Shabaz Ali

Full transcript

Home Again – Interview with Shabaz Ali

Introduction

Shabaz: It's just fascinating to see the growth in watching me be on stage and trusting and believing in myself. I've always said fake it until you make it, so I just really faked it. I walked into the room really shaking but thinking, "No, no, no, just go in and just do it." And then eventually people just believed it.

Ella: Hi, I'm Ella.

Matt: And I'm Matt. Welcome to Home Again, a podcast from SpareRoom about the places we live.

Ella: Where we ask our guests to pick three homes and tell us how they shaped their lives.

Matt: So who is our guest this week, Ella?

Ella: Our guest this week is Shabaz Ali. He's known online as Shabazsays, and he creates these hilarious videos where he basically pokes fun at influencer culture and consumer culture online.

He's also dubbed himself the “King of the Povvos”. His followers are called the Povvo Gang. It's a really lovely place on the internet, which sort of celebrates this idea of not having to have a perfect life and taking the onus off this polished social media ideal of what perfect means.

Matt: He's also got a fantastic documentary called Shabaz Asks: Are Billionaires Bad?, where he basically seeks out a billionaire to talk to and to challenge his idea that any kind of wealth hoarding at that level is a bad thing and can only be bad for the world. It's a fantastic watch. It's funny, but it also asks some really important questions. Yeah, thoroughly enjoyed it. That's on iPlayer. I would recommend that as well.

Ella: Yeah, I think he's going to be a really interesting guest, and I can't wait to speak to him.

Hi, Shabaz.

Shabaz: Hiya.

Ella: Welcome.

Shabaz: Oh, thanks for having me.

Ella: It's so lovely to have you on.

Shabaz: Thanks for having me in your home.

Ella: Yeah. Take a look around. Make yourself comfortable.

Shabaz: Yeah, I always do that. Anytime I'm on a podcast, I'm like, "Thanks for inviting me to your living room." So, yeah.

Matt: The mics are always here.

Shabaz: Yeah, they stay there. Standard in every home now.

Ella: Before we kick off, we want to ask you a couple of quickfire questions just so we can get to know a bit more about what you're like to live with, what you're like at home.

Shabaz: Yeah. Okay.

Ella: So first off, what's the chore you put off the most?

Shabaz: Cleaning my room, always. There's just stuff every— The thing is, I always say my room is organised in my way. So yeah, there might be pizza boxes and food from like a month ago, but at least it's in the pizza box and food from a month ago corner. You know what I mean?

Ella: And you know where that is.

Shabaz: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like piles of clothes in that corner, clean pile of clothes in that corner, miscellaneous clothes in that corner. Yeah, so.

Matt: It's a system.

Shabaz: Yeah. Somebody walks in and goes, "Your room's messy." I'd be like, "No, but it's not though, is it? I know where everything is."

Matt: Morning or night person?

Shabaz: Night. Hate mornings. You don't get me up before 12:00. My manager even knows that now. If she ever sets a meeting at 10 o'clock and I don't make it, I'm like, "Well, that was your first mistake, wasn't it? Setting a meeting at 10 o'clock." It's ridiculous. Like, I don't go to bed till like 4:00, 5:00 AM, and then get up at like 12:00. Absolutely.

Matt: Is this the reason for filming everything in bed?

Shabaz: Yeah, because the majority of the time, I'm there.

Ella: What's your home alone guilty pleasure?

Shabaz: Walking around with no pants on. When I'm on my own, I hate wearing trousers. Okay, obviously I'll wear underwear; I wouldn't be fully out. But I just don't like wearing— I hate trousers. So I love the idea of walking around in underwear.

Ella: Being free.

Shabaz: Yeah, that's what I used to do all the time. I'd never be able to live in one of those high-rise apartment blocks—

Ella: With the big windows.

Shabaz: Yeah, where there's— Like when I went to New York, I was literally opposite a building where there were other people staying, and I was like, "The fact I have to close these curtains all the time because I don't want to put pants on." So, yeah.

Matt: Who would your dream celebrity flatmate be, dead or alive? And just to caveat, they would be alive when you lived with them.

Shabaz: I don't know. Who would I think to—

Ella: It depends whether you're thinking like, do you want practical gains from this? Do you know what I mean? If you're thinking chef, delicious food.

Shabaz: Oh, yeah, I would 100% want a chef because then they could just cook. But then I also think like Kim and Aggie, 'cause then they could just clean everything. But then also they'd be a pain in the backside for me, wouldn't they? Be like, "Oh, your room's messy, da, da, da. Oh, the kitchen's really dirty." But if they just liked cleaning—

Like Mrs Hinch. Have you heard of her? She'd be great. She'd go around cleaning all day and doing her content. I'd be like, "You do you, love." But then I feel like someone like that would be hoovering while you're sat on— they'd be trying to iron the bedsheet while you're sat on it, or clean the toilet while you're on the toilet.

Matt: And they would mess with your system.

Shabaz: Yeah. I think Adele, though, would be cool, 'cause I'd just get her singing all the time. I'd be like, "Adele, I'm in the mood for a sad song. Sing me a sad song." You know what I mean?

Matt: Better than Alexa: Adele.

Shabaz: Yeah, just be Adele. Just knock on her door and be like, "I know it's 4:00 AM, but I really want you to sing 'Someone Like You' for me."

Matt: She wouldn't mind, would she?

Ella: No, I think she'd love it.

