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Older. Like, who would want that? More responsibility, more stress and more wrinkles. For us millennials the dawning of adulthood can be a real point of stress. We’ve grown up in a world where perfection is pitched as a realistic goal, a thing to be achieved as opposed to some sort of abstract concept to be aimed for but never quite reached. Because perfection is impossible, like not looking a total prick in a vest top or trying to sound interesting when talking about bitcoin.
Not only do we see adulthood as this part in our lives when we live in complete and utter bliss with all our shit together, but there seems to be a massive stress for my generation to get to that stage in life as quick as possible, with no slip-ups on the way. I mean, what would be the point in owning a beautiful new sports car when you’re too old and grey to absolutely smash the likes on Insta? I find it hilarious when an older person buys a fancy new sports car and is accused of having a mid-life crisis. Really? Are they having a crisis or just earning enough money now to be able to afford one?
The pressure is on. You’re getting old, and you need to sort everything out before you get there. If you are feeling like that right now I’m here to tell you it’s OK. If you’re reading this and panicking that you’re never going to win an award, make a million pounds or even run that company, then take a deep breath. Everyone is panicking, about everything, all the time. As you get older you learn one thing for sure. No one has a fucking clue what the hell they’re doing. Your mates don’t know what the hell they’re doing with their lives, your parents had no clue what they were doing when they brought you up – hell, even the President of the United States is just a big clueless mess guessing his way through life. Although that has become more and more horribly apparent in recent years.
In a recent chat with Spencer Owen, AKA Spencer FC, a brilliant content creator with over a million subscribers on YouTube, he spoke very eloquently about why he is glad success has come to him slightly later in life (by YouTube standards) and why too much, too soon can actually impact negatively on your life in the long-term. We started by discussing how hard it must be for pop stars who achieve success early on, which then fades.
Interview with Spencer Owen –
‘Someone asks you for a cup of tea. No thanks, I’ve been to the moon’
IAIN STIRLING
I look at some pop stars who are, like, private jets to LA, living the life, blah-di-blah. And maybe they didn’t save like they should have done. And they’re 24 …
SPENCER OWEN
Yeah, what do you from there? It’s like that Buzz Aldrin thing: you’ve gone to the moon and someone asks you for a cup of tea. No thanks, I’ve been to the moon.
IAIN STIRLING
I’ve been to the moon. What do you do?
SPENCER OWEN
I’ve had moments. I’ve been amazingly privileged to have played football in front of crowds of 20,000 and 30,000 people multiple times, which I never thought I’d say. And they’re amazing moments. The last Wembley Cup, I played in front of 34,000 people. I’ve put on that whole event – that was my baby. Huge success. Within an hour of the game finishing I’m sort of sitting there thinking, ‘What do I? What’s next?’ And you hear from World Cup winners – a much higher level. They win a World Cup, have half an hour of elation and ‘Oh my God, this is so good.’ And then suddenly you’re thinking I’ve just completed the one thing I had in my life driving me. So I think that it’s really important to stress that it’s not going to solve your problems. If you’ve got problems you need to deal with them wherever you are, whatever you do. I think that so many guys I talk to behind the scenes, hugely popular YouTubers with many more subscribers than I have, making crazy, crazy money, to the outside world have got everything they could possibly need. But they’ve just got no motivation. And you hit a point where you think, ‘So what am I doing it for?’
IAIN STIRLING
I mean, if you’re 20 and you’re jet-skiing in the Caribbean and have a massive big house, that’s cool, but what do you do when you’re … what do you when you’re 30 or 31?
SPENCER OWEN
I’m pretty confident that you weren’t, at the age of 5 or 6 or 10 or 15, saying, ‘I want to be a stand-up because I want to have a big house.’
IAIN STIRLING
I didn’t know it was a thing.
SPENCER OWEN
You wanted to do stand-up.
IAIN STIRLING
But also because of my background I never knew that stand-up was … I mean, I knew there were Billy Connolly and Lee Evans and they were superstars, but I didn’t know you could make a living doing what I do. I did a show in Birmingham, 400 people, sold out the room, and I couldn’t believe it. I’m delighted with that. But if I was selling out the Birmingham Glee on my own tour when I was 22, I’d want to be at Wembley now. You’d drive yourself insane. That’s why I’ve enjoyed it, but I’m glad I’ve done uni and even the kids’ TV thing. It was a bit of fame but it’s not mad.
