How I finally got to grips with my central heating system
Tim Dowling
For several years running, I had to call out a plumber every autumn; the central heating pump would quit shortly after I turned on the system. One year, I had a magnetic filter installed to catch the gunk that kept jamming the pump, but the next year it quit right on schedule. I called the plumber. He cleaned out the magnetic filter, restarted the system, and sent me a bill.
The next year, the annual breakdown of the pump coincided with a warm spell, so I did nothing for a week. One day, while I was staring into space, it occurred to me that YouTube might hold the answer to my problem.
I watched “How to clean out a Fernox TF1” five times. The production values weren’t high – it was filmed on a phone – but the action took place in a dusty boiler cupboard reassuringly similar to mine. The faceless star of the video dropped several components and had to fish about for them, which was also reassuring. It was fascinating: I had owned a TF1 for two years and I had never even looked at it. Now I knew it to be a thing of wonder, with a 9,000 gauss removable magnet at its core.
A video for anyone who’s sick of their boiler breaking down.
Most important of all, the video contained vital procedural information. Without the instructions “keep a bucket handy” and “first, isolate the unit off”, my real-life encounter with the TF1 might have ended very differently. As it was I had no problems, and I ended up with a very satisfying quantity of black sludge in my bucket.
I put everything back together exactly the way my YouTube mentor did, de-isolated the unit, gave the pump a clout with a hammer and everything started going again. I haven’t enjoyed such a sense of accomplishment since. Only “How to assemble a clarinet” came close.
My crash course in squeezing blackheads
Lucy Mangan
You know that bit at the beginning of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin where Dr Iannis patiently works to extract a pea from a patient’s ear? I didn’t bother going any further with the book. It was the most satisfying piece of prose I had ever read. I knew nothing could top that. And nothing did, until YouTube came along.
YouTube has taught me two things. First, that there are many ways of winkling out blackheads and extracting pus from pimples/boils/other pressurised carbuncles located in obscure crevices of the human body. And, second, that I am an awful person who will search for, watch and find a deep and meaningful peace in the videos of people doing so.
My favourite – yes, of course I have favourites; what of it? – is of a giant blackhead developed by a woman over the course of 20 years. I don’t know where on her body it is, but it must be somewhere inaccessible otherwise I cannot fathom how she kept her hands off it for two decades but, by the time the video starts, her niece has persuaded her to go to a semi-professional with a sharp pin and even sharper resolve and the pin has begun its work. After six minutes of exquisite agony – for the viewer, I mean; “exquisite” is probably not the word the blackhead’s hostess would reach for – a long, stiff worm of impacted grot has been winkled out and lies exposed on the winkler’s palm. It’s disgusting. It’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
There are hundreds of others out there, but that’s the best. I’m not giving you the link. If you want it, you’ll find it easily enough. And you do. And you will. By your recent search terms shall I know thee.
I learned scouse from a Toxteth teen smoking weed in a caravan
Rhik Samadder
Acting is just pretending with confidence or, if you prefer, lying. For evidence, check out the “other skills” section of any Spotlight profile. In addition to horse riding and stage combat, actors will tick off any box available – unicycling, camel-whispering, advanced midwifery; there may be an audition in it, so why put yourself out of the game? One reason is that you will occasionally have to make good on these claims. My own profile proclaims me an expert in every accent and dialect imaginable, from those spoken in north Lancaster to Sri Lanka, via Trinidad & Tobago. I claim a smattering of Urdu, Pashto and conversational Bactrian for all I know. It’s all bullshit. The thing is, sometimes an audition comes up that requires one of them, and that’s when I go running to YouTube.
“What do Jordanians sound like” I’ll type, or “man from West India just talking”.
There are lots of accent tutorials from 15-year-old “experts”, which are invariably useless. (For a solid ROFL, search any “how to speak British” video uploaded by an American.) No, when researching dialect, you need the real deal. I learned scouse from a Toxteth teen smoking weed in a caravan, and Bostonian from a crowd fight in a Burger King. I pore over foreign news clips: villagers holding up a big fish, or denouncing a tyrant, parsing their vowel sounds so I can convincingly play a Yemeni scientist or Afghani diplomat on TV.
Without YouTube, actors end up doing impressions of other actors, draining an already shallow linguistic pool. With access to the lives of ordinary people, and an ear for the rhythms of real speech, we can steal from much more authentic sources.
It’s also good for watching two-hour compilations of controlled building demolitions, which are very therapeutic when you don’t get the job.
A means to reaching the end in all those impossible videogames
Stuart Heritage
A guide to shortcuts to help you get through Batman Arkham City.
Here’s a horrible confession: until relatively recently, I had never completed a videogame. Sure, I would give it my best shot, but eventually I would grow tired of drowning in the same place, or getting crushed by the same pillar, or playing other Sonic the Hedgehog levels that didn’t have the Green Hill Zone theme playing underneath it, and I would give up.
Two factors helped me overcome this. First, I realised that if I was going to spend the bulk of my disposable income on what basically amounted to a really expensive CD, I should probably figure out how it ends. Second, people started posting walkthrough videos on YouTube.
I first discovered YouTube walkthroughs after spending an entire morning – honestly; four full hours without a break – trying to throw a stick at a switch during one of the Batman Arkham games. That’s all I needed to do. Throw a stick, steer it around something and hit a switch. And I couldn’t. And it was driving me berserk. But, perhaps because I had just been through a breakup and had nothing else whatsoever to do with my life, I vowed that this time I wouldn’t be beaten.