Shabaz: Yeah, yeah.

Home 1

Ella: We would love to hear about your first home.

Shabaz: My first home was my childhood home in Blackburn, a terraced house. The street was really quiet. We moved out of there years later. It was the best. It was like three bedrooms. We shared a bedroom. My grandad used to come over, so he had his own room, and then my mum and dad had their room, and then me and my siblings shared a room. It was the best house. I loved it. Then we ended up getting a loft conversion, which then became my room, and you'd open the window and just see the view of Blackburn.

To anyone that knows Blackburn, they will be like, "What did you really see?" But it was my hometown, and the peace of opening the window and hearing the sirens and the crime—no, it's not Gotham; it wasn't like Gotham. But there's something soothing about it. Even now, when I stay in London, I have to have the window open just to hear the cars and the noise, and that's how I sleep. It was only a small town, but I loved that house. That was my favourite home.

Matt: Is it the kind of thing where if you don't have that, you have to have an app with some street noise on to get to sleep?

Shabaz: Yeah, I have street noise on. I have like night sounds or city sounds or whatever. I grew up like that, but I also had—weirdly, in my bedroom I had a boiler. Do you know the boiler? The thingy. The noise of every time somebody opened a tap, or when the boiler was on, that noise—people used to go, "I don't know how you sleep with that sound." And I'm like, "Oh, no, that became like a comfort thing for me, wasn't it?" So yeah, I loved my childhood home. It was my mum's pride and joy. She had a living room, which is very standard in every Asian household—you have a living room that's there for when guests come, so we weren't allowed to ever go in it. My mum even had a cabinet with china in it for when the Queen visited.

Ella: And did she ever?

Shabaz: She never came, but you know, Mum still kept the cabinet just in case she popped around one day. So, yeah.

Matt: So even in a fairly kind of small family home, you've got one room you're not allowed in at any time.

Shabaz: Absolutely. It doesn't matter what—and my mum kept our house like a showroom, like it was pristine. Her kitchen was her pride and joy. I remember one time I wanted ice cream and she'd just cleaned up. There was a rule in our house, right? If she's just finished cleaning, you weren't allowed to touch anything. So if the bins had just been emptied, you weren't allowed to put anything in the bin. At some point, someone's going to have to break the cycle, aren't they? They're going to have to put something in the bin. She's like, "No, I've just emptied it." Like her kitchen: if she's just cleaned it, we weren't allowed to use a dish.

I went in there one day and got my ice cream, and then spilled the ice cream on the side, and then she was—

Ella: And that's why she said, "Don't touch it once I've just cleaned."

Shabaz: "Don't touch it." Yeah, because I'm not going back and cleaning it again. So yeah, pristine house, but we loved it. It was great.

Matt: Has that, do you think, in some way influenced the kind of organised chaos you like now?

Shabaz: Yeah, because we did a lot of chores growing up. If she kept the house clean, we kept the house clean as well with her. So part of my organised chaos is I still need structure.

As much as it's like I'm busy and I'm messy, my room will have an unpacked suitcase from four days ago, but then there will come a point where I'm like, "Right, I need a day where I just need to get everything clean." Then I'll pull everything out of the cupboards and get everything done, and then I'll sit in my bed and be like, "This looks great now. My room's a showroom now." So yeah, we definitely got that from our mum.

Ella: I get the impression from the way that you've spoken about your family that you're quite close with your family, and like you were saying, your grandad came over a lot.

Shabaz: Growing up, they were just people I lived with that just lived in the same house as me. I wasn't that close to them. Not so much. And then as I grew older, now I'm getting older, my niece being born was what changed things. Having my niece—my brother's daughter—when she was born, I think that's when you start to value family.

Because I guess it's what I wanted to instil in her: we're only a small family, so I wanted to instil that value in her to appreciate the people around you, which has made me appreciate the people around me more as well.

Matt: 'Cause you don't always, do you? It's part of your job as a kid to sort of move on from your family and establish who you are and stuff. And sometimes it's only when you get a bit older you look back and go, "Oh, maybe I've got rid of a bit too much contact there."

Shabaz: Yeah, too much. I moved out of my family home when I was 18, straight away to uni. I'm probably going to jump on your next bit, but that's what I did. I escaped. I was like, "I want to go to the city and then move out." And then I ended up just right back at the family home, and I stayed there.

Everyone's like, "Oh my God, why don't you move out?" I'm like, "Why would I?" I could move somewhere else, but then I wouldn't be able to have a maid, or a cleaner, or a chef, or all of the above—I have all of that in my mum. No, but family has become important now.

Ella: Tell me about Blackburn. You're saying you loved the sound of it outside; it sounds like you loved sort of being there.

Shabaz: I didn't like being in Blackburn when I was younger. It definitely was a thing of like, "I need to get out of this small town. Everyone's got the same mentality." And then as I grew older—the thing is, what I always said was I had these big dreams to do something incredible in the world. And it was only when I realised that actually it wasn't the town, 'cause I became huge in my small little town, in a small little house, in my small little bedroom.

So realistically, it wasn't that the town was stunting me; it was myself. It was my own outlook and going, "Oh, do you know what? I'm limited by the people around me, or the situations I'm brought up in." When in actual fact, I was just limiting myself.

