Dagenham-born James Buckley landed his breakthrough role as smutty suburban schoolkid Jay in The Inbetweeners. After the show’s success, Buckley acted in comedies such as Zapped and White Gold, but has forged a new career online – as one of the most prolific celebrities on the personalised message platform Cameo; a gamer on livestreaming site Twitch; and now documenting his life with his wife, Clair, a former model and actor, on YouTube, along with their two sons, Harrison and Jude. Their book At Home With the Buckleys is published on 29 September.
James
This was taken as my best men were doing their speech at our wedding. I look scared but not because I was worried about them saying anything shocking about me – I’ve played my life quite safe and I’ve not got into many embarrassing situations. It was more because I found the whole thing stressful. I am a massive introvert, so having a wedding – hosting a huge party – was pretty overwhelming.
My best men did a version of Oasis’s She’s Electric and changed the words so they were about Clair. I can’t remember much about the day. I know I did a speech, which possibly went on too long. It was all about how brilliant I am, how lucky Clair is – but the truth is that I actually hate myself. I don’t know if everyone got the joke. And I know I wore a kilt. I was marrying a Scottish lady in Scotland, so I felt it was appropriate to kilt up. I did wear pants, though. It was November.
Our love story started on Twitter. I’d been single for a bit before we met. A friend of mine had just died and I was feeling pretty confused about the world. Then Clair messaged me and we got chatting – she was living in Scotland and I was in London but I had a DJ gig in Liverpool, so we decided to meet there for a drink. I wasn’t expecting to be completely blown away as soon as I saw her. We had such a good time together; she made me laugh and we talked about the Beatles. Before leaving I said: “Why don’t you just come back with me?” So she did, and we’ve lived together since.
The novelty of what I do isn’t lost on me. It was never the plan to make our relationship into a job, but it’s nice it worked out that way. It takes the pressure off me financially: I don’t have to do a TV show or something that I’m not 100% into.
Our YouTube channel really took off during lockdown. Because I was in The Inbetweeners, which was such a success, viewers were curious about what my life might be like. What they found was far from some celebrity existence: we are from traditional working-class backgrounds and we don’t take anything too seriously. People see themselves in us. Once lockdown was over, I thought our audience would be after more exciting content, but it turns out they just want to watch us sitting on the sofa getting on each other’s nerves!
Now I get to make money on my own terms with someone I really enjoy hanging out with, which is great because right from the beginning I knew I wanted to spend as much time as possible with this person.
I’m not sure what we’ll do next but I have always said to Clair: if you ever want to call it a day with me, that’s absolutely fine, I wouldn’t argue with you. I’d just be grateful, and thank you for the time we’ve had.
Clair
I’m slightly better at handling the limelight than James but I don’t love the attention, so when this was taken I was thinking, “Oh my God! Why are they singing?!” I really liked my dress, though. It had pockets, which was great as we’d already had Harrison, who was one at the time, and he was with us on the day. I had a dummy in one pocket and a little packet of baby snacks in the other. Danny Dyer’s girlfriend, Jo, caught the bouquet. It took four more years for him to propose but they are married now.
I’d never seen The Inbetweeners before I met James. I tried to put an episode on once but my 10-year-old sister walked in, so I had to turn it off. I just saw the adverts for it and heard my friends talking about it. One day someone I followed had posted something about James on Twitter, so I started following him and he followed me back. I don’t know what I said in that initial message but it was so exciting when he replied. We chatted for a while, then I got him to call me to make sure it was actually him. He has a pretty distinctive voice, so I knew it was real.
His mod style was what first made me think James was nice. It’s a bit unusual to find someone the same age as me who dresses like Paul Weller and wears the Fred Perrys and looks like all the bands I love. The night before we met, I told him I was nervous and he said: “Well, you know, tomorrow you’ll meet the guy you’re going to marry, so it is quite a big deal.” I brushed it off like: “Ah right, whatever!”
I was 21 and wasn’t hunting down a husband or anything, but as soon as we sat down in front of each other, we realised we had so much in common – mainly our obsession with the Beatles, and how our favourite was George. I said if we ever had a boy I’d like to call him Harrison, and he said he’d be up for that, too. I was like: “Oh dear, I might be in trouble here.”
When we started our YouTube channel, the numbers were crazy, around 400,000. Our video Christmas Is Cancelled was our most popular – I had to cook Christmas dinner for the first time with very little notice and bought the wrong ham. I suppose people watching thought, “Well, this makes me feel better. Their life is a bit shit, too!” I did smash the gravy that year, though, so it wasn’t all bad.
James is really good at encouraging me to do stuff. In this digital world, I get fixated with the numbers and feel self-conscious about putting photos on Instagram, thinking, “Who do I think I am? I can’t do that!” James brushes it off and says it’ll be fine. When he was doing 2:22 Ghost Story a while back, he’d come home and say how difficult it was, and how he wasn’t sure if he could do it, so I’d give him that encouragement back. We balance each other out well and know when the other person needs support.
James and I never went into this thinking:, let’s build a Buckley empire. Opportunities came and we jumped at them. We are amazed people want to hear more from us. We’re just having fun together, that’s all it ever was.