SPENCER OWEN
Yeah. You also learned the trade in so many ways.
IAIN STIRLING
Yeah. A central London club isn’t letting the guy that talks to a puppet dog in for free to a table with a bottle of vodka, and I’m not getting paid enough money to pay for it myself so I’m not going to those places. But then it comes when I’m 28 and I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s too loud, I want a seat.’
SPENCER OWEN
It’s the same with me. I get a load of plaudits from people, from parents saying they like my channel for their kids or whatever. It’s not that it’s something that deserves praise, it’s just that if I was doing what I do now at 18, I wouldn’t be making those rubbish videos probably, because I made those videos and no one watched them. I didn’t make videos filming a guy committing suicide in a forest, so, as a moral barometer, I’m certainly not at that level of it. But when we’re younger we do make mistakes. And a lot of the other YouTubers have never done anything that bad, but they’ve still made silly videos. I would have done it too. It’s just I never really knew what I wanted to do. Now I have ideas and there’s other things I’d like to go and try to do, but it was only when I was like 23, 24, maybe even 25, and I left full-time employment and deliberately said, ‘Right, I’m going to try and do this.’ Most of the YouTubers aren’t even that age yet. So how can they expect to know these answers? I remember sitting down with my dad when I finished uni, and I actually said to him, ‘What advice can you give me?’
IAIN STIRLING
If I had said that to my daddy he would have crumbled.
SPENCER OWEN
I remember him saying something quite boring – take your time, find what you want to do, don’t rush into anything, don’t rush into getting married, don’t rush into settling down, don’t rush into living in one place or doing one job. Just take your time, which was quite valuable in many ways. So I went and tried things. I did things I didn’t like, I did loads of jobs I didn’t like, some of which were rubbish jobs, some of which were actually good jobs, but I didn’t like them.
IAIN STIRLING
And that’s another problem with this social-media thing. It’s not just footballers or YouTubers, now everyone succeeds so young. You go and watch something like Britain’s Got Talent, and there’s a 17-year-old saying, ‘This is my last shot now.’ What you are talking about? You’re 17. You’ve got a young person’s railcard for another 10 years. You’re fine. The rush to get there almost comes down to that Instagram thing of ‘What’s the point in winning an Oscar when you’re 40 because you won’t even look good in a selfie?’
SPENCER OWEN
I’d much rather win an Oscar at 60.
IAIN STIRLING
Oh, mate.
SPENCER OWEN
Cos if you win it at 20 you’ve been to the moon. Where do you go?
AGE-WISE, WE’RE ALL IN THE ‘SHIT BIT’
In the same way that Spencer had the support of his dad, having a family around me is actually the main thing that has saved me from the fear of growing old and becoming an adult doomed to spend my life sitting on a couch in comfy slippers while struggling to understand technology. I look at my family at their different stages of life and realise that it’s not all bad. The beginning of life is great, we all know. Being properly young, not having a care in the world and more importantly having parents who are literally there to serve you from dawn till dusk. They read books that you tell them to sing to you. Sing! Grown adults have to learn songs and perform them to you like you’re a Roman emperor. A mini Roman emperor who could at any point shit himself.
Parents have a legal obligation to look after you, no matter what you do. That’s mad if you think about it. At the age of three you could just go about sticking marbles up your bum and some fully grown adult would have to say, ‘Well, I guess that’s our day spent sorting out the marble situation, then.’ If I had fully comprehended that notion as a kid I would have stuffed so much stuff up my bum at every possible occasion. ‘It’s pieces of Lego today, Dad. Forget the NHS, I think it’ll be worth going private because this will be happening a lot. And if you do nothing, the courts will get involved!’ For many millennials (particularly myself) this carries on long into your adult life. Well, maybe not the marbles thing – I’ve not done that in months now.