Blackburn, I love it. I love my town. There's some comfort and joy in the hometown. It gets such a bad reputation online. It's an industrial town, an old cotton mill town, so you know what that's like: everyone thinks everyone's poor and everyone's just one-track minded, there's no integration or whatever. But I just think it's a great community and there's great people that live there. I love it.

Matt: And when you talk about wanting to do great things as a kid, did you know what they were when you were a kid?

Shabaz: No, I knew I needed to have an impact on the world, which is really weird for like a 10-year-old to think that. But I opened history books up and I looked at some of the most atrocious things that human beings did, and my brain couldn't comprehend why humanity behaved that way. I was always really fascinated with the complexities of human beings and why they act the way they do.

Which is really strange, isn't it? Like, what a kid—go outside and play with some toys or whatever. I was just that fascinated with the world and how everyone was, and I knew that I wanted to have some sort of impact on the planet. I was like, "I just want to do something amazing." I knew where my mindset was and I was like, "I need to be able to meet loads of people and reach loads of people to be able to share my values with them."

Then I became a teacher and I thought, "That's what it was." I thought, "Oh, this is it. This is what I'm meant to be doing." And then social media happened and I thought, "Okay, well, this is maybe it." Something else will come along and then I'll be the prime minister, won't I? And then I'll be like, "Oh, this is what I was meant to do."

Matt: Still time.

Shabaz: Still time, yeah. I'm working on it.

Matt: You're allowed to be northern prime minister now.

Shabaz: Yeah, absolutely. Exactly. We've finally cracked the code.

Ella: Like you said, you felt that way from being younger and you come across as very confident and very ambitious. Do you know where that came from?

Shabaz: I have worked so hard on that. It is strange because I feel like only a year ago—I was on tour last year doing a comedy tour across the UK, and I recorded all of it, and I was watching the footage back.

The person I am at the start of the tour, where I'm so self-deprecating and like, "Oh, I don't think I'm that funny. People aren't going to find it funny," and then going on stage and coming back and going, "It wasn't very good." And then the person I am after the tour is two very different people. It's just fascinating to see the growth in watching me be on stage and trusting and believing in myself, which has taken a long time for it to happen.

Was I confident? Yeah, I was always confident. But I've always said fake it until you make it, so I just really faked it. I walked into the room really shaking but thinking, "No, no, no, just go in and just do it," and then eventually people just believed it.

Matt: Well, it's funny, isn't it? 'Cause through creating content from your bed, you're not seeing the people who are consuming it.

Shabaz: Yeah.

Matt: But the whole idea of stand-up—and, in some ways, like a teacher—you're reading a room, you're responding to a room, you're allowing other people to interact by controlling the room a bit. Presumably that helped a bit, but it must be a very different thing to be in front of people reacting in real time to what you're doing.

Shabaz: Yeah. Hearing them laugh and enjoy it, and then speaking to them afterwards, is a very different thing to just reading comments, because you become a bit immune to it. Whereas seeing a human being and them telling you about their life and how you're part of their life, it has to do something to a human being, doesn't it? And I think that's what it did. It just kind of made me think, "Oh God, wow, this is real. This is people's actual lives."

With numbers you forget how many people that is, but I've always said: imagine 10 people came up to you on the street and said you were amazing and you looked incredible. You would be like, "Oh, that's the best thing ever." But when you get 10 likes on a post, everyone's like, "Didn't do very well." And it's like, well, no, it did. That's still 10 people that have actively gone out of their way to go, "I like this," or commented and stuff.

So it's really made me appreciate each individual person that follows me, and as it gets bigger and bigger, I'm like: how much can I make sure that I'm doing the best I can for them as well?

Matt: Do you feel like sometimes you put yourself to one side to do that, and the need to help other people gets in the way of looking after you?

Shabaz: 100%. I've spent so much of my time doing that. I've been bombarded with this wanting to do well in the world and wanting to help people that you can't be that person always. I want to do more.

Growing up, I was bullied in high school at the start of it. My first ever bullies were like family—not my immediate family, but cousins, relatives, aunties, and uncles. So for me, when I found my voice in around Year 10 and 11 in high school, I found my voice and I found I was funny. I found that actually if people were laughing with me, they wouldn't be laughing at me, or you could get them before they got you, which was my quick-witted sort of thing.

I learned that I didn't like injustice, and that's what's happened now. As an adult, I've become this person that doesn't like seeing injustice, so I fight so hard for women and children and whatever. People always say to me online, "Well, why, when the system's built for you? Literally the system's built for you, but you're fighting against it." And I'm like, "Because for me, I just don't like seeing injustice."

But then again, you've got to look after yourself because I can't cure everything. My DMs are filled with, "Have you ever heard about this flood in this random village?" and I want to help them, but I can't. So I have to now actively go take a step away and not do that.

Ella: And even in the first place, with social media now, even making that decision to speak about those things on your platform—speaking about women's rights, trans rights, whatever you want to speak about is seen as political. Putting that on your platform where you're—

Shabaz: Comedy, or in bed talking about fashion, yeah.

Ella: Suddenly then you're putting yourself up for aggravating people.

Shabaz: I guess. I've said this from day one: the page is Shabazsays, and it was always what I said. I started as a blog in like 2012 writing stuff, and it was always what I thought in that moment. It didn't matter what it was, it was what I thought. Yes, there was an element of comedy and political commentary, but I don't know why people are always surprised when I'm political. What did you think I'm Rich You're Poor was? What did you think my whole shtick was? It was all political, and I only started it on politics and stuff.

