And I go through that every now and then and answer the questions and write things. And yeah, so it's a hard one for me to answer because I wouldn't be able to practice what I actually preach. So you're too fearful to go and get a health check done? Yeah, I couldn't do it.

I couldn't do it. It's like shop shutters come down in my brain like that because if I go there and the doctor's like, yeah, you're ill, then that's the end for me. There's no recovery process. That's it. And that's a mental thing. I know that's not the right thing.

Fiona gets upset when she hears that, but I can't. Maybe it will change when I have kids. What do you mean that's the and that's a mental thing i know that's not the right thing fiona gets upset when she hears that but i can't maybe it will change when i have kids what do you mean that's the end for you i can't live with knowing i'm ill so even because i've i've put so much time and effort into believing it myself my little breaks now when i'm like actually no i'm fine i'm fine if i ever got that confirmation i would i would shut down i would but that's why it's a disorder that's why it's not right it's weird living with living with those thoughts is um it's not an easy thing to do have you found yourself and my business partner you know you've met dominic he went through a number of struggles which he's been very open about and he turned to alcohol as a way to kind of like self-medicate and i remember coming downstairs when we lived at the mickle door don't know if you ever came to the

yeah yeah yeah in manchester and finding him in the early hours of the morning just drinking with the lights off like 3 a.m yeah and then thinking like oh this guy's just a piss head whatever finding out years later that he had like some severe anxiety suicidal ideation he used to stand on the train station he said and considered you know jumping in front of the train and stuff did you ever find yourself medicating to try and escape some of these thoughts or realities you're living yeah i still do it now i still do it now i i i will go out and drink with my mates and it's not a big problem now and nothing to worry about and if it was i wouldn't be sat here telling you about it but i would go out and drink with my mates and then i would come home and carry on just drinking on my own because the ocd the balloons fly away

and then i feel the shop shutter goes up and i've got this release that i've not thought about having cancer in the past five hours because i'm i'm i've let loose on on booze and then i'll come home and then start to sober up and don't want that i don't want my thoughts back again so I will sit there and I will drink more and it will get to six in the morning and the sun that's why I obsess over sunrise as well because I because I just yeah it's just it's just a tough one I can't I struggle to sleep almost every night because that when I get in bed I I think about it more and that and then when the sunrise comes up and it's a new day and I know I have to start again it's it's a tough one so so I I obsess over sunrise times and I could probably tell you within 15 minutes maybe when the sunrise is I think it's

probably like 6 52 right now maybe what's the significance of the sun rising sorry because I panic so much at night time and that's when the the worst thoughts come into my brain that I panic so much that I can't I cannot sleep and I'm just in a circle of thinking cancer cancer cancer and then and then because it's like I know I need sleep because I need to go and interview this person tomorrow or present for West Ham tomorrow it's an important thing it's important for everyone so but I have to be on camera I can't have bags under my eyes as well so so I see it as an egg timer and and I'm like shit shit shit shit the sun's gonna come up and then I've not had any sleep and I've got to go and perform and so I'm checking my time I need to know when this when the sun's

coming up so I obsess over that like and another OCD thing is I always have to turn my phone off on the 15 minutes. So I have to look at the time. Say it's 4 a.m., I have to see that 4-0-0 for the light to turn off before I can settle. And if I miss that and it's 4-0-1, well, I'm up for another 14 minutes then because I need to see it hit 4-15. It's weird.

And I don't mean to sound insensitive when I say that. It's weird because I have it myself. But it is an unusual thing. But there are a lot of people out there that have a similar thing. So hit me up on DMs. Maybe we can have a chat. Did you sleep last night? Not really.

