Hello hello 👋
An extra special hello to the 384 of you who’ve arrived via Dave ‘Freaky Word Sponge’ Harland’s Word Man newsletter. (If you don’t know Dave – this week he’s sharing lessons in copywriting learned via a ghost who appeared to him ‘wearing a lanyard that said Wirral Council’ requesting motivational copy for a new municipal swimming pool.1 If that sounds like your jam – and how could it not – sign up.
While we’re on the subject of made-up nonsense – I found out recently2 that when crime writer Dorothy L Sayers worked as a copywriter in the 1920s, she not only penned the famous slogan ‘Guinness is Good For You’ (we all knew that lol), she also invented ‘The Mustard Club’ – an entirely fabricated exclusive private club, whose exploits she wrote about in order to create intrigue about Colman’s mustard. It was a fabulous success. The Mustard Club ran for seven years, was regularly reported on in the press, and its spoof newsletter had over half a million subscribers3. Yes, it put me in mind of Club Rochambeau, too.
Enough of that. Here’s WhatWillyCook.
This month’s ‘brand’ is also food related. It’s WhatWilly. He’s Will Hughes in real life and @whatwillycook on Instagram. He makes short, funny, useful, extremely daft recipe videos. He has 711k followers. He says he was Children’s Masterchef winner in 1997. (Not true. In 1997, he was one year old). His videos started as a joke to entertain his mates during lockdown, then blew up. His tagline is ‘recipes, not stressipes’, which, with its made-up word, sing-song rhyme and chill vibe, is the perfect three-word introduction to WhatWilly’s world.
Full disclosure: I think his stuff is very, very funny. So, I’ll try my best to help us glean some valuable insights and all that. But please know I’m typing this while weak and weeping with laughter.
Bourbonbourbon
Here’s his very first post from 2020. Made cos bourbon the biscuit and bourbon the drink sound similar, which is funny. There’s a disclaimer at the end saying don’t make this recipe it ‘tastes like shit’ and he was just testing his editing skills. Even so, all the basic ingredients (pun intended) are already present: gonzo production. Deadpan delivery. Bit shambolic. Saying unassuming words in a slightly odd way:
Yer mum
Soon, he’s mixing in more signature ingredients on Ed’s Mum’s sausage pasta. Schmoozy music. A wrongly-sized pan mistake left in the edit. A sexy-creepy voice-over. More slightly off pronunciations (‘la BaZil’). We see ‘Pasta water’ make its first appearance.
Not Huel
(OK. Quick sidebar: In every Tone Knob I say something like ‘you must check out their website’. I also know from the Substack stats that not many people actually do. Which is totally fine – like Huel, I try to make each post nutritionally complete4. But honestly, just GO WATCH EM. The tasting menu 3here is fine. But stuffing your face with repeated trips to the WhatWilly carvery is much better.)
Chish and fips
By fish and chips, the voice-over has strong Toast of London vibes, stuffed into a Patridge of Alan. The gonzo delivery makes the videos feel spoof-like5, yet I learn an Actual Thing from each one. I notice that while the weird metaphors are excellent (‘take your fishies for a swim in your beer batter aquarium’) it’s the weird pronunciations that have me hooked. (‘Teaspoons’ as ‘tess-punz’. Why is that so funny?)
Garlic sand
By Halloumi Burger, more and more things have peculiar nicknames (garlic powder is ‘garlic sand’; the oven the ‘heat box’; a saucepan lid is a ‘metal hat’). I find that when a run of these arrives in quick succession, they send me slightly hysterical, like how babies go when you tickle them.
‘Piss’
By mid-2022, paprika is reliably ‘smoky pap-pap’, black pepper is ‘pepper noir’, spring onions are ‘sprunions’ and honey is ‘bee jizz’. There’s music now, too. ‘Freezer Dumplings my Old Friend’ or this ode to Cheesy Nuggets to the tune of ‘Easy Lover’:
Mouth-hole
They say you never forget your first WhatWilly. Mine was Mackrel and Beetroot Salad from April 2023. I watched it 23 times, went to the shop for mackerel and beetroot, and made it. He seems to be guessing6 at what might make a good dressing and has pulled all the dried tomatoes out of his bread. My salad was delicious. I ate it while scrolling the Insta comments, enjoying other people’s delight at discovering him, too.
Delicious ear-worms
At some point last year, I realised the WhatWillyCook voice-over had completely hijacked my internal food monologue. I often stand in front of the fridge saying in a slightly narked way, ‘I’ve got eggs and I’ve got cheese, so I’m going to make an eggy, cheesy, omelette.’ I now refer to pasta water, lemon juice – most liquids in fact – as ‘pasta piss’, ‘lemon piss’ etc. I know I’m not alone. In my local Tesco Express the other day, I overheard a woman say to her partner ‘grab those sprunions will you’.
