“Then I saw all the hate he was getting,” says Simon, referring to the fact that Cal’s autism means he’s frequently picked on for his “eccentric” content by members of the online football community under a cloak of “banter”. Then Cal and Simon bonded over their mutual love of football. Later, Simon jumped on a TikTok Live with Keeley and Cal. She encouraged him to make his own account, and Simple Simon was born. Trying his best to keep up in a TikTok dance, it jumped to a million views, at a time when Keeley’s videos maxed out at 20,000. One day in January last year, Keeley Colbran, AKA a regular collaborator of Cal’s, invited her dad to appear in one of her videos. All of this could quite easily have stayed with Cal, content with saving free kicks from Walsall midfielders legends and merrily leathering the ball into the back of his garden net. Nottinghamshire-based footballer and long-time TikToker (with 1.6 million followers), his content mostly consists of picking fantasy five-a-side teams, ranking footballers and playing out imaginary football matches by himself in his gran’s back garden.Ĭal is a key figure in the origin myth of this BritTok beef – he’s also the most established creator in the drama – yet for the most part, he’s managed to stay out of the later battles by focusing on his niche football content and collaborations. But everyone has their own theory, and most point to an unlikely source: everyone’s favourite TikTok goalie, Cal the Dragon, who was profiled in THE FACE last summer. ![]() Where, how and why all of this started is like asking how EastEnders began – it’s probably the wrong question. ![]() Even if you do, there’s a chance you’ve missed out simply because of what you click on and the recommendations the app offers you next. Floor tickets are sold out, remaining seats start at £40, and pay-per-views on YouTube are expected to make the participants a hefty profit.Īnd yet, if you don’t have TikTok, this whole thing has probably passed you by entirely. On 16 th July, the biggest beefers will head to London’s Indigo at the O2 for Scores Settled, an actual, IRL boxing event that will continue the online-personality-to-competitive-fighter pipeline popularised by KSI and Jake Paul, but with a TikTok twist. This soap’s storyline has its own season finale scrawled into the calendar. And a big fanbase invested in this weirdly engrossing drama, with just one subsection of the plot gaining 5.4 million views? Big ticks all round. An ever-evolving, hugely complicated plot, with no particular start point and no definite end? Tick. A second layer of supporting characters, all eccentric but kind of loveable at the same time? Tick. It has all the ingredients of a classic drama, played out online and stretched into a long-running saga that has the capacity to take minutes, hours and days out of your life.Ī core group of main characters, bound by unshakeable loyalty or at each other’s throats? Tick. This dramatic moment is one instalment of a British TikTok soap opera that’s swept the digital nation. Cue pandemonium in the room, a mass brawl and a deluge of comments from delirious fans watching the livestream. With the atmosphere increasingly febrile, Matthews upped the ante by dropping his trousers to reveal a pair of boxer shorts with Keeley’s face printed on the front. With no actual members of the press in attendance, and one viewer comparing the venue to a Tesco staffroom, hopes of a detailed, illuminating presser departed long before any of the group opened their mouths.Ī slanging match ensued, with each side trading insults (mostly regarding what each would or would not do to their respective mums). On the left, fitness fanatic and livestreaming lothario Ed Matthews ( 181.2k followers) and his Lambo-flaunting gym buddy, who goes by the initials HS ( a whopping 879.4k followers). On the right, non-league football coach Simon Colbran ( 398.3k followers) and his 19-year-old daughter Keeley ( 360.6k followers). Up for debate: the origins of their rapidly expanding beef. ![]() In April 2022, two warring TikTok clans gathered around a peculiarly shaped office desk to live broadcast a press conference.
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