I've said it before: Shabazsays is not a democracy, it's a dictatorship. It's my way or the highway. If I don't like you, I'll block you. I'll block you and then what I'll do is go on your friends list and block your friends as well. It's so funny. I love doing that. I'm not only going to block you, but because you're associated with this person, I'm blocking you as well. So remember, when you act like that on my page, just know for the future you could be ruining your friends' chances as well.

Matt: Well, I think it's also really important that we are allowed to say what we think in a moment about a thing. Sometimes you say stuff to work out what you think. It's not, "Hey, I've thought out everything in the world, I have a clear position on everything, and here they all are." Nobody's going to want to watch that. It's the genuine reactions to things.

Shabaz: Yeah, and I verbalise what I think, and then I love reading the comments. I'm such a comment reader. I'll sit for a good 15 minutes afterwards and read the comments and absorb what people are saying, and then I take in their opinions and what they think.

I never say to anyone, "Look, you can't have a voice." You can have a voice, but like you have freedom of speech, I have a freedom of delete. I will get rid of something if I don't care about it. But I also will read it, and I think it's being educated; it's hearing another side of the coin. If I know I'm right, or where I'm standing firm and somebody's just being facetious—sometimes they're just doing it for clout, or just because they want to be a pain in the backside—then I'll be like, "Well, I can just delete you or block you."

Most of the time, I love an opinion. You want to hear other people's thoughts because I might not have all the sides of the coin, but somebody gives me a different side. The vastness of the internet is great.

Matt: It feels like the wealth gap is where your content has settled as a main theme. But talking to you, watching things, reading things, and listening to things, it feels like that's just one facet of injustice as a much wider thing, but it happens to be that you've kind of settled on the wealth gap as a real rich seam of stuff.

Shabaz: We grew up fairly decent, not well off. I wouldn't say we were an average Asian family in the sense that I didn't get free school meals, or I wasn't really poor, and we were going on holidays and things like that. But my parents ended up going through this really big financial issue, which then I think made me realise how difficult it can be on both sides of the coin. We've had money, we've not had money. I've seen all sides of it. I've met people with no money, I've met people with loads of money.

That's always been something that's fascinated me: a lot of problems aren't solved with money, but when you're financially a bit freer, a lot of problems seem to go away. A lot of mental health problems seem to—not go away because you bought yourself happiness, but the burden of money can exacerbate every other issue you have, and I don't think people understand that. A lot of people go, "Well, money can't buy happiness." It doesn't buy happiness, but it allows yourself the freedom to be able to enjoy other things.

Throughout history it's done it, and even now, if you think about it, people are struggling, which is why they're turning to these extreme rhetorics online. Whether it's going down the manosphere route, or whether it's going down the tradwife route, or the anti-immigrant mindset, or anti-trans mindset, it's all down to financial problems. If you're financially free, or if you have money, then you're busy spending it, not worrying about immigrants. Rich people are worried about how they can make more money, or they're just bothered about stirring trouble up for the poor people.

Matt: It's so often about looking for somebody to blame for having taken things from you, isn't it? Rather than, "Why haven't I got this? Is it the fault of the people in charge of most of the money, or is it that person there who's got as little as I have?"

Shabaz: It's crazy. So that's why wealth inequality has always been the centre point of everything I do.

Ella: Were the I'm Rich You're Poor videos around lockdown? Was that when you started posting it?

Shabaz: I'm Rich You're Poor actually started just after lockdown. That's when it started in its format—I kind of always touched on it in between talking about things, but it struck a nerve just after lockdown, after the whole cost of living really hit hard post-lockdown and stuff. People just resonated with it.

I'm Rich You're Poor came from internet culture and the cost of living, wealth inequality and internet culture, because we got to a point where we were really at the precipice of this huge change in social media. We were seeing so much more content than we were five years prior to that. People were just like, "I'm so sick of seeing all this perfect packaged perfection," and I came along going, "Oh well, let's go criticise them and let's poke fun at them."

Ella: You've got quite a nice community that follows you–Which is unusual in this…I don’t know if that’s changed at all but—

Shabaz: The community is lovely. It took a long time, though. We are all chasing viral clips and viral moments 'cause it's great for the numbers, but realistically it does nothing for you as a person, as a brand, or anything unless you have a community behind it. Once it comes to inspiring people, if I've got four million likes on a post, that's great, but I want to read the comments. I want to see people engaging. I want to see people going on a journey with me.

Those people are the ones I keep. So every couple of months, I do a super controversial post where I give a really big opinion, and then I sift out all the people that don't want to be part of it.

I built my page and algorithm brick by brick. The house got built brick by brick because I was like, "Yeah, I'm going to make sure that the people that are following me will all be aligned."

Recently, there was a case of an influencer in Australia and everyone was talking about it. Somebody went, "What's so fascinating was your comment section versus someone who made the exact same video. Your comment section was filled with, 'Absolutely, Shabaz, you hit the nail on the head. This is incredible. Thank you for speaking about this.'” And then you've got the comment section on another page where they're going in on that person, and we've said the same thing.

It's because my page is filled with people who have a mentality like me, and that takes some time. It took a couple of years to get there.

Home 2

Matt: When you talked earlier on about moving on to your second home, you mentioned going away to uni and that kind of being the next place you chose to talk about. Having come from Blackburn, moving away, suddenly presumably you're surrounded by a much bigger mix of different kinds of people from different places, different kinds of attitudes to money. How was that at 18?

