For this week’s Writer’s Workshop John Holton has given us the usual six prompts, one of which is to “Share links to 5-10 of your favourite non-political YouTube videos from this past week.” How could I resist! As you might expect I watch a lot of music clips on there, but also mix in a few comedy ones and the occasional extra. Not all of these are new to YouTube this week, but all are in my history from the past seven days so that’s good enough for me!

Starting off with a musical one (of course):

That is far from being a new video, and is one I’ve watched numerous times, but it popped up in my recommendations so I thought – why not? The Darkness are one of my favourite bands, and their videos are always fun, like this one. If you watch it on YouTube you will see that the comments include several from people who took part in the video, including from the guy who stole the show: someone says that they loved the ‘fat man dancing’ and Mark, for it was he, replies with his thanks. YouTube may sometimes be overlooked when we think of ‘social media’ but that is a very good example of how it can work. And we all had fun in the process.

This next one is brand new this week. Just to prove that I have a fairly wide-ranging musical taste, how about this? Absolutely gorgeous:

I’ve played Hildegard Von Blingin’ before, so you may recall her. Her usual songs are in what she calls “Bardcore for the discerning clergyman, noble, or muck-gathering peasant.” I don’t know her real name, but she tells us that she is a Canadian singer/illustrator who started making Bardcore in 2020: it is a pastiche genre that takes modern songs and makes them “old-timey” with Medieval and Renaissance inspirations. She has the most beautiful voice, and posted this song, originally written by the near namesake who gave the inspiration for her name, as a thank you for reaching 1m YouTube followers. I think you can see from this why so many people like her music. 12th century rock and roll at its finest!

A little comedy for you now. This is a bit sweary (you have been warned!) but it is a hysterical compilation of clips from the tv show 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, which is a very successful mashup of two other UK tv shows. You probably won’t really need to know the show to enjoy these – it’s an 11 minute clip so be prepared for YouTube to drop in the occasional ad, which probably won’t be as funny, sorry:

This next one is part movie trailer, part song:

If you don’t know the background, Fisherman’s Friends is a British film released in March 2019, which was inspired by a true story about Fisherman’s Friends, a group of Cornish fishermen from Port Isaac who achieved a UK top 10 hit with their debut album of traditional sea shanties. It is a lovely, feel good movie with some great music, and gave rise to a follow up – Fisherman’s Friends: One And All – in August 2022. Both are highly recommended by me. This was the title and opening track on the 2019 soundtrack album, which I also commend to you.

As well as being a great place for music and comedy, YouTube is also good for those of us, like me, who follow football teams from the lower tiers of English football. I can’t get to games any more, but my two teams – Leyton Orient and Dover Athletic – post brief highlights of matches, which are a great way of keeping in touch. On Tuesday evening, Leyton Orient (the Os) played a game in the third round of the FA Cup: it had been postponed from Saturday due to the pitch being frozen, which meant that the draw for the next round had already been made. So the Os and Derby County, from the division above, knew that they were playing for the honour of playing host to the current English champions, Manchester City. This is how it went:

The game kicked off at 7.45 pm, and after the usual added time, plus extra time, it went to the penalty shootout to decide the outcome, and eventually finished around 10.45pm. ‘Watching’ a penalty shootout involving your team on Twitter is a surreal experience, but it was a fabulous end to a game which will stay long in the memory of those Os fans who were there. And I can see a bit of it thanks to YouTube. There is also an interview with Richie Wellens, our manager, but I think that sharing that with you as well might be overkill. Suffice it to say I was a very happy bunny late on Tuesday!

John suggested that we share between five and ten clips, and I’ve now reached five. But I think I’ll give you another from my recent viewing to round things off for today. This one is around nine months old, but YouTube’s algorithm did its usual excellent job by adding this into my recommendations. This is The Bygones, a new band for me, but on the strength of this I have been listening to more of their music, and I suspect I’ll be playing them here again:

The Bygones are Allison Young and Joshua Lee Turner. Joshua is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who has been sharing music to his own YouTube channel since 2007, when he was just 15. After meeting Allison online in 2017 they formed their duo. The Bygones are reported to have independently funded their debut album and kicked off a subsequent tour via a Kickstarter campaign in less than 48 hours in 2023. They released a six track EP in 2022 and that eponymous album last year: I’ve listened to it, and it is as lovely as this song (which is on it) would suggest.

I said that would be the last, but can’t resist adding in just one more. Another of my favourite bands appeared in my recommendations this week, and I just had to listen to it – so you’re getting it too:

That was Oysterband, with Diamonds On The Water, the title track of an album that came out in early 2014 and has given them their biggest success to date: one week at #51 in the UK Albums chart in March of that year. Folk music isn’t something that often makes the mainstream UK charts, but for me many of that genre are infinitely preferable to the puerile crap that sells by the truckload: quality beats quantity every day for me!

So, that’s what I’ve been up to – what have you been doing?