As great as being young is, there is a bit towards the end of life that I properly relish – being properly old, like nearly done, old. I can’t wait to get to the stage when I can go out in public with my family, say something horrific and then just turn to them and say, ‘Well, now that’s your problem.’ Go to the restaurant, scream something politically incorrect, turn to my son and say, ‘You go deal with that and I’ll stay here and finish off my Bolognese … I would probably tip the guy too – I was out of order!’ I love old people like that. Just no one left to impress. No picture that they need to pose for to get likes on Instagram. No boss to answer to. They can do what they like, to who they like, when they like – so long as it doesn’t involve too many stairs.
Despite all this freedom, however, what old people like to do is gardening and when they like to do it is 6 a.m. What is it with old people and getting up early? I know they say the early bird catches the worm but not when that bird has a Zimmer frame. Have a lie-in! What have you got to do that’s so urgent? ‘I need to send a letter.’ A letter? Do it in the afternoon or just don’t send a letter! Text your friend Karen and then press the snooze button. ‘Karen doesn’t know how to work her phone.’ OK, fine. Well, 6 a.m. it is then. Even if they do have an obsession with early rises and mundane tasks, there is still a madness that surrounds all pensioners, and for reasons that I believe become more clear as you read this book, I am so very drawn to it.
My gran was like that. Wonderful woman, all six foot two of her. Now, her height isn’t relevant to the narrative in any way whatsoever, but I think we’ll all agree it’s a lovely visual image to carry through this chapter – a tall, crazy, old, female version of me. Imagine me but taller, with a fetching grey perm – you are all very welcome. She wasn’t tied down by the rules of society; she didn’t have to go to dinner parties and pretend to be fine with the very obvious fact that Colin was getting way too much attention. Fuck you, Colin, you’re only three weeks old and already you’re pissing me off. As a little aside I got my friend to read this paragraph back for me just to see if perhaps me imagining my own gran telling a three-week-old infant to ‘fuck off’ was too harsh, especially given my previous in this area, and my friend simply replied: ‘Who the fuck calls their baby Colin?’
Anywho, the point is I always admired my gran’s general disregard for ‘the rules’. Sometimes it was adorable, such as the time she assumed that Postman Pat tinned spaghetti shapes were all shaped like different post offices in her local area, and sometimes it was funny in retrospect, like watching my mum chase Gran’s 1970 black Ford Fiesta down the street after Gran had kindly accepted my and my little sister’s request to ‘get driven to the shops in the boot’. That is panic. The point is she was bloody marvellous. Awful driver, though, but still – six foot two.
THE ANTIGUA FUCK-UP (PART I)
One of my fondest memories of my gran was around the time of my first break-up. My family and I were on holiday in Antigua. I was comfortably in my twenties. Some of you might think that’s weird, and I guess in some respects it was. I had my reasons, primarily the nasty break-up and being a mollycoddled millennial. My mother still felt the responsibility was solely on her shoulders to make sure her ‘little boy’s’ broken heart was mended. Oh, fuck off, Freud!
You never really forget that first break-up. It never leaves, always there in the back of your mind, incurable, sort of like the sadness version of herpes. Mums are the only people that can really help, in my experience. My mum, I mean. I’m not just roaming the streets screaming, ‘She left me!’ at any woman with a buggy. I tried to talk to my friends about it – that was a bloody disaster. They just stare at you helplessly, a blank expression etched onto their faces, like when someone’s farted in a lift and everyone is trying to look like it wasn’t them that did it. I mean, I couldn’t move for messages on Facebook and Twitter hoping I was all right and ‘if I needed anything just ask’. Now, I’m not saying those people’s concerns weren’t genuine, but I will say that, although undoubtedly worried for my wellbeing, they certainly weren’t willing to travel in order to demonstrate it. There was someone who would, however. Someone who would move mountains for her ‘little boy’, her little 26-year-old, mortgage-owning, law-degree-having little boy – Mummy.