Shabaz: I moved out when I was 18. I was meant to go to university and stay in the halls, and then that fell through for some reason. They'd oversubscribed or whatever, so they were like, "You're going to have to find somewhere."

At the age of 18, in the middle of London—I was in Kingston at the time as well, so it wasn't even London, it was Kingston—I had to find a rented place quickly, get settled, and then start uni as well.

I moved into a house share. If you walked in, you had stairs going up, that front room, living room, a downstairs room, and then a kitchen on the other side. I was in the front room that they'd converted, and then upstairs there were three rooms, and there was a room downstairs that they'd made.

It was fascinating, 'cause I lived with an Italian girl, a Filipino girl, a Bengali boy, and a Sri Lankan boy. All of a sudden, I've gone from a house of lads—it was just me and my brothers—to this completely different life where there are other people and I'm sharing a bathroom with people. In my loft conversion at home, I had my own space, and here I was like, "This is weird. Now I'm sharing a kitchen with strangers."

Unfortunately, none of the first years stayed in the house; everyone was in halls. I was with second years or third years, so they were all older. I was the baby of the group. All of a sudden, I've gone from the middle child to the youngest kid in the house. That was an experience, for sure.

Ella: Do you feel like they treated you like the baby? Maybe in a positive way - Did they sort of take you under their wing a bit?

Shabaz: Yeah, I was happy to be treated like that. My entire life I've been happy to be treated like that, which is why now I have management and I love that. I love having a manager because even if I know what I'm doing, I just love that somebody else does something for me. Even getting out of the taxi when I have to take my own suitcase out of the back, I'm like, "Oh, I don't want to do this."

I love the idea of just being the baby of the group. Even when I became a teacher, I was the youngest one and everyone else was older and had been teaching for years. They were all experienced, so they really did treat me like a baby, and I was like, "This is great." It's nice because everyone does everything for you. I'm smart, but I love acting like I'm not, because with naivety you get away with everything. They're like, "Oh, go on then, Shabaz, I'll mark your books for you." I'm like, "Oh, thank you," whereas really I'm like, "Yes!"

It was nice, though, because I was lost. I only just turned 18 in June, and that August or September I'm already in London. I'm 18 in a big city, and it's scary on my own. Bear in mind, none of this lot were on the same course as me; I was a first year, so I kind of needed it. But then we had cleaning schedules and stuff, and I was like, "What's going on?" I'm very clean. We were very clean growing up; my mum was really strict. So being in a household with people that weren't clean—yeah, never again.

Matt: Did it make it hard to find your people then, living with second and third years and not being around halls? Did that make settling in tricky?

Shabaz: Yeah, it was very hard. I was very lonely. I think back now and I didn't like it. It was awful. The first couple of months I was hanging around with these older lot, and then finding my own people. Once I started my course, obviously I found people.

The difficulty was that everybody lived in London. All my friends would just go back on the train and go home, and then I'd be left in Kingston on my own, trying to navigate the city on my own. London was only round the corner, but that was hard. It was really difficult being just alone. I had friends during uni time, but once we went home, they all went back to their places. I really struggled. Over the years I ended up moving back home, and then I moved back down again. I just didn't like it.

Ella: Did you find it a bit of a culture shock outside of everything to do with uni, adjusting to what that life is like, coming from Blackburn and the North to then being thrust into somewhere like London?

Shabaz: Absolutely. Then I ended up getting a job in Topman on Oxford Street. I was going from Kingston to Oxford Street and working.

Ella: That's a very cool first job.

Shabaz: I know, it was great. I loved it. The owner and the owner's daughter used to come in all the time, and they'd bring celebs in because it was the flagship store. So it was really fun, and I learned how to fold jeans. It was great.

I grew up on Sex and the City, so I wanted the Carrie Bradshaw life. But it didn't happen like that; it didn't feel like that at all, 'cause I didn't have Carrie Bradshaw money. Even though she didn't either—did you see the size of her apartment for New York? That's a lie. I didn't have a walk-in closet with designer clothes. I just assumed it'd be Lily Allen's "Sun is in the sky, oh why." I literally thought it'd be that, briefcase walking in the city, but it just didn't turn out like that.

It was a massive culture shock. Plus everyone treated Northerners like we were rats. It was awful. Southerners are awful human beings. Not all of you! If you come up North and you ask somebody where to go, they will take you there, they will feed you, they'll give you a cup of tea. Whereas down South, you could be lying in the streets and everyone would walk over you 'cause they're all busy. And imagine: I'm 18 years old, I have no idea what I'm doing, I'm lost in the city, and it just wasn't very nice. It wasn't the dream.

I thought I was going to be this huge person in city lights. I still loved it; I still sat and looked up at Piccadilly Circus and thought, "Oh, I'd love to have my face on that billboard one day." The noise and the hustle and bustle is great, but it was so lonely.

Matt: There's something really interesting in that, 'cause you talked a little bit before about being sold these perfect lives on social media. Richard Curtis has got a lot to answer for. You watch Richard Curtis films and everybody lives in London in beautiful houses five feet from the Thames. Everything's always lit beautifully, and you think it's going to be like that. And of course it's not, 'cause most people don't live like that. It's that gap between what you're shown and what it's actually like when you get there.

