Few people can claim to have been a member of the British royal family, an Oscar winner, a candidate for mayor of London and the world’s most valued individual (for seven minutes, but still). Maximilian Arthur Fosh can. Kind of.
If it’s not already clear, Fosh is posh. You can tell by his accent, mannerisms and obvious public-school education. The 29-year-old YouTube sensation is better known as Max Fosh, and his ridiculous antics on camera have amassed more than four million YouTube subscribers and a fledgling stand-up career.
What’s not to like about him? He has delivered Deliveroo meals on horseback, established the UK’s third-largest religion – Sillyism – and was immortalised in meme format for attempting to “Uno reverse” a soccer referee.
“The videos that I make are all within the remit of silly,” he tells me on a video call. Even his company name is silly: Fish with an O Limited. “Whether that’s competing in the Mr Universe bodybuilding competition without having done any training [or] cooking an oven ready-meal in a volcano – all my videos are kind of like asking the questions that you might have with your mates after you’ve had a few pints down the pub.”
I’m in London for the day, and although we’re unable to meet, we’ve arranged the call to talk about Loophole, the live show that he’s bringing to Ireland this month.
“It’s all about the various loopholes that I’ve found whilst making videos,” he says. “There’s also a loophole in there that I found and thought was too good for YouTube. So I decided to make an entire stage show around it.” I push Fosh to give some clue about what the loophole might be, but he doesn’t budge, insisting that it’s life-changing and audiences will be sworn to secrecy. Silliness to be expected, I’m sure.
Fosh is a sucker for bending the rules. He is part of a stream of comedians entering the live circuit from less established means: born of the internet but moulding their acts for the stage. As the world looked to screens more than ever for entertainment during the pandemic, acts such as Fosh took centre stage.
“I think it’s a slightly more meritocratic system,” he says. “Previously you might have to wait for a producer or commissioner to put you on a panel show on TV just to get access to a larger audience, whereas now the destiny is very much in your hands. And we’re seeing a lot of creatives and comedians break through very, very quickly – which is exciting, but you’ve got to make sure you’ve got the material to back up the one minute that people have seen online.”
Fosh is no rookie to the stage, having previously toured a show and performed at Edinburgh Festival Fringe. But he remains an outsider to more traditional acts. “It’s a completely different world from what I make on YouTube. It’s just such an immediate reaction to the content that you are putting out there, and people will not mince their words. Their reactions won’t be faked.”
When he’s not touring and dishing out allegedly life-changing secrets (€28.40 per ticket seems like a bargain, no?), he’s making a living primarily through advertising. Running ads on his YouTube videos can lead to sizeable payments if, as Fosh’s do, your videos regularly generate more than a million views. “It roughly equates to about £4,000-£5,000 per million views,” he explains, “but that can vary massively depending on where your audience is watching.” He also runs native advertising mid-video, an approach that has come to dominate the content-creator space in recent years. Users have trained their brains to switch off to obvious advertising and habitually click “Skip ad” where possible. In response, Fosh will, for example, talk about a sponsor for roughly 60 seconds during a video.
“I can spend upwards of £20,000-£30,000 on a video, and I know in that instance I’m going to lose money, but I always have the idea of, like, ‘That’s okay, because there are videos that will be profitable in the future.’”
What have been some of his favourite videos to make? “I hired the SAS to beat my friends at paintball. That was quite fun.” Not for his friends, I suspect. “I got a parrot that could say ‘red’ or ‘black’ and make my bets for me in Vegas in roulette. We managed to come away with some money” – $1,500, or about €1,300 – “so thank you very much to Pablo the Parrot for being very accurate with his red or black. And then there was another one where I hired 12 bald men and wrote a spoiler on their heads, one letter at a time, to spoil The Lion King [stage musical] for my friend.” What about the spoiler brigade? Wouldn’t they be annoyed? “I mean, you’re 30 years down the line, Conor, come on,” he jokes.
Fosh’s ideas undoubtedly capture the imagination. With creators competing for eyeballs on the internet, it’s often just a video title and thumbnail standing between success and failure. (Us newspaper folk do the same thing, I suppose, but with more notions.)
One episode that caught the attention of the media was his Welcome to Luton prank, when he laid the words out in giant letters in a field near Gatwick Airport, outside London. It cost him £4,000 between the sign, its installation and renting the land for six weeks, but the confused passengers and international news coverage probably made it worthwhile. That and the 15 million YouTube views.
Another stunt saw Fosh run as an independent candidate in the London mayoral election of 2021, in an attempt to win more votes than the actor and activist Laurence Fox. Though his mission was ill-fated, he managed to receive 0.2 per cent of votes, coming second last among the 20 candidates. Count Binface’s policy platform must have resonated more with voters.
Fosh is, of course, very British, which might make the Irish stops on his tour seem surprising, but we love berating upper-classness just as much as the next former colony. “I’ve made no secret of where I grew up and my background,” he says, “and a lot of the early videos were very much taking the mick out of that. I did a lot of interviews with posh people at these very posh events and almost ridiculed them.” He has drifted away from that style, but the themes still show up in his content, including a recent video in which he posed as an obscure member of the British royal family to unsuspecting Americans.
In an online arena devoid of intimacy but forever chasing authenticity, Fosh presents his fans not only with humour but also with nostalgia. He serves up a cosy, self-aware version of Britishness that stands out amid a blur of clickbait uniformity. It’s the Mary Berry-loving for-king-and-country vibes, with a self-deprecating humour one can get behind.
“Especially when it comes to the upper-class nature of British society, there’s always been this very weird fascination with it,” he says. “And that has pervaded through popular culture ... especially media for a long, long time. If you think about the 1990s, the biggest movies [in the UK] were Notting Hill or Four Weddings and a Funeral ... It’s upper-class posh, but it’s done in a very soft way. And that’s pervaded. If you think of reality TV, Made in Chelsea was a massive show – it’s this ridiculing or introspection of the upper class. If you can be a part of that tranche of society, and you can be reflective of it, then I think people respond to it. And it can feel non-threatening.
“I think there is a fascination with people who might be perceived as posh but in an ‘Oh, but they’re okay’ way.” Entertainers such as Jack Whitehall have touched on this mode of comedy before, he says, “with a real soft edge”.
Instead of punching outwards, it’s giving: “Look how absurd I am and this whole situation is. Let’s laugh at this together.”
Max Fosh: Loophole is at Waterfront Hall Auditorium, Belfast, on 3Thursday, September 26th, and 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin, on Friday, September 27th
