Fashion faux-pas, fans getting married, and facing the Jungle: Jim Chapman joins us in the Pub Corner
From Youtube to your best mate
Anyone who was alive and online during 2010 will remember the OG Youtube boom; vlogs were vlogging, normal lads in their bedrooms were making us laugh with challenges and pranks, and content creating became an actual career for the first time ever. Pioneering that charge and making everyone a bit happier in the process were the likes of Joe Sugg, Caspar Lee, and Jim Chapman – and they’re all just as iconic and wholesome as ever.
Since leaning away from YouTube a couple of years ago, Jim has become your best-mate-by-proxy on the ‘Gram, sharing everything from his DIY Fails whilst renovating a house, life as a father to two under five, and keeping stylish amongst the scary onslaught of clothing trends which really should have stayed in the 00s.
Down at a lovely local London spot, Mr Fogg’s Pawnbrokers on Dean St, Jim joined us for a pint of Lucky Saint, looking back on his career so far – everything from the highlights of being in a boy band back in the YT heydays, to accidentally being mistaken for Andrew Garfield on a red carpet. Oh, and a nice dose of Christmas chat too…
He once walked through a mugging
There are many quintessentially British - or London-y - experiences that you must endure before becoming a bona-fide Brit in the big smoke. Think: having a pint outside on a road even if it’s pissing it down, or queuing an hour for a sandwich you saw on TikTok. Turns out Jim has a story of his own…
“I remember once I was moving house, and I was looking at a flat in Peckham, and I walked through a mugging,” Jim remembered. Needless to say, he didn’t end up moving to that particular spot.
For him, Christmas is a full-festive-family affair – complete with an annual Christmas quiz
Christmas comes with many (jingling) bells and whistles, and between the family festivities, food, and friendly catch-ups, there can be an awful lot going on. One of the great things about it - aside from the carols, Christmas jumpers, and food - is how every single person has their own chrimbo quirks shaped by years of glitches and accidents which become beloved traditions.
“I just like being with my people,” Jim reflected, thinking about big family Christmases.
“We’re going to my family this year, which I love, but I’ve only got a few days before that itch though.” That itch? we wondered: “The murder itch,’ he joked. “No, no,” he clarified. “Just when your social battery runs out."
“There's loads of us,” he explained. “I’ve got a twin brother and two big sisters, we each have two children, my mum’s there, my siblings bring their partners, and sometimes they bring family members too. We’re well into the twenties with guests… It’s brilliant.”
“We do a Christmas quiz which we are yet to complete,” he reflected. “There’s far too many questions, far too much alcohol, and no one ever finishes it. My brother and sister are both really competitive - I’m just happy to be there. I think the tradition is not to complete it at this point – part of the charm is that we never get it done.” Sounds like my family with the Christmas washing up…
Strictly and the Jungle are on his hit list of dream gigs
You never really know with celebs what their guilty pleasures are, and consequently which shows they are genuine fans of and which they’ve been peer-pressured by their agents / family into doing. For a big name, Jim does relatively few cult-British family-favourite shows - not that he’s not been asked, but it doesn’t mean he’s not got his eyes set on some glitter and some khakis…
“I love to do Strictly or the jungle because I’d love to either learn to do a new thing or be in an adventurous place,” Jim confessed. “I’ve been able to do a lot of once-in-a-lifetime things through my job and the more odd or extreme an experience, the more I’m into it.”
With a load of presenting and interviewing gigs firmly under his belt, it’s easy to wonder if he’d be looking to be a host of any of these Brit-cult-family-classics as much as a participant. After all, Strictly’s looking for some new hosts, we hear…
“That’s a tough gig,” Jim replied after our Strictly hint. “I don’t know if I’d want to - I mean if the opportunity came up I’d say yes absolutely! But I reckon I'd get one season in and they’d go, “you’re fired”.”
For all his style he definitely has some outfits he won’t be repeating – including his sister’s noughties coded hand-me-downs
It’s easy when stumbling across the lesser-spotted impeccably dressed man on Instagram to think they have it sorted. No grey tracksuit in sight, never a collar out of place, and looking like they’ve never ever walked out of the house of a morning not realising they have a small spot of toothpaste down their top. However, somewhat comfortingly to hear, Jim’s definitely got a few fashion faux-pas he can remember.
“Prior to social media, there were LOADS,” he laughed. “I used to wear my sister’s clothes – it was hand-me-downs because we didn’t have much money. These were the days of Christina Aguilera as well, and the days of really low waisted flares so I’d be walking around in those. And I was an awkward teenager as well so not sure that helped!”