Shabaz: That's it. My sister-in-law as well, when she first came to the country—she's from abroad—she was like, "I want to go to London." She came and she went, "Ugh, I don't want to go to London again. This is not what it's like on the TV."

I was like, "Yeah, I know movies always make it seem so much more." But imagine we grew up with movies where we were like, "Yeah, but that's a movie." Imagine now seeing it on social media, where everything's polished and great, and then you come to the place and you're like—I hate the sight of Euston Station. It's so disgusting, isn't it? It's like the pits of hell.

Now don't get me wrong, there's something about London that London at night brings me so much joy. I was staying in Canary Wharf, and I looked out my window and saw the city and I was like, "It's just so beautiful." I think that 18-year-old dream is still there. But I was so lost and lonely, away from family and away from all the friends and life I ever knew. It was just not for me.

Ella: Going back to you being a Northerner living in London, do you find it kind of funny? Because now your Northernness plays such a big part in your persona and who you are.

Shabaz: I took elocution lessons at the age of 18 and got rid of the accent completely. Which is fascinating, 'cause everyone's always like, "Why?". Believe me, I genuinely was this 18-year-old that had the belief that being from the North—this is really sad, but if it was up to me, I would've even changed the colour of my skin because I fully believed growing up that the colour of my skin, my background, my low-income status, and being Northern were all going to stop me from being successful. I genuinely lived that life in my head: all of the things that are now so celebrated were going to stop me.

So I did what I could to sort of blend in. I got rid of the accent and was speaking like a Southerner, thinking I could blend in. And it's so funny, because it's literally the opposite: that is what I'm celebrated for. I became the most successful just being my Northern, brown, working-class self.

I wish I could go back to that 18-year-old and shake him and just be like, "Listen, mate, trust me. Be yourself. You'll do a lot better." But for such a long time I really did feel like an outsider, so I tried my best to fit in.

Matt: But it's great that you've become successful by being you, because if you'd been successful by becoming somebody else, that would've been horrible.

Shabaz: Exactly. Everything happens for a reason. I started doing social media in 2013, and it was only in 2023 that it skyrocketed. Why not in 2013? 'Cause I wasn't ready for it. Mentally, and in where I was in my life experience-wise, I wasn't ready for it. Everything happens for a reason.

Matt: Just hearing you talk about achieving success—people forget that stuff is built over years and years. People think you're an overnight success, and it's never the way.

Shabaz: It takes 10 years to be an overnight success.

Matt: Yeah, exactly. Did you ever struggle to accept that success?

Shabaz: All the time. I was at the NTAs and at one point I looked down and saw the crowd and saw everything, and I went, "Oh my God." I don't think I even realised that I was there. All these things have happened so quickly and rapidly in this short space of time. Yes, it's taken so long to build to that, but there's so many great experiences: I wrote a book, I had a documentary, I had a tour. Because it's been so fast, I don't think my brain has gone, "Do you know what's just happened?"

There is always a part of me that's like, "This isn't real, or maybe you're not as successful as you think." I was getting into a taxi and the guy was like, "So what do you do?" We had a long drive, so I was telling him all about what I do. I got out of that cab and I was like, "Oh my God, what has happened in the last two or three years is crazy."

Imposter syndrome is massive, and imposter syndrome for someone who grew up in my town is huge. It took me so long, but the biggest thing was when somebody came up to me in the street and said, "I love you," I'd kind of ruin their day. You know that very British thing where somebody goes, "I love your top," and you say, "Oh my God, it was like £2 from Primark, it was cheap, I've had it for three years"? It's just that.

Now you're going to do that and ruin their moment or take the joy away from them. I hadn't realised I was doing it until one of my friends pulled me up about it. She was like, "This person is so excited to see you, and for them, you are the joy. And you're just going, 'Oh no, don't be daft, I'm not that funny.' You've just kind of taken that away from them."

Whether I fully accept it or not is a different story, but what I will do is allow you to feel that way at least. I might not necessarily believe all of what you're saying in myself, but let me let you have that moment so you can say, "Look, I love you, and I think you're really funny," and be like, "Oh, thank you, and I really appreciate that you feel that way." Even if I don't always feel that way, I will still not take that moment away from someone else.

I also think having that voice inside you that tells you you're not good enough is good to a certain extent, as long as you don't allow that voice to take over. It keeps you humble; it keeps you grounded.

Matt: It's funny, 'cause some of the worst people are the people who do believe it all and go, "Oh yeah, of course I'm great." We had a lot of conversations with my wife before my son was born—he's 13 now—about how we wanted to raise him. He's already coming into the world pretty privileged as a white, male, London middle-class boy. We'd settled on our job being to raise him to find this him-shaped space in the world and fully occupy it without treading on anybody else's space to get there. It's that balance, isn't it? And the English thing about compliments is always to go, "I don't want it."

Shabaz: But I think we need to get better at it. We just need to get better at it. It's not about being arrogant and going, "I know." It's more like going, "Thank you, I appreciate that's what you've said." You should be able to do that, and you should also celebrate your wins.

I have started celebrating my wins, and people might consider that arrogance, but I'm like, "No, because I worked hard, and I should be able to say this is the fruits of my labour." Is influencing the same as brain surgery? No. But in my capacity, how much I work is evident. People see I'm running from one place to another place and doing stuff and building something. So you should celebrate your wins.

