It must be something in the water, or maybe it’s the fact we douse our chips in litres of salt and sauce, but the fact is us Edinburgh folk have managed to own the internet on multiple occasions.
From furious maws to gravity-defying stunt cyclists, we’ve pretty much sussed it when it comes to providing top notch content for the viral video market.
Here are a few of our favourites from the last dozen or so years.
READ MORE: Incredible 1980s photos show Edinburgh tower blocks that have since been pulled down
Bus swerve hero
Nothing made us prouder when Lothian Buses driver Charmaine Laurie broke the world wide web by pulling off a mad Tokyo drift during the ‘Beast from the East’ weather event in February 2018.
Dashcam footage caught the heart-stopping moment mum-of-two Charmaine, whose bus was carrying 20 passengers at the time, took evasive action to avoid collision with the car that had suddenly ended up on her side of the road.
Snowed in and with nothing else to do, we all lapped up this clip of Lothian Buses’ quick-thinking hero.
There are various versions of this video out there, so it’s hard to know for sure how many times the clip has been watched, but it’s fair to speculate that it was a LOT.
Sunshine on Leith
Inspired by footage of musicians serenading locked down locals from their balconies in Spain and Italy, residents in Leith came up with their own unique way to lift spirits at the start of the Covid pandemic in March 2020.
Intended as a message of solidarity to the nation’s key workers, locals living in the ‘Banana Flats’ at Cables Wynd came together to belt out Proclaimers anthem Sunshine on Leith.
The resulting video sent shivers down the spine of the internet. Pure magic.
You can watch the clip here.
Disgustaan!
The gold standard of viral videos by which all others are judged - you simply cannot write up a list of Edinburgh viral videos without including this absolute worldie.
Posted in 2013, the now legendary footage begins with two young girls singing to the camera (Cher Lloyd by Cher Lloyd) before mum suddenly and unexpectedly bursts into the bedroom to enquire which one of the pair had just taken a “s***” without flushing.
“Disgustaan!” the mother bellows, in an unmistakable east coast twang, before hastily exiting the room. The video ends with the two young girls looking decidedly shell shocked.
The footage has been remixed, repackaged and memed to death, but still has us in stitches. Even Cher Lloyd herself has had her say on it.
10/10, definitely merits repeat viewing.
'Inspired Bicycles'
Now a household name, world-renowned stunt cyclist Danny MacAskill can trace his fame back to 2009 and one video in particular.
When the video Inspired Bicycles dropped on Youtube it became an instant hit with millions clicking and sharing the footage of Danny’s gravity-defying tricks and stunts that were filmed all over the capital.
Honorary Edinburgher Danny (who is originally from Skye) would go on to create lots more top quality stunt videos, but this 2009 OG still holds up.
Edinburgh avalanche
Weather events always sell and so it proved back in December 2010.
Filmed during what was the most intense winter spell in years, an unidentified person is filming from an office window on Morrison Street when a whole load of snow starts to slide off the roof of the Scottish Widows building opposite and down onto a group of startled passers-by on the street below. That’s a snowball fight they were never going to win.
The Edinburgh avalanche was shared thousands of times by early Facebookers and Twitterati.
