Max Fosh: Going Viral, YouTube and Being Posh

**Romesh Ranganathan** (0:00)
Posh isn't fashionable at the moment.

**Max Fosh** (0:02)
No, it's not. We're not having a good time.

**Romesh Ranganathan** (0:04)
Posh white guys, I'm not saying you've got it hard, by the way, before anybody comes at me, but being posh and white, it's not as good as it used to be. That's a fair comment, isn't it?

**Max Fosh** (0:15)
Yeah, I think it's fair to say it's not as good as it used to be.

**Romesh Ranganathan** (0:17)
It used to be fucking great. It used to be the best. It used to be, absolutely. You must think about your ancestors, that you lucky.

**Max Fosh** (0:27)
Well, there was a period of time, wasn't there? It was like, if it was the World War era, the young posh guys were always the officers, they were the first one out of the trenches. That's a really bad time. And they were like 19
Then it got really good for a really long time. And I like, you know, as you say, please, I don't want to peek out. It's still really good.

**Romesh Ranganathan** (0:54)
It's objectively still great, but it was better.

**Max Fosh** (0:58)
Yeah, I mean, if you say that, then I support it.

**Romesh Ranganathan** (1:02)
Well, no, because I can't say it anymore, because if I say that, I get called like a sellout Uncle Tom Coconut.
Do you know what I mean? So it's not actually easy for me to say it either.

**Max Fosh** (1:11)
Hello, I'm Max Fosh, and I'm going to be on The Romesh Ranganathan Show.

**Romesh Ranganathan** (1:26)
Oh, shut up, Romesh. Okay, Max Fosh.

**Max Fosh** (1:31)
Hi.

**Romesh Ranganathan** (1:32)
Thank you for coming on to the podcast. I'm going to do your intro now.

**Max Fosh** (1:34)
Please do.

**Romesh Ranganathan** (1:35)
Any issues? Let me know.

**Max Fosh** (1:36)
Yeah.

**Romesh Ranganathan** (1:37)
My guest today is a YouTuber and comedian.

**Max Fosh** (1:41)
Yeah. I mean, the branding's... Yeah, okay.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:43)
That's fine. Yeah, that's fine.

**Romesh Ranganathan** (1:43)
After presenting a community radio show and creating his own content as a university student, he first launched his YouTube channel in 2017

**Max Fosh** (1:51)
Yeah.

**Romesh Ranganathan** (1:51)
Okay. Since then, he has amassed over 5 million followers and over 1.5 billion views.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:57)
Yeah.

**Romesh Ranganathan** (1:58)
He was the man behind the Welcome to Luton sign at Gatwick Airport, ran to be London mayor in 2021, and for seven minutes became the richest man in the world.

**Max Fosh** (2:06)
All good. Now he's doing its job.

**Romesh Ranganathan** (2:08)
Great. Now he's in the new show. Would you rather, not just chat GBT, you read the Tatler article. Would you rather decide to survive on Amazon Prime? It's a wonderful, fearless, and truly debonair gent, Max Fosh, everybody.
How conscious were you of like, how old are you? 31? I'm 31 31 So when you were coming up, was that something you were aware of? Did you think about that at all?

**Max Fosh** (2:35)
Yeah. I mean, when I started making content, I was doing like street interviews, nights out, this was like in 2017, 2018
And I did a video where I went to the Royal Agricultural University at Sire and Sesta, which is arguably one of the poshest places in the UK, and interviewed their students, and they were all quite pissed. And like, it was kind of like posh on posh violence. I was slightly doing takedowns and stuff like that. And I posted that video and it just flew. And I then, because a lot of the comments were calling me posh, I understand that, so how do you kind of get ahead of it? But then, after a period of time, I wanted to make sure that it wasn't just the only adjective that was being used to describe me.

**Romesh Ranganathan** (3:12)
Yeah.

**Max Fosh** (3:13)
But by being the person who was kind of holding up the mirror to the absurdity of poshness and posh people, it kind of got me as like, oh, he's all right. And weirdly, the posh people that I interviewed, they loved it. It was like this weird kind of like Stockholm syndrome, be like, oh, I will say the most outrageous and out of pocket thing for you right now, because I want to be involved in the video.
And I was like, why are you doing that, guys?

**Romesh Ranganathan** (3:38)
Yeah.

**Max Fosh** (3:39)
So at the beginning, I was very, very conscious of it. But then after about two or three years, I was like, I need to have something else to say.

**Romesh Ranganathan** (3:46)