Like you've started this podcast, and this is incredible. You should be able to go out there and go, "Look what we've done, something that we thought we were going to do. We've done it. We're recording." Celebrate that. The natural thing to do is kind of go, "Oh, yeah," but you should be able to celebrate your wins.

Ella: Do you ever feel worried or concerned about how people view you, in the sense that obviously you're a creator, but also now you have a documentary with the BBC, you're doing red carpets, and…

Shabaz: Yeah - I have money!

No, I don't. Because if you follow someone for who they are morally, I don't think it can change depending on their circumstances. I don't think I've changed. If you spoke to someone that knew me from high school, they would say, "You're exactly the same. You were always this. If there is something diva-ish about you, you were always that." Whether you had money or not, or the experience or not.

I've always liked opulence and all that stuff, not to show off about it, but I've always liked nice things and I've always been fussy. If a kidnapper kidnapped me, I'd be like, "I'm not going in that van. Absolutely not. It's dirty. What, you want me to sit on this mattress? Absolutely not." Whether I was poor or rich.

If you are a corrupt person, this industry can corrupt you really quickly if you're already morally corrupt. I just don't think I am, so I don't know what you're going to throw at me that will change that. Well, there's a big cheque with a few zeros on it that might change that—no, I'm kidding! But it just wouldn't. If it hasn't so far, what makes you think that in a couple of years it's going to change something?

Home 3

Matt: And it's interesting talking about feeling like you haven't changed, because you talked about growing up in Blackburn and sort of not loving it, and then you've gone away and come back—and I guess we're going to talk about your third home in that sense. Sometimes you do need to go away and come back to see where you are.

Shabaz: 100%. You've got to step away and look at it from an outside perspective. You've got to step away from your circumstances and re-evaluate. And you can re-evaluate at any time of your life. People have this thing of "in your 20s, discover yourself." You can discover yourself at any time.

When I did teaching, I was with teachers where some of them were in their 50s and 60s that were like, "Do you know what? I just wanted something different. I wanted a change, so I did a training course and I did teaching." There's people that are rediscovering. Social media does help with that. There's so much doom and gloom online about how it's really bad, but some of the joy is that you can discover a community or find something that you actually enjoy and try to do that.

There's people out there that will go, "For the first time ever, I've put myself on camera knitting," or doing something that was a hobby, "and I'm making money from it." And why not do that? You can reinvent or re-evaluate what you want to do in life by just taking a step away and doing that, which is what I did.

Matt: And how was it going back?

Shabaz: At first I hated it. I had a really weird trajectory. I had my childhood home. We had to move out of our childhood home because I went to London, and then I came back because my mum wasn't well, so I came back to help out at the family home. We moved out of our family home into the current home, and before we moved in there, I was like, "I'm off to London again, 'cause I want to go."

So I went back to London, lived there for five or six years, and then moved back into the house we live in now. I felt like such an outsider because I'd lived away, come back, lived away, and I couldn't find my feet in the home that we're in now because it wasn't my childhood home. It felt like I was a guest. Bear in mind, I'd at this point been in three or four different homes, so I felt like I was just renting again. I didn't feel like this was my home.

It took until COVID, because let's be honest, we had nowhere else to go. We had to stare at those four rented walls. It was only then that I appreciated, "Actually, it's quite a nice house. I like this place." But I still grieve because I don't think we got to say bye to our childhood home. I did grieve that for such a long time. This home now is not my forever home, 'cause I want to build my own forever home. It was a shock moving back; it just felt like I was renting for a bit.

Ella: You film a lot of your videos in your room. That feels like that's probably your safe space where you feel inspired. Has that always been that way?

Shabaz: The house that we live in now is an old Victorian house with a ground floor and a loft conversion. My loft conversion is me, and then my brother's room—he's moved out—and then a bathroom. So I never need to go anywhere. If I could turn my brother's room into a kitchen and had stairs going straight from outside to my room, I wouldn't leave the house!

My bedroom is my safe space, 'cause it's tucked away outside, away from the rest of the family home. It's my space. If I'm tired or exhausted, I can just film in my room. When I first started making videos, you'd hear people in the background. I'd have to wait until everyone was asleep, or I couldn't make videos. Whereas now, I can be recording and doing what I want in my own little safe space. I even have a lock on my door so that no one can come in. It's great.

Ella: Being back in Blackburn in your family home, do you think—like you were saying earlier—you adapt to a lifestyle if you're going on brand trips and doing exciting stuff. Do you think being back there helps keep you a bit grounded?

Shabaz: 100%, because there is nothing more humbling than coming back after a bougie brand trip to your terraced house and your neighbour asking you, "Where have you been? You're never at home." And I'm like, "Yeah, I know, Auntie. I'm going home now."

Then coming home into your bedroom and hearing sirens and shouting drunks in the street—it's great, and it's home. I get to look around my room and see that this is the real world. If I lived away in the city, I wouldn't have that moment to see the life I've built in the room that I have, all the little trinkets, my family, and the town I live in. You wouldn't go back to: "Actually, that's Shabaz”. This is Shabaz. That is also Shabaz, but this is fundamentally who I am. And I think that helps me.

That's why I was saying to you guys earlier: I love getting home because I've done enough of showbiz Shabaz, and I need home Shabaz now.

Matt: Do you feel like there's a difference between Shabaz Ali and Shabazsays?

Shabaz: No, I don't think there is, really. I think what I am is a little bit more reserved—well, not reserved, but a bit more politically correct online. I'm a bit more PC and a bit more brand-safe online, just because there's a lot of people watching you and a lot of influence. Anything that I do, I at least try not to have a negative impact on people.

