Your nan definitely won’t have heard of Jim Chapman. Indeed, you might not have heard of Jim Chapman. Yet teenage girls around the world have posters of the 28-year-old in their bedroom, and are likely to burst into flurries of selfie-snapping if they spot him walking down the street. Chapman isn’t in films or TV. Nor is he a musician. And obviously he’s not a banker. He is, though, a YouTube sensation – and he’s made his fortune by taking videos of himself going about his daily life, and posting them on the internet.
Norwich-born Chapman has been posting videos since 2010, and the topics range from the mundane to the bizarre. Visit his two YouTube channels – Jim Chapman and EveryDayJim – and you’ll find videos of Chapman baking cakes, pretending to be Lord Voldemort, and, er, drawing pictures with his feet. If you’re sitting there scratching your head and wondering how that can lead to success, you need to look at the numbers. His two YouTube blog channels have racked up more than 95 million unique views between them. With YouTube views come ads; with ads come money, and plenty of it.
Chapman and his wife – makeup artist and revered fellow ‘vlogger’ Tanya Burr – bought themselves a £2m house in London last year. Thanks to a huge adoring fan base of easily influenced under-25s, everyone wants to work with him – from Burberry to Jamie Oliver.
It all began when Chapman’s older makeup artist sisters started YouTube channel Pixiwoo in 2008 to talk about makeup. “It was kind of an accident, really,” Chapman tells me breezily. “My older sister Sam said that one of her friends asked her how to create a smoky eye. She was really heavily pregnant and thought, ‘I don’t want to write it all down, so I’ll make a video and post it.’ I don’t think she even realised other people could watch it at the time.” But watch it they did, and Pixiwoo has now garnered more than two million subscribers on its YouTube channel.
Chapman’s then-girlfriend Burr decided to have a go, too, and launched her own makeup blog. Her huge success spurred Chapman, who was working a series of “normal nine-to-five” jobs after graduating with a degree in Psychology, to do the same. “At the start, we had no idea anything would happen from it, and then it kind of grew and grew. There was no goal for me. I did it because it was fun; I didn’t really think about the numbers. I had no idea that the number of people who were watching could reach what it is now.”
I did it because it was fun; I didn’t really think about the numbers. I had no idea that the number of people who were watching could reach what it is now
When Chapman first began vlogging at 22, he was shy and has admitted to not having many friends. Now he has millions of them – alongside the legions of loyal viewers, he also counts fellow vloggers Alfie Deyes, Zoella and Caspar Lee among his closest pals. Though it might all seem like an easy way to make a living, Chapman assures me it’s not. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s also a labour of love,” he says. Chapman tells me that for every vlogger that makes it, there are thousands who fail, and success involves tirelessly producing content for a channel that could take years to take off. “It’s impossible to say what it takes to actually get there, because it’s about whatever makes that person individual. There’s something about us that you can’t really quantify, something that just kind of pops on screen.”
Watch his videos, and it’s clear that Chapman has likeability factor in that squeaky-clean way. He’s also 6ft 3in, blue-eyed and stylish (gq.com’s readers voted him their best-dressed man of 2015). That might have helped him amass a fan base that any boy-band member would be proud of, as well as explaining why he’s also a model and a regular at front rows of fashion week. “I love the shows, although I do feel much too normal to be there sometimes because you get a lot of crazy characters,” he laughs. “I guess it’s quite nice being a guy who can talk about fashion, because for the average dude you’ve got guys who are really bloody good-looking, who look incredible but don’t talk much. I think the general public feel like they can’t really relate to that, because they’re like, ‘I’m never going to look like this.’ Then you’ve got guys who are really flamboyant or have crazy taste, who can talk but it doesn’t quite meet the ‘everyman’ criteria. Then there’s me, who is just a normal guy, happens to like clothes, and can talk about it. I think the modelling just kind of happened via that; it seemed to make sense because it was like, ‘He looks quite good in clothes and he can talk about them, so maybe he looks good in a photograph, too.’”
His style tips for the City gent? “Keep it simple; don’t overthink it; know your fit and your style; and keep it kind of masculine. If you’re wearing a suit, then pick a pocket square that really represents you, or a nice tie. That’s where you can make it yours, as opposed to buying a really crazy suit that you’re only going to wear once because you think it looks cool, before you realise that actually, floral suits aren’t that cool.”
Though he tells me he and his wife are stopped – and often even mobbed – by fans and paparazzi on a daily basis, the concept of his own celebrity is something that Chapman still finds quite difficult to take in. “This is something I have struggled with as I never thought of myself in this way, but you can’t deny the fact that millions of people now know who I am. However you define it, I guess that does make me famous.”
Chapman and the blogging contingent represent a new breed of celebrity, one that has turned the camera on itself, making its stars more candid in their approach and certainly more accessible to their fans. “My relationship with my audience is much deeper, it’s much more reciprocal and we kind of work together. They really trust me. I have to respect them and they respect me. I think that it’s not good enough now to just be a pop star, or a movie star, or even a YouTuber; you need to kind of have the full package and take your audience along with you, in a way.”
It’s not good enough now to just be a pop star, or a movie star, or even a YouTuber; you need to kind of have the full package and take your audience along with you
Which is why vloggers like Chapman have grown bigger than their online personalities to become fully-fledged celebrities. While Zoella appeared in last year’s Great British Bake Off for Comic Relief, Chapman DJs for Radio One, and even live-presented at the premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Though they’ve made their fame from something relatively simple – posting internet videos – the importance of vloggers, and their ability to grow and influence an audience, demands that the media worlds sit up and pay attention. “What vlogging is generally doing is redefining a whole genre, which I’m quite excited about. It puts the power in the consumer’s hands, whereas before, audiences were only subject to what the people at the top decided they wanted to post.
“Whether it’s in magazines, or on TV, on the radio, whatever, it’s some guy at the top, who’s probably too old to be ‘down with the kids’, deciding what kids want to see. Now suddenly all the people who are the future generation of the world are in control and can watch what they want to, and it just so happens that they like to watch people like me.”
In 2016, fame isn’t about going to acting school, learning how to sing, or tirelessly attending auditions. Like Jim Chapman says, “All you need is a camera, an internet connection, and a laptop.”
