From car magazine editor to YouTuber, this lifelong petrol-head proves that you can teach an old dog new tricks  

Starting a car YouTube channel at 59 wasn’t the plan, but it changed everything. And ‘Lick your lips and pinch your nipples’ isn’t a phrase I ever imagined being directed at me. But as always, you never know what life has in store for you. 

I spent 30 years behind the lens, in an office editing national newsstand magazines, latterly for my own publishing company. I planned to build them up then sell them on to major publishing houses, before taking up the life of leisure I would have surely been born into, were it not for my parents’ utter failure to be members of the landed gentry.  

Unfortunately, much like my missed bloodline opportunities, the world had other ideas. Which is why I was now stood in front of a camera, with a mate, making silly remarks.

By 2019 the downward curve of magazine sales had gone from a gentle slope into something resembling a downhill ski run.

Printed magazines started gently declining around the time of the 2008 banking crisis and subsequent financial crash. And the whammy was neatly doubled by the introduction of the iPad around the same time.

By 2019 the downward curve of magazine sales had gone from a gentle slope into something resembling a downhill ski run

‘Who’d buy an oversized mobile phone you can’t make calls on?’ I said at the time. ‘Everyone,’ said the world. I remember knocking on my elderly neighbour’s front door around this time, which he opened with one hand while clutching the latest Apple tablet in the other. ‘Shit,’ I thought. 

By 2019 the downward curve of magazine sales had gone from a gentle slope into something resembling a downhill ski run. We could see the gloom at the end of the tunnel as it approached with ever-increasing speed.  

We cut back, then cut back again 

Then shaved yet more costs off what was left of our empire. Our core product was a motoring title called Practical Performance Car (there’s no such thing of course – the practical element referred to the hands-on approach of the mag). Our readers, like us, liked to do their own spannering and modify their old cars to suit their tastes. 

We had a large section of technical content in the mag. But now we weren’t just competing with other print magazines, a contest I feel we quite comfortably won, but blokes on YouTube making videos of how to do things. However good our content was, we were never going to compete with that.  

We moved out of the premises we’d bought and rented it out. Our once magnificent workshop with an office on the side (space for all our project cars and somewhere to produce the mag itself) now became a gym, and we worked from home. It certainly saved money, but the collective creative spark produced by a small, enthusiastic team was dampened. And then the Covid pandemic arrived. 

Selling newsstand magazines when all the shops are shut isn’t possible 

And even when they reopened our sales never recovered. We used to shift a decent number of copies through supermarkets, but Covid had stopped folk going to them, opting instead to order online and get their groceries delivered. No more blokes sneaking off to the magazine aisle while their partner fills the trolley.  

I don’t blame people – I’ve barely been to a supermarket since Covid and my life is immeasurably happier as a result, but even if it occurred to you to order a magazine from Tesco or Asda while you stock up on baked beans and chardonnay, you couldn’t, because they don’t list them online. 

I was 59 – I thought a new career was a ridiculous idea at my stage of the game 

Like lots of people we had one of those bounce back loans from the government, and unlike lots of people we even paid it back. And about a month later, with sales which had once been at nearly 20,000 copies a month having fallen into three figures, we called it a day. I did scraps of writing work to survive, and we sold the business premises, so the wolf was beaten from the door, but I was more miserable than I realised. 

Two years after the mag closed an old colleague, Ben, returned from a lengthy spell abroad and suggested we relaunch Practical Performance Car as a YouTube channel. I wasn’t keen. I thought of myself as a writer. And I was 59 – I thought a new career was a ridiculous idea at my stage of the game. But Ben had boundless enthusiasm, and nagged the hell out of me. Eventually I caved in and agreed to give it a go, although I had no real idea what it looked like. 

We started off with very little equipment 

We had a couple of smart phones and Ben’s old digital camera – and embarked on a steep learning curve. I leaned into my magazine experience and located some of the cars we’d featured over the years, starting with an old 1970s Mercedes that I’d imported from South Africa back at the turn of the century. I’d fitted it with a big V8 engine, and eventually sold it on. The new owner had converted it into a replica of the very first race car AMG built, and was chuffed to bits to see it on the screen, big, silver, or otherwise. 

We also featured my old mate’s car. Charlie’s on-going project is a Rover SD1 powered by what’s essentially the same engine that won the Battle of Britain – a 27-litre V12. He’s been working on the project for 35 years, and aims to attempt 200mph this summer. I’ll be there, with my YouTube kit, obviously. 

It turned out that I was pretty good in front of the camera, so I naturally became the presenter. And early on we had a big hit when we featured a little Citroën 2CV that the owner had fitted with a BMW motorbike engine. I still don’t know quite why, but as I write it’s heading towards 650,000 views.  

All the same, less than six months later Ben left the UK again and hasn’t returned for any length of time, so since then I’ve run the channel on my own. Ironically, given that my old career was displaced by new technology, so was Ben’s in the YouTube project. Where he used to sit in the back of my old estate car with a camera, filming the feature car, I now have a GoPro on a sucker mount.  

I’ve learnt a lot 

Sound is often more important than video, for instance. Videos eat time. I reckon each 15-minute video I make has around three days’ work in it, when you take into account finding the subject matter, arranging the video shoot itself, and then editing the raw footage. And never tell people you’re going to interview them, because if they’re remotely nervous the word itself puts the fear of God into them. Hardly surprising, given that it’s more often associated with going for a job, or talking to a copper under less-than-ideal circumstances.  

But my biggest take-away is that I’m not miserable anymore. I need to be doing something creative, and always have. It’s what I’ve always done to make myself happy, and it doesn’t really matter whether that’s making a magazine, rebuilding an old car or producing a video, although in the case of the latter, it is quite a thrill to start with nothing, produce a video, and then watch the views rack up and the positive comments roll in. 

Do I feel like an old fart doing something that perhaps is the preserve of younger folk?  

Absolutely. I look in the mirror in the mornings and wonder where my dad went, as my granddad looks back at me. And there are some truly unpleasant people out there, who get their kicks saying things online that they wouldn’t dare say to my face. But that’s their problem. They’re not living in my head. 

My wife and I visited our son and daughter in Leeds recently and we ended up in a bar where I was the oldest person by a good 35 years. As we were leaving a couple of young women approached us giggling: ‘What’s the dynamic here?’ said one of them, having noted the chasm in ages. ‘These are our parents,’ said my daughter.  

‘Wow, you hang out with your parents – cool!’ 

‘Yeah, better than that, my dad’s a YouTuber!’ 

Blimey. I guess that makes it official.