At the same time, you can't be that controlled. I'm not controlled by anything; I'm just more aware online than I am with my friends. But I don't think that's being fake, because every human being has a different aspect to their personality with different people. You are not the same person you are with your friends as you are with your mum, your teachers, your work colleagues, or your manager.

My manager—I've got her blocked from some of my stories 'cause she can't see everything. God forbid if she saw some of the stuff I post, she'd be like, "Shabaz!" Whereas the rest of the population can see it. And then I've got my Close Friends story, where they get the real—if you ever get on the Close Friends story, you'll see some real shade.

Ella: Do you ever get worried that you're going to post the wrong thing in the wrong place?

Shabaz: Absolutely, all the time. Done it twice, and then somebody goes, "You know you were supposed to post that on your Close Friends story?" I'm like, "Oh yeah, sorry." So, yeah.

Matt: You talked earlier about wanting to make a difference as a kid, wanting to help people and put something out into the world. If that kid saw you now—it's hard to imagine, because what you do now didn't really exist back then—do you think that kid would be proud?

Shabaz: Yeah, I think he would. I think he'd say, "You're on the road there." It's sort of on the vision of what I expected. Without sounding conceited, there was a part of me that knew, "You're going to do something incredible. You're going to do something amazing in the world." A tiny little voice in my head was like, "You're going to do something; your name's going to be in lights somewhere, even if it's a light you bought yourself."

I think he would probably say, "Yeah, sound. Checks out. Sounds about right." Am I fully there? I don't know yet. I think there's still so much more to do. I don't know what I'm searching for, but I'm hoping I get an answer for it.

Matt: The way you talk about it, it sounds like there's an element of it that can't be taken away from you anyway, 'cause you built it so meaningfully. And I've heard you talk before about how you'd happily go back to teaching if this comes to an end. So it's not like you've built this big fantasy castle based on believing all the PR. You sound incredibly grounded in terms of how you live in it.

Shabaz: Yeah, absolutely. I enjoy every day as it comes. I get to do what I get to do. I know who I am.

I feel sorry for younger people who come into this industry, because you're discovering who you are and you're also being thrust into people telling you you're amazing, and you've got all these people waiting on you. But I knew who I was before all of this, so this hasn't changed anything. It's just a different direction. It's a different branch on the tree, not the root itself. A lot of people root themselves in this world, and it's like, no, this should just be a branch.

Whether I do a BBC documentary, or a scripted show, or stand-up, it's just another branch. The roots of who Shabaz is will always stay as the main bark of the tree. Everything else is just a different experience.

Matt: You've been on an incredible journey, one that is clearly continuing, and it's just been a joy getting to talk to you about it.

Shabaz: Thanks so much for doing this, and thanks for having me. I look forward to seeing it come out, and seeing how far you go with this through seasons and seasons. And then you'll be in a big TV show—you'll have the national one! Can you imagine? That'd be great, wouldn't it?

Ella: We'll be up there with you on the BBC.

Shabaz: Yeah, go into people's homes and do it there. That'd be great. You're coming to my home when I finally get one.

Ella: We'll take you up on that. Thanks.

Matt: And cut.

Ending

Matt: That was cool. I really enjoyed that. There's always something fascinating about somebody who has what kind of appears to be a character they play in their content, so it was really interesting to hear him say he doesn't really feel like there's a distinction between the two. That seems to keep him incredibly grounded in terms of totally trusting the content he's putting out and his own kind of authenticity, but not getting lost. It was just a fascinating conversation. I really enjoyed that.

Ella: I always get a bit worried when we do an interview. You have all these preconceptions of how you think a person's going to be, but he was exactly what I imagined he would be, and he's very comfortable with that. He was speaking about how he is who he is; he doesn't change that for the internet. He sticks to his guns even with deciding who follows him. If they're not bringing the good vibes, he doesn't want them there. I think that's also something that he's worked on; that's not something he necessarily always felt.

Matt: And really interesting to hear him talk about the difference between what you see online and having taken 10 years to build this, building it brick by brick, mindfully and consciously. It's not just an overnight success. It'd be really easy, as somebody whose main thing is to point out wealth imbalance and injustice, to be a little bit earnest and holier-than-thou, and there's none of that at all. He is happy to be a contradiction of all sorts of things and celebrate that, and I just really enjoyed the way he talks about that.

Ella: He was a really fab guest. He was so funny and so talkative. We went off on so many tangents, but I thought that's part of what made it so great.

Matt: Yes, and it's good to know that we are all awful as Southerners.

Ella: Speak for yourself!

Matt: Really enjoyed that. That was fun.

Ella: Thanks so much, Shabaz, for being today's guest. If you want to see more from him, you can check him out on socials @Shabazsays. You can also watch his fantastic documentary over on BBC iPlayer, Shabaz Asks: Are Billionaires Bad? We'll link to all of those in the show notes.

Matt: If you've enjoyed this episode, you can leave us a rating or a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Also come and find us on socials @homeagainpod, and don't forget to give us a follow. You can watch full video versions of Home Again over on YouTube.

Ella: But for now, I've been Ella.

Matt: I've been Matt.

Ella: And you've been listening to Home Again, a podcast brought to you by SpareRoom.

Matt: See you next time.

Ella: Bye.