Weekly Watch: Big Clive

By Circe -


I spotlighted this channel in my frail attempt to post a bunch of nice things at the end of 2016, but here it is again. Big Clive is a large bearded Isle-'o-Mander, né Glasgwegian, who loves taking gadgets to bits to see what's inside of them, and "testing" cheap Chinese eBay crap until it catches fire. I love him to death.

If you binge long enough, you'll learn many things about Clive. He used to spend summers on the Isle of Man, he moved there to help care for his ailing mother, he has a fine appreciation for whiskey and Guinness. He set quite a lot