Eventually, I broke and Googled something like: “How to hit the switch with the stick Arkham.” The first result was a video made by a fan who had played the full game, and narrated it, and uploaded it to YouTube, possibly because he had just been through a breakup and had nothing else to do with his life.
He showed me how to hit the switch (all this time, I had been doing it wrong), and from that point on he became my companion, telling me how to tackle the next stage before I had even played it.
Some might call this cheating. Some might say this is ignoring the exploratory spirit in which these games were made. To these people I say this: “You try hitting the poxy switch with the bloody stick, then we’ll talk.”
I discovered that ‘dupe’ makeup is just as good as the high-end products
Sara Ilyas
Why you don’t need to buy expensive brands to get the look.
I used to be snooty about the cult of young YouTube vloggers, with their gratingly enthusiastic tutorials on “How to get ready for a night out” or “How to be a jarring suburban brat”. That was until we had a big family wedding. The makeup artist we had booked cancelled at the last minute and we were forced to book a friend of a friend. Nice as she was, we looked terrible. I resembled Elizabeth I in a sari. With a scouse brow.
I’m not ashamed to say that I cried. As our aunt ridiculed us on the drive home for wasting £30 on something we could learn to do ourselves, I found myself agreeing. I do a decent job of basic everyday makeup, but now I was determined to learn more. So one evening I threw myself into YouTube beauty tutorials. First, I tried out a smokey eye – surprisingly straightforward. I quickly mastered more elaborate eye makeup and the art of subtle contouring.
Then, my younger sister showed me the world of “dupe” videos. Dupes are cheap makeup products that are as good as products 10 times their price. Dedicated vloggers trawl through cheap high-street products, posting up their best finds. The best concealer is £2 and is from Collection 2000. My favourite blush is £4.49 and from Sleek, a star brand of the dupe scene.
There’s a reason why these videos are watched by millions of people: cheap products can disappoint if you’ve not researched them, but most people can’t afford to drop £50 at the Chanel beauty counter either. The most useful dupe I have bought is a W7 eyeshadow palette for £5, the higher-end version of which will set you back £40. You might find 15 shades of brown and gold unnecessary, but with Asian wedding season approaching, I beg to differ.
My introduction to zen and the art of jeans washing
Tim Jonze
Washing raw denim jeans – you don’t just bung ’em in the washing machine, you know.
I sat there, transfixed, watching the clothes-washing instructions of a fashion designer called Jing, who was head designer at a company that made streetwear out of bamboo thread. Now, I know what you’re all thinking: “Tim, that could be the opening line of a Booker prize-winning novel.” But no, this was real life for me, and it was causing me to re-evaluate who I really was.
Jing was teaching me, over 14 minutes and two separate YouTube clips, how to wash a pair of jeans. And not just any old jeans – I’m not a total moron, I do at least know how to wash normal jeans (just bung them in the washing machine, then text your wife to ask what setting it goes on again). No, these were “raw denim” jeans, which I purchased without realising what a total ball-ache they would be to deal with: you can’t use washing machines, you can only wash them once a year, you need special detergent and they have to drip dry.
And so I watched Jing as he slowly, but methodically, squeezed a year’s worth of leg-grime out into a bathtub of lukewarm water. As I did so, I noticed a transformation within me, from someone who ridiculed the superficial life choices of a person such as Jing into someone who truly admired his entire aesthetics-bound existence. As he briefed me on the beauty of having your own unique “fade”, I realised that the colour of your jeans didn’t have to be just something that Urban Outfitters decided for you, but rather a gentle brushstroke on to the canvas that was my soul.
From that day forward – or at least from whatever future moment my jeans finally dripped dry – I promised myself that, like Jing, I too would be a living monument to design, in which every move I made was in itself a work of art. And with that resolution firmly in my mind, I clicked on another YouTube link and learned how to reset the thermostat on the boiler.
I perfected my chatshow couch skills
Kayvan Novak
Peter Cook on Parkinson in the 1980s: learn from a master.
Three years ago, I got a call from my agent to ask if I would like to go on The Jonathan Ross Show to sit on his couch and be interviewed by him. As myself. No hiding behind balaclavas or prosthetics. Just me and him having a chat on his couch, a couch that had provided comfort for many a famous backside. And now it would provide some comfort/discomfort for mine. Comfort should I manage to pull off some sudden Robin Williamsesque mid-interview manic pantomimes, leaving an impression of the wild and crazy guy I had always imagined myself to be or, more likely, discomfort should I find my own personality cylinders misfiring due to neglect through spending too many hours on the telephone pretending to be a mouse. I needed guidance, I needed to learn some chatshow couch skills and fast. I needed YouTube.
Until this point I had used YouTube mainly to indulge in TV nostalgia from my childhood. But now it was time to put the world’s greatest visual jukebox to the chatshow archive test: I typed in “Harrison Ford interview” and watched him on Wogan, Letterman and Johnny Carson. He was young, thin, slightly aloof, sarcastic, in his own world, handsome but not funny enough. So I typed in “Peter Cook Parkinson”: he was old, thin, wild-eyed, smoking, hilarious and definitely not me. Of course! Peter Sellers! Damn; he’s playing the ukulele.
As I watched each video the little column on the right of my YouTube window kept offering up more and more delights: Muhammad Ali, Sean Connery, Grace Jones, Pete Doherty, Marco Pierre White stock cube recipe (sponsored link) – I inhaled it all. And the more I inhaled, the more inadequate I felt. How could I possibly earn my place amid all this chatshow talent, personality, charisma, wit and charm? By watching the opening credits to Button Moon, Manimal, The A-Team, Knight Rider, Cities of Gold, Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds and an old episode of Far Flung Floyd. Sheer YouTube bliss.
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