So I’m on this holiday, and I’m fine, totally fine, don’t look at me like that, I’m fine. We were three days in to ‘the big holiday’, and unlike our Scottish holidays of old there wasn’t a caravan in sight; however, exactly like our Scottish holidays of old, there was rain … and lots of it. Nothing gets a mum down more than rain on the main holiday. They obsess over it, constantly mentioning home. ‘In Scotland it’s beautiful,’ Mum would remark while staring out the hotel window at the grey antigen sky, like a convict looking out through his cell bars. ‘Three days’ rain on the main holiday. I can’t believe it. I’m going to call Thomsons.’ Yeah, Mum, you do that. I’m sure there is some policy that covers entirely uncontrollable and unprecedented Caribbean drizzle. They’ll give us a full refund – they can claim the costs back from Mother Nature’s insurance policy.
In order to alleviate some of the pent-up cabin (relatively upmarket hotel) fever we decided to go on a family drive. Is there anything more relaxing than a family drive? Mum shouting at Dad for driving too close to one side of the road, Dad not speaking to Mum because it wasn’t until two hours into the drive she realised the map was the wrong way round, while the kids in the back are relentless with their constant stream of ‘Are we there yet?’ and ‘Iain pulled my hair again’, which for the record was an absolute fucking lie. The only person totally at peace in this tin can of pent-up passive–aggressive anger was my gran, who just sat in the middle seat knitting. Not a worry in the world. Just absolutely over the moon to be out the house.
We drove on some more until we came to a red light, barely visible as the thick rain lashed down all around. My dad nearly missed the light, slamming on the brakes just in time and skidding to a stop as my mother muttered something loving under her breath about him being a ‘homicidal maniac’, and then we waited. What a holiday this was shaping up to be. I should get the selfie stick out right now!
After a few seconds I noticed a huge Antiguan man walking alongside the car. Now Antigua isn’t one for pavements and all that boring infrastructure stuff, and why not, it’s a paradise. You don’t need pavements in paradise. We all know what happened to paradise when they put up a parking lot so I was delighted that Antigua had decided to keep things simple. While we waited patiently for the lights to change, this behemoth of a man was now sludging his way through the grassy knoll that ran adjacent to the road. Eventually he stopped, almost parallel to our vehicle, and started to fiddle with his belt.
Now the next 30 seconds of my life are etched into my psyche in such detail I don’t think the images will ever leave me. I could be on my death bed, surrounded by loved ones, adoring fans, my wife and kids staring into my dimming eyes, and as they all ask me, in perfect unison, ‘What are your dying words, our beloved?’ I will whisper with my final breath, ‘Once, in Antigua, me and my mum spent 30 seconds staring at the same stranger’s penis … Oh, and I once told an eight-year-old to go fuck himself.’
Our Antiguan man-mountain of a friend had decided to remove his aforementioned penis – from his shorts, not physically from his body; he didn’t rip it off, stick it in a jar and hand it to my beloved mother – he simply popped it out his pants and started having a widdle in the street. So as a man peed in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of the road, the Stirling family stared on. Mother seemed furious that yet more unwanted drizzle had affected our main holiday. I was paralysed with fear – ‘paralysed by the penis’, if you will. Someone had to do something, but who was it going to be?
‘WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?’ I’VE NO IDEA, MATE. I’M ONLY SEVEN.
It’s weird the first time you find yourself in a situation in which you feel like you need to protect your parents. The role reversal is a real rite of passage into adulthood. That first time your dad can’t pick up a particularly heavy box or needs consoling following the loss of a pet, or when your mum is left helplessly staring at a stranger’s penis. Having these figures of strength and unconditional love turn to you for help and showing they’re not infallible – nothing makes you feel more like a grown-up. Like the first time you cross a road before the green man comes on and you notice those around you follow you on your journey to the other side of the road. I’ve never felt more powerful in my life. Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Iain Stirling is a fucking alpha male!
The reason this role reversal hit me particularly hard was in no little part down to the fact that when it comes to my own parents I am a textbook millennial. My parents have always put my hopes and desires above their own at any cost. Evenings were spent taking me to any club or hobby that remotely tickled my fancy. Football, tennis, golf, swimming, boy scouts, amateur dramatics – you name it, I was painfully average at all of them, but Christ was I diverse. In theatre, people speak of the ‘triple threat’, one of those talented son of a guns that could sing, dance and act. Well, I, Iain Stirling, was more like an sexuple threat. I would sing, dance and act, while in a swimming pool, playing golf with Akela looking on, ready to give me my putting badge. This severely watered down my ability to excel in any particular area, but I was having a lovely time and Mummy said I was good, so what does actual objective success even matter? As I type this I can imagine my mum saying to me, ‘You weren’t average at all, son. You were uniquely talented.’
Every problem I ever faced was never faced alone. I always had the support of my loving parents no matter what. And when it came to her baby boy there were few lengths my mother wouldn’t go to. When I got bullied, my mum didn’t just go into the school. She didn’t just tell me that I should ignore it. What Alison Stirling did was sign me up to self-defence classes three times a week. She had to buy me all the gear, drive me there and back in the evenings and give up her weekends for competitions and exams – all because of that one time Gavin pushed me in a puddle.
Now I’m not saying all my mother’s acts of parenting were needlessly overbearing. Self-defence is undoubtedly a useful skill, and the weekly socialising and exercise were great for my physical and mental health. The issue I have is with the discipline Mother decided for me – judo. The problem was that judo didn’t have any real-life implications in terms of thwarting those evil bullies (well, Gavin). As a martial art it is definitely one of the more passive disciplines. On the intimidation scale I was less Conor McGregor and more Gandhi. First of all, for judo to work you and your opponent need to be in a hold, and secondly for that hold to work you both need to be wearing the appropriate gown. ‘Oh, you want my lunch money, do you? Well, stick on this dressing gown because we’re about to cuddle.’ I carried on with judo for a further seven years, until a little girl called Katie snapped my collarbone and, as a family, we decided I should maybe focus on the arts. During those seven years the bullying never subsided, but my health improved significantly, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time. I imagine Gavin is now a professional internet troll.
Although it seems like a great thing for millennials to grow up with parents willing to go above and beyond in order for them to live the best lives possible, some experts have spoken out, claiming millennials have grown up with what is now being regarded as ‘bad parenting’. This phrase might make it sound like we all grew up with some sort of abuse or neglect, but actually it’s quite the opposite. ‘Bad parenting’ is the idea that our parents told us throughout our childhoods that we were special and could achieve anything we wanted, so long as we wanted it badly enough. During my childhood I remember my mum constantly telling me that I was ‘special’ and could ‘achieve anything’.
Other ultimately useless information was also thrown at me on regular occasions, such as ‘Iain, the bullies are picking on you because they’re jealous.’ Yeah, that’s right, Mum, the bullies are jealous of my stutter and my lazy eye. The truth is that kids pick on kids because kids are pricks and picking on people is fun. It’s called ‘making fun’ for a reason. Sometimes as a child you need to be told about the harsh realities of life, which I was protected from my entire childhood. I was never told about failure growing up; I was constantly protected from it. I don’t think I went to a funeral until I was at university. Heaven forbid I would be made aware of the fact that all people eventually die. I wasn’t ready for that. I was only 20.
As well as limiting our exposure to the harsh realities of life, our parents would also go above and beyond to ensure our dreams and desires could be realised. Millennial kids were never brought up with a belief that they were flawed or that they had to be realistic in their dreams. Yet despite this increased protection and support, millennials are still overall a lot less happy than their Gen X parents. How can this be? The answer is in our increased life expectations, dreams that were far ahead of anything Gen X parents ever hoped for. Essential happiness comes down to a very simple formula.
HAPPINESS = REALITIES – EXPECTATIONS
It makes total sense if you think about it. Your happiness is essentially the current situation you find yourself in, less what you expected your life to be like. This is the mistake many parents have made. Tell your kid they will grow up to be an astronaut and, shock horror, a reliable, well-paid job in admin will never really live up to their childhood expectations. This is not to say a child’s dreams shouldn’t be nurtured and encouraged, but you also need to teach them about the world’s harsh realities to temper expectations. I asked my mum whether she felt any pressure to monitor my expectations when I first started in comedy.
IAIN STIRLING
I’m at university. I’m studying law but I clearly want to be a comedian, which in our family is not a thing you do.
ALISON STIRLING