But for the everyday man who lives in chackets and the same pair of Levi’s, does he have any tips? Or is style something you are just born with? (Spoiler: it’s the former).
“I think style changes,” Jim pondered. “I look at things from 10 years ago and think oooh, I wish I hadn’t worn that. I’d say nowadays my style is very much anti-trend. Most of what I wear I could have worn 10 years ago and will wear in 10 years time. Classics.”
“There’s an art to it,” he added. “You can wear slim, you can wear wider but if you go to the extreme of either of those things, it doesn’t do anyone’s body any favours. Part of what is beautiful about dressing is the drape and what it hints to. If you wear stuff that’s far too tight it leaves nothing to the imagination and you can see your entire body - same with if you’re slim like me and you wear too loose clothes, you kind of get lost in it, and you look really, really skinny. I think the answer is moderation.”
He has one main tip which sounds mercifully simple: “Know where your waist is."
“It cuts your body in half,” Jim explained: “It makes your legs look longer, makes your shoulders look wider, so it’s important to get right. Then from there it’s pretty classic – don’t go too wide or too slim. With suiting, get the shoulders right first.”
*bookmarks for later*
He has a lot of love for his fans - especially as they've grown up with him
One of the pitfalls, surely, that comes with being a Youtube star especially back in the day was the majority of the fans were around 14 years old. And as Jim remembers, really awkward when you’re on the tube and someone starts screaming and crying (in a good way). Or when a 14 year-old-girl would be like “oh I know him from the internet” and her parents would suddenly stare at him and go “What?!” and he would have to explain that he didn’t know them, and that I was just a Youtuber. “I’ve had that situation more than once,” Jim laughed.
But there are lovely upsides to it too – “Without sounding holier than thou,” Jim prefaces, “But I get people who have had tough times and have gone 'I watched you and your friends and you felt like a friend to me', and it helped them to get through and think that fun and friendship is out there.”
On the same flip side, “I used to get so many parents say 'you know what, you're a really good influence' - because they could have been watching anything online but instead they were watching me and my mates just cause harmless mischief, and get up to innocent fun. It was a wholesome time of the internet.”
“I’ve had people who have met in the comments of my videos, who have met and then fallen in love, and got married. I’ve never been invited though!”
Clearly, that’s what modern dating takes. Get off the apps, and back onto Youtube.
His has a big celeb doppelganger - and he once accidentally signed a fan’s poster by mistake
Corey Mylchreest gets mistaken for Nick Hoult, Matthew Rhys for Julian McMahon, for Jim Chapman, it’s Andrew Garfield.
“I also once accidentally signed something as Andrew Garfield. I was at an event and Hacksaw Ridge had just come out, and he was behind me on the red carpet - five, ten yards maybe. I was signing autographs and taking selfies, and someone mistook me for him. And I was so in flow with writing and singing that when someone passed me a Hacksaw Ridge poster, I just signed it, and it was only once they went “I loved you in the movie” I realised, and went “oh, thanks!”. I suddenly realised what I’d done, and this guy had the rest of the cast’s signatures on the poster and then I’d just defaced it.”
Just a light bit of (accidental) identity fraud.
He was in a (parody) boyband - and he’s not against a reunion… But he might be the only one
Being in a boyband is a right of passage – were you even at least semi-famous in the noughties / 10s if you didn’t try and migrate into a music career? Come to that, if you didn’t have some sort of ill-fated band created in the back of your parents’ shed / garage when you still had acne and dreams, I’m not sure you’re allowed to migrate into adulthood. The price, surely, for becoming an adult - apart from paying taxes - has to be a dodgy attempt at a band. Luckily for the public, Jim’s attempt - alongside his fellow OG Youtubers - was a right laugh – even if it was off key.
“It’s sort of false advertising,” Jim laughs “But back in the day, a group of us were in a hotel room. And we just decided to turn on the camera and sing along. It blew up to the point where Sport Relief got in touch and thought they could do something with it. We had a vocal coach and choreography lessons, and we were in an actual recording studio – the whole thing was a parody. It was shocking in the most glorious way. No one took it seriously, it raised a load of money, BUT I still now get people asking when the band is getting back together. We just had our tenth anniversary!
"I’m not sure the vocal coach understood the assignment - that it was a parody - and was quite confused. Joe [Sugg] has some pipes on him, but the rest of us were awful.
"It was great to be a part of, there was talk of a reunion, but I’m not sure we’ll be getting back together."
Here's to 2026 we guess, the year of surprises, and hopefully, a reunion or two.
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