Me, actually
If that makes me sound a bit easily influenced, know that I do have previous when it comes to daft food malarkey. Ages ago I wrote a book called Toast: Homage to a Superfood. It was mostly a riff on the idea that although toast is one of Britain’s most-loved foods, it’s also very ‘private’ – we usually make it for ourselves, rarely for guests, and often eat it at times when we’re half-awake or half-asleep. Also, there’s recipes. The publisher went bust the week it came out, and these days it only seems to be available in French. (If you want a copy in English, ping me an email. I’ve still got a few kicking around.)
What’s going on?
You don’t need a disquisition on the changing landscape of media formats from me. Let’s just say that WhatWilly is part of a general shift towards us enjoying cooks and, ahem, ‘food content’ that’s more casual, normal and relatable. It’s been made possible by social media, accelerated by lockdown, and is just where the vibe is at right now7.
They’re also just fabulously useful: pretty much whatever you want to make, there’ll be a video by your favourite chef, showing you how to make exactly that thing, in a normal kitchen, in two minutes flat. I watched a Nigella Lawson8 programme recently and was struck by just how incredibly slowww it felt. There were three recipes in half an hour. (Mind you, it wasn’t so long ago that it was only possible to learn one new recipe a week, en masse as a nation, from Delia Smith. This often triggered a national shortage of limes or eggs or spatulas. Dark days I tell you.)
Three things to love and learn from
I notice I feel a bit queasy taking something so joyously daft and squeezing it for, um, insight-piss. But let’s do it anyway:
1.📔 Get curious about your private language.
WhatWilly’s videos are packed with great jokes (‘this is coming together like the Beatles at an orgy’; ‘tough prawns are like eating small shoes’) But what keeps us hooked is the ceaseless flow of his idiosyncratic pronunciations (‘tezz-spUnz’), spoonerisms (‘Charmesan Pease’) and pet-names (‘Smokey Pap-Pap’). For brands – we rightly say we shouldn’t inflict our internal jargon on our customers. But I think a ‘private language’ – of pet names, in-jokes and the oddities we say when no one is looking – is different. Jargon tends to sound ugly and functional. Private languages usually use language much more playfully. What’s there you could use?
2. 🥘 Get stronger, richer, more aromatic.
Because this is all on Instagram, it’s possible to literally watch WhatWilly find his voice in real time. He gets stronger, funnier, more ‘itself’ with each video. Conversely, many brands are at their strongest on ‘launch day’, then get more diluted over time. I often say to clients that the initial project, guidelines and workshops are just the very start. How can you make sure you enrich, deepen or build on your work over time?
3. 🤓 There are many flavours of ‘expertise’.
This is an obvious point yet bears repeating: ‘having expertise’ does not need a ‘high-status authority’ tone. Short-form social videos have made this so ubiquitous we hardly notice it anymore – yet so many brands still stiffen up. One of the requests I get the most from prospective clients is ‘can you help us sound more like experts?’ Well, kinda. Assuming you actually are an expert, the way to get that across is to be more WhatWilly: be really helpful and really yourself. The fact that you know your onions will come shining through.
That’s all for this time. What did you think? Hit reply and say. I love hearing your thoughts. :-)
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👋
Me and Dave figured out an exchange whereby I gave him a Voicebox – he’d been using someone else’s for years but was too tight to buy his own, classic Dave – and he did me a couple of mentions in his newsletter, which is 2.3 x more popular than Tone Knob. And now I’ve just borked all that by giving him a totally free plug in Tone Knob right up front. So not only is Dave funnier and more popular than me, but he’s also way more business savvy. I hate you, Dave.
On a literary walking tour of Bloomsbury, no less. The lengths I go to in order to a) bring you word-related wisdom, while b) also nailing my 10,000 steps.
I got the general Mustard Club lowdown from the tour guide. The numbers came from Diane Duane’s excellent blog on the subject.
Unlike Huel, I try not to be disgusting, indigestible Bro-gloop.
I still have nightmares about How To Basic’s ‘How To Perfectly Cook Roast Chicken’.
You could say it’s ‘creatively improvising’ – which is true. But the vibe is much more taking a punt. So good.
Back in 2021, the FT was hailing the arrival of the ‘chef bros’.
I suddenly remembered just how often ‘celebrity chefs’ used to be helpful in explaining the whole tone of voice thing to perplexed businesses. Beng able to point out how, say, Jamie Oliver’s friendly bish bash bosh was different from Nigella Lawson’s aloof ooh plump and sumptuous was different from Gordon Ramsay’s ANGRY! LAMB! SAUCE! ranting was a great way to get people thinking about how different personalities can be captured in just a few words.