Express & Star

YouTube stars Caspar Lee and Oli White talk HelloWorld Birmingham and the future of vlogging - in video

They have garnered more than a billion views on YouTube between them before reaching the age of 25.

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Caspar Lee and Oli White with the pupils of Bristnall Hall Academy in Oldbury

And now Caspar Lee and Oli White are visiting pupils to tell them how they achieved online success, ahead of the pair’s appearance at HelloWorld Birmingham.

The two-day interactive event, which will see YouTube stars such as Zoella and KSI join the line-up, takes place at the Genting Arena on October 28 and 29.

Speaking ahead of the show, Oli and Caspar met Express & Star video journalist Juliet Hounam at Bristnall Hall Academy in Oldbury where the duo spent time telling the pupils how they made it in their careers.

The YouTube stars each said they were excited ahead of the Genting Arena event, as it is set to be something completely out of the ordinary.

“What I think is so special about this event is that it’s just completely different,” said Oli, aged 22.

“It isn’t one stage - there is going to be a giant arcade, there is going to be a massive sun - and it’s going to go from being really sunny, to then turning to night.

“The whole kind of world and arena is going to change. And I think that’s the most exciting thing for us because we have done quite a lot of different events, but this is so different and really fresh.

“I’m very excited for it.”

Caspar largely echoed his thoughts, adding that HelloWorld is what he ‘wanted in a live event’.

“I’ve done a lot of them before, I’ve enjoyed them, but I’ve never seen anything set out to become this big from day one,” said 23-year-old Londoner Caspar.

“They’ve put a lot into it, we’ve put a lot into it, and we’re just really excited.

“The line-up’s incredible.”

Caspar’s keen to try the Birmingham cuisine when he heads to the second city too.

“Birmingham happens to be my favourite city starting with a ‘b’,” laughed Caspar.

“We got to see a little bit of the Genting Arena - that was really cool.

“I tried to get some food - wanted to try the local cuisine - but we didn’t have time.

“Hopefully we can go in there afterwards and get a little bit more, erm, Birmingham in us.

“I want more Birmingham in me.

“I’m the curry guy; I once did a thing where I had curries in different countries for a YouTube video. It was probably the weirdest thing I’ve ever done.

“But I should have come to Birmingham.”

Looking to the future of vlogging, having spent time chatting to the Bristnall Hall Academy pupils, Caspar suggested the future of YouTube and online blogging is ‘very exciting’ - and is growing at an alarming rate.

“You’re gonna see the market’s going to get really saturated as well because anyone has access to a camera these days and the audio’s getting better and better,” added Caspar.

“So you’re going to see a lot more micro vloggers, which is awesome because you can have one in every town and they’ll be so much closer to the audience.

“I guess it’s just important for the platforms to allow those smaller channels to share themselves with the audience, because that’s going to be the most difficult thing.

“And I guess what you’ll find is people will start creating ways to kind of incubate and create new talent on our platform.

“But it’s very exciting and it’s incredible the amount of views some vloggers are getting these days.

“Some of them are getting like 700 million views per month. We’ve never seen numbers like that before, which is really cool.”

“I think vlogging is something that is really unique. It’s unique to each person,” added Oli.

“Someone lives a completely different life to someone else, and I think them sharing what they do in a day or some of their experiences is so unique to that person.”

Speaking about his time with the students, Caspar added that his intention was to motivate them to pursue any career they wanted.

“It’s been incredible to chat to some students in the area and hopefully motivate them in anything they want to go into in life by saying that it’s important to do well in school, but it’s also important to start working on their future as well while they’re there.”