Really? Not in there. If there's any talk of death in any capacity, I will relate that back to myself and obviously i lost my dog last night so i was just yeah just up thinking yeah it's weird because i even know like that all that all those thoughts plague me and like this is like a therapy session for me like talking about this because i've owned fiona has heard this a hundred times and then no one else has really heard it but um even though those thoughts plague me I am really happy I just am so last night you find out your dog's passed away and you that sends you into sort of a spiral

thinking about death more broadly and yourself um and that keeps you up last night yeah yeah yeah I I'm in a bit of a in a bit of a routine at the moment where like i've had like two three hours sleep have a really busy day today drive back to norwich and then probably have two three hours sleep tonight two three hours until i become exhausted and then i can just sleep all the way through one night and it's a reset so like i just work until i can't anymore but the thing you were saying about Dom drinking at like three in the morning like that is that is I've been that guy I've been that guy 150,000 times like yeah so I when you said it I could I could

envision him there because I've I've been. The thing that you said about your drinking pattern that I could really relate to is with all my mates, we'd like come home after like being in Manchester or whatever and our like drinking arc, if it was a graph, goes like up and then plateaus. Because we're like, we've had enough. But what you said is that you want it to carry on drinking because you didn't want the sober thoughts back.

And that's exactly what I used to see in Dom i used to look at him and thinking why does he never want the party to stop why does he never want anyone to go home why does he always it seems like once he's had one it's a straight line upwards until he is incapable of pouring another yeah whereas i was i would be like i'd have three and then tail off and then want to be in bed by like 2am right yeah and so i have mates that like you and i'm the dom in my group and and i can't i could never understand the use i can never understand how why are you not why do you not want to carry on like like it doesn't it doesn't make sense it's such a release for me such a break from my everyday thoughts what like i just assume everyone's gonna be the same like I just assume everyone's

gonna be the same like you just want to go to bed and lay there with those thoughts like no way like let's just carry on and see the birds come up Fiona tell me about that you know it's it's it's hard enough um having a partner anyway when you're busy and you're you know focused on building your career as I found out but um when you're dealing with difficult thoughts often it can make it I guess an exacerbating factor so it can become more difficult she's just the best thing that's ever happened to me like she's just fucking incredible like she will sit there and listen to me until six seven in the morning just every time just talk about things that's regardless of if I've been drinking or not because I've I fear that this podcast may make it sound like

that's what I do all the time. It's not. I will do that more frequently than most people. I probably have two of those nights a month where I stay up until the silly hours. But compared to where I used to be, it's not. It's fine. But she will just sit there and listen.

And she's not a drinker. She never drinks. So she'll come out on a night out and will just be high on life, which is brilliant and beautiful. And I wish I had a bit of that. I don't. So we're very much chalk and cheese in that respect. But she keeps me going.

And there was a time in December where I'd stayed up too late. And so it was now the early hours of Sunday morning. And anxiety was running through my veins and I said I'm not gonna go to work on Monday and I was hosting something for West Ham I said I can't do it I said I can't look people in the eyes I said the OCD is too much I'm I'm shaking I'm panicking I can't face it and she said oh you will do it I said don't force me to do it fee please I don't want to do it she said I'm not going to force you she I got up in bed and she'd uh packed all my stuff that I needed and my laptop and put it in the car and then when I was ready she was like I've run you a bath you're going to get a bath and then

we're going to go to London book the hotel I went hotel woke up the next day presented for West Ham done a good job smashed it went driving home next day I was a bit teary-eyed and was like I need you to just push me into things because if I hadn't have done that I'd have just been hating myself for ages so she's very much my rock and uh sounds a bit a bit cheesy and that but I would not be making content now if it wasn't for her what an amazing person she's fucking beautiful mate yeah she's yeah she's incredible she's incredible some of the advice she gives me and stuff it's like and when i met her she was having bad panic attacks and i didn't know panic attacks were a thing i really didn't we was in

covert garden and we and she just started shaking sat on the floor and i was like what's going on here and now she and she would she would do no public kind of if i was doing any public events she didn't want to be there she didn't want to be whatever and now it's completely flipped i've brought her into my world whether she wanted to or not she's been a byproduct of me for so long and now i'm a byproduct of her and she's she's my backbone and she's she's got all of her anxiety seemingly under control I'm sure she'd tell me if not and she doesn't have panic attacks and now I'm that guy and she's so yeah shout to Fiona shout to Fiona hero it's so lovely to hear you talk with such admiration about her as well because guys can sometimes they either avoid talking about their partners or they're they're a bit too tough to like give them the credit for the supporting role they play but i think the same way with my girlfriend who's actually upstairs now

who's been a real rock for me and a real stabilizing force and really like helped me focus on what actually matters in life is like really i think with my girlfriend she's probably i don't know if she's even through the curtain and she can hear me but she doesn't particularly care about what i've achieved it doesn't seem to care at all when i if i like if i made if i made loads of money it's more about the other things like in terms of being connected to my family and being a good human being. Those are the kind of things she drives me on. But, um, Speaker 2 Fee's the same. Yeah. Yeah. Like me and my, my family, if I go around my nans on Christmas day, we're all like, we get, I love my family. Of course I do. But we'll

watch TV, the Christmas specials, whatever's on. We'll go around Fiona's house. Her family never turn the TV on for three or four days over the Christmas period. They sit there and they talk and they love each other and they embrace each other. And for me, I'm like, this is weird. Like this is old fashioned. Old school values. Yeah, but she's just so full of love

and she just, yeah, she just brings everyone closer. She walks into a room, she brightens it so you want to be a dad someday jeez yeah i do why was that question difficult i don't know i don't i'm i'm i we me and fee have spoken about a lot because i'm 29 now soon in two weeks so i'm getting i feel like i have to kind of soon um you have to kind of soon yeah i have to have a kid soon surely like i don't want to be what this i don't want to be a dad that's like 60 when they're like 20 so like i don't want to be i don't i can't have a kid when i'm 40 but do you want to have a kid yeah i do want to have a kid i'd be a great I'd be a great dad but ideally not soon yeah I said when I was early 20s I said by the time I'm 25 and then when I was 25 I said by the time I'm 27

and then now I'm saying by the time I'm 30 but I've got just under 13 months so I don't think that's gonna happen and Fiona's just had a um her sister's just had a baby so Fiona's just become an auntie and we love the little baby of course we do but of course hard work and i can give it back does it feel a bit scary for a lot of people it's quite a scary prospect for me it's a little bit of a scary prospect too because i think what am i gonna have to sacrifice to i don't want to sacrifice anything you have to sacrifice something to find time right and sure when you're very career driven yes yeah i just sort of run about from place to place talking to people on a camera like i could have a kid and fee could stay at home and edit but i love my life so much i don't want

it to change right now you can have a kid i hope so i hope so what's your um you know you're talented right though jack you know what your talent is right yeah what do you think your talent is it's a difficult question to ask people because it makes them feel uncomfortable but what do you if you had to say like the reason i am sat here today and the root cause of my success what would you diagnose if you were talking about jack mate from like a third party perspective i think i can speak to most people on their level so you can put me next to um ksi you can put me next to deborah meaden and i'll be able to get a laugh out of them and when they know the real me and i'm not trying to be jack mate i think that's a good i think that's a good person

and i've never been the best youtuber It's probably why I don't do the typical YouTube anymore. I'm not the best presenter, but I'm one of the best podcasters. I would say, and I've found what it is I love and what it is I'm good at. So I would say I'm a really good talker. I would, I I would completely agree I think you're much more talented than you give yourself credit for actually thank you I look at some of the stuff you do specifically with presenting actually and podcasting but presenting and podcasting and it's clearly it's almost a bit like Will Brazier like clearly a real talent that is in my view like impossible to replicate like I like and you talked about potentially in the future

doing some stand-up stuff i saw you talking about that before you'd be great at that and i could never do like i don't believe i could have i shouldn't be such a pessimistic person you've been doing big theater productions right i'm not there making people i'm not trying to make people laugh i'm trying to make them cry it's like it's like a completely yeah but that's a fine line in comedy if you can make if you can make someone cry you can make someone laugh it's all about emotions that's what it's all about do you know what it is it's like the labels we give ourselves and i've never labeled myself as like a funny person i've never told myself that i could make people laugh whereas you do that you do that very almost like effortlessly and i think

to be honest i think you've been practicing since you're a kid as you said so i did um i did two shows um opening up for max fosh in november and they were the best moments ever of your life yeah and that was stand-up yeah yeah i feel a bit silly saying it because max fosh did an hour brit a beautiful show um and it was called social butterfly um it was spelled with a z for a reason that becomes clear in the show but he he had um presentations and everything and he came on my podcast i said oh you're a real stand-up now you've just done a tour all up and down he was like no i don't feel like a stand-up because i had these aids and it was almost just whatever and i was then i felt like an idiot because i'd just done five minutes opening up for him and i was putting online that I've just done my dream.

But I had, I had. I was so nervous. I pretty much had a panic attack before I went out. I was looking at Fee going, I can't do it. Shaken, couldn't do it, couldn't do it. Had all my little jokes written on my hand there, but they'd already sweated off. And I tell you what, Steve,

like I put myself down a lot. And we've spoken about self-deprecating humour. I went out on stage, Max Fosh just suddenly went, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the stage, Jackman. I went out and that was what I was meant to be doing. Like everything,

any comedian that told me on my podcast came to me in that moment and I learned that and applied it on the stage. And I had people eating out the palm of my hand and I would make a joke and I would, but when I did a bit of standup years ago, I rushed through it because i wanted it to be over i was in the moment and i was able to live in the moment and leave pauses and hit beats and it was well good i walked out and the guy in in the front row had my merch on so really yeah there's one guy here that knows so i was able

to talk to him you want to do that more yeah i will do it now now i know i can do it i will do it surely there's no feeling like that like in front of people live and they're just you know hearing that laugh is i've never done heroin but i imagine that's what it's like to do to get that hit and i want that i want that back that was like the biggest rush that i've felt in in a long time and are you thinking about doing that as a happy under the happy hour brand i think i'll do a happy hour show yeah um whatever that may be but then i also want to do a stand up jack dean or jack mate stand-up show um i've got loads and loads of stand-up bits written down i've done i've got notepads and macbooks full of full of jokes so there's nothing like it there's nothing like the real world we get kind of lost in the digital so there's nothing like it there's nothing like the real world

we get kind of lost in the digital world there's like content creators or whatever but last night and the last few nights at the palladium have been the most like uh nothing has made me feel as alive as that so anyway israel i should know i don't normally say this but fuck it you know israel was here yesterday so you know it's the questions from him usually we don't tell people who the question is from right but israel adesanya wrote a question for you okay mind this is the this is the goat of fighting right this is the goat right yeah he wrote a question for you he wrote and you've got to answer this with total honesty that's the only rule here you've got to answer it with detail he said how are you truly feeling

content I was gonna say happy but I still have some issues I need to iron out so I'm content and I feel privileged to be where I am that's what I'll say. You probably wanted a better answer, but there we go. That's all you're getting. Perfect. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Steve. Thank you for your time, and I'm so glad we finally got to do this because you've been an inspiration for me, I think, centrally because of your willingness to be so open and honest with things, and I don't think you'll ever see the impact that that openness has on thousands,

hundreds of thousands of millions of people. It's like, I think more people need to do, need to to find within themselves to do that because as you've said today it's liberating for you like the therapy of just being able to say it kind of lifts the weight but it also lifts the weight for everybody listening and so i applaud you for that and your self-awareness about the journey you've come on as a creator as a man in your maturity so thank you it's a pleasure to sit here and thank you for the inspiration no thank you mate means a lot and thank you for having me on the show it's a great show so um yeah let's do mine and we'll speak about your favorite sandwich let's go do it Thanks for watching!