In a trendy front room, somewhere in London, sit three youtubers. Vinnie and Luke Vaillancourt (of V2) bookend Calum McSwiggan. In front of them lie a multitude of discarded plastic shot glasses, 6 bottles of beer and some duct tape.
This is not, despite first impressions, that type of video.
The game, McSwiggan begins, is simple. You attach one large bottle of beer to each of your hands with some duct tape, and you can’t leave, take it off or urinate (without difficulty), until the bottles are finished. After a few minutes of flying neon duct tape, screams of pain and jubilant outcries of ‘TEAMWORK’, the bottles are affixed.
Throughout the 8 minute video, the gregarious hosts triumph over their alcoholic appendages, pontificating on the LGBT Youtube family whilst attempting to cover Disney classics with varying degrees of success.
As the video draws to a close, amongst peels of laughter, Calum turns to camera and asks what, if anything, “three idiots getting drunk has to do with LGBT issues and positivity.” He rounds on his own question with the answer:
“Ten years ago I was a teenager sat in my room, struggling with being gay and how hard life was as a gay man and now I’m sat here in my apartment with two of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and things really do get better and this is testament to that. The fact I’ve gone from being very miserable to being with some of the best people in the world.”
As the three Youtubers hugged, I rolled my eyes so hard that they almost popped out of my head. It was, I decided, a beautifully convoluted excuse to sit down together and get ruined. My ice-encrusted cynicism labelled the explanation as nothing more than drunken logic, drunksplaining it’s very existence.
That was until I actually met Calum.
In a dingy hipster bar on the Pentonville Road, we sit down to chat about the campaign from which the hops infested Disney sing-a-long sprouted.
41 years ago, not far from where we sit drinking cheeky lunchtime ciders on empty stomachs, the London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard was founded. Since the phone started ringing on March 4th 1974, the charity has grown, quickly becoming a 24 hour service that has provided confidential advice and support to over 3 million LGBT people.
In February of this year, switchboard approached Calum, asking him to help with their relaunch. The campaign around is leading up to a gala, being held on 25th June, at the Waldorf Hilton Hotel in London.
After initially agreeing to do one video, the campaign blossomed, expanding first to 4 and then to 25 collaboration videos. The LGBT collaboration month videos run in tandem to the ‘Switchboard Selfie’ campaign, which is aiming to collect 10,000 selfies from it’s supporters by the night of it’s star studded gala.
As we chat, Calum has released 23 of the 25 videos from the campaign.
“It’s basically killed me. It’s absolutely annihilated me. I’m going to sleep for a thousand years from next week.”
His hyperbole isn’t without warrant.
After beginning filming in April, he finished filming the last video a week before we met, with the editing completed the evening before. Across the entire project, because of cancellations and changes in schedules, over 75 people, at one time or another had agreed to feature in the campaign.
As we talk, he ventures that it is, without doubt, the biggest project he’s ever done, and it’s not hard to see why.
Each night in June, a different video has been released. Some, like the Edward Scissorhands video above, are funny. In one video, the Youtuber plays the ‘What’s in my mouth game‘ with drag queen Vanity Von Glow. After placing a leek, a chicken kebab, a ruler and some chocolate in her mouth while she’s blindfolded, Vanity does the decent thing and reciprocates placing some asparagus, a condom, a sponge full of wine in his, before climaxing with a spoonful of cinnamon.
Elsewhere in the series, the exploration of LGBT issues goes beyond simulated fellatio with root vegetables, though nowhere was the lack of repeat incidents more sorely felt than the collaboration video with Canadian porn star and social campaigner Jake Bass. In spite of this missed opportunity, it is from Bass’ video, entitled ‘More than just a Porn Star‘, that some of the most visceral moments of the entire series come.
Through (what appears to be) a narcotic veneer, a sincere connection to the subject mater shines through. All the videos are edited down from longer conversations, but this was the result of an hour and a half in which the two talked at length about the situation in Russia, and for LGBT youth across the world.
On Bass, Mcswiggan said – “It’s so easy to pass off porn stars as not caring and being self-involved, but he cares so much. You can see in his eyes, it hurts him to talk about the stuff we were talking about. That’s why there’s no music on it, and the edits [rather than being jump cuts] are left for 30/40 second cuts. It’s so raw, that I wanted to present it as that.”
In a video entitled ‘Gender Identity‘, McSwiggan chats to Fox Fisher and Lewis Hancox from My Trans Summer, and documentary film series ‘My Genderation’. They talk about all things trans, from online hate, passing privilege, and pronouns.
A few nights later, in ‘Do Lesbians watch Gay Porn?’, the lack of Lesbian representation in society, and the subjugation of women’s sexuality by the male gaze is discussed. The video also touches on the notion of coming out, and the perpetual nature of it, which is a key theme that runs throughout the series.
“It seems like a very obvious thing to say but coming out is a very complex process.” In that statement, he hits upon the source from which the series, at least in part, draws its beauty. The sheer number of videos manufactures a situation whereupon the whole spectrum of the coming out process is discussed. In collaborating with people who had come out just two weeks before their inclusion in the series, to those who had been out for years, McSwiggan has managed to move the conversation on from the ‘It gets better campaign’.
“There are so many ‘it gets better’ and coming out videos, which is amazing and brilliant, and have helped many people, but no-one is talking about being in the closet, the stage of actually going to come out and then the stage of continually coming out every single day. Young people who haven’t come out yet don’t realise the importance of it.”
It’s the ubiquitous and shadowy monolith known as ‘young people’ that drew Switchboard to Calum.
“They were very interested in reaching out to a Youtuber, because they wanted to engage young people and [Youtube] is the buzzword of the minute”
The young people that Switchboard want to reach are already reaching out to people like Calum.
“Every day I get around 50 emails in my inbox from people who watch my videos. Around 75% are about mental health issues. It’s such a massive issue, and I don’t know whether it’s being tackled as it should be. Every day when I get new subscribers a good percentage of them are there because of the mental health stuff.”
Though there are no videos specifically centred on LGBT mental health, it is a thread which runs through the entire series, silently entwining all aspects of LGBT life. Beyond the video series, Calum has spoken at length on his channel about his struggles with depression, and his suicide attempt.
“I don’t ever want to stop talking about it, as long as there are people struggling with it who need to talk about it.”
Like many who suffer with depression, McSwiggan spent two years with it undiagnosed, gradually normalising the debilitating numbness of the condition.
“I think that’s how a lot of people feel, especially when there are people like Katie Hopkins who say it’s not real, you’re just sad, cheer up. It gets ingrained in your head.”
The LGBT collaboration series is peppered with moments of negativity. Brief glimpses into pasts littered with hurt and suffering, particularly that of the series host. As we sit talking, I see more and more of it, flashing through like single frames of pornography inserted into a children’s film. He talks of having all of his teeth broken from being bullied. In a quick fire round of questions, he explains every brutal detail of his worst ever day- I won’t go into detail, but it’s safe to say it was a pretty shit day. There are nods to loss, to pain, the like of which many in the LGBT community face on a day to day basis.
What separates Calum from many, including me, is his optimism.
“I’m dangerously optimistic. To the point where I find a silver lining in everything. I have to cut negative people out of my life”
He talks of his optimism as a tool he’s developed to combat his depression. A weight that he constantly holds up, driving him to keep busy, to be the role model he wants to be to people. As he talks, I’m struck by how genuine it feels. I’m reminded of his drunken explanation from the first video, and forced to admit that maybe, some people are capable of being that optimistic.
When asked to describe himself in three words, he lands quickly on optimistic, kind and adventurous. The collaboration series embodies these qualities, throwing him from place to place, from person to person, from quizzes with drag race royalty to talking about homophobia in an Irish park.
Above all, it’s his optimism that shines through. His desire to see the best and to do the best. To cushion every blow with a soft landing. To endure internet hate and reach out to those who need it.
It is, perhaps, not quite enough to melt the icy ventricles around my heart, but that doesn’t stop it being the one thing, above all else, that keeps drawing me back, like a moth towards a flame.
The London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard Gala event is being held on 25th June 2015 at the Wardorf Hilton Hotel. Tickets are available here.
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