True Geordie (Brian Davis) — YouTuber and podcaster from Newcastle; runs the True Geordie podcast and The Kick Off football show, plus boxing/fighting content with billions of views.
The gist
True Geordie tells Steven Bartlett the raw story of his rise and fall: growing up on a council estate, working as a deep-sea diver on oil rigs, then exploding on YouTube with viral football rants. He describes how sudden money fueled his ego, leading to a spree of supercars and reckless spending before everything collapsed in a single week. He lost a multi-million pound betting deal, was hit with a six-figure tax bill, and had sexual DMs leaked publicly, pushing him to suicidal thoughts. He speaks with unusual vulnerability about his mother's death, his father's bipolar disorder and suicide attempt, his anxiety and depression, and how antidepressants finally helped him level out. The conversation closes on his ambition to be valued as a media company, his struggle to find peace versus chasing money, and his belief that his content represents the future.
Big reveals
- In one week he lost a multi-million pound betting sponsorship that was nearly signed, after a new executive made outrageous demands.
- The same week he had sexual DMs leaked and was hit with a six-figure tax bill, leaving him fearing homelessness.
- He says he literally wanted to kill himself during that period and drank whiskey and smoked weed to cope.
- He was drunk on whiskey at 11am while recording the 'fall of True Geordie' video, deliberately having friends roast him so people would move on.
- He drank himself to sleep to the point of collapsing, both after his mother's death and during the financial crisis.
- His father, who has bipolar disorder, had a suicide attempt this year that True Geordie had to call an ambulance for; it took two hours to arrive.
- After waking up one morning not wanting to live, he phoned the doctor himself and started antidepressants, which he says have been a godsend.
- When Steven met him in 2017 he was paying a man 50 pounds a day to rent a sweaty bomb shelter studio after a company sacked him for being 'not brandable.'
Things worth remembering
- He earned around 10,000 pounds a month as a deep-sea diver on oil rigs before YouTube.
- He paid roughly 100,000 dollars in cash for his first Audi R8.
- He says he has about a 15-person crew on every Kick Off show, possibly the biggest crew on YouTube.
- He had to become his father's next of kin and 'parent' him, while his father is mentally unstable.
- He realized he had chemical depression and likely PTSD with low serotonin, not just situational depression.
- He believes he outdid Joe Rogan on a Kamaru Usman interview using his empathy and emotional side.
- He learned to build pitch decks himself and personally does the color grade, sound, and frame-by-frame editing on his content.
- He pulled up Heineken for using the Kick Off trademark and made them pay him off.
- He turned off comments on social media and several YouTube videos for his mental health, and they still trended top 10 worldwide.
- When Sky launched their own version of the Kick Off, it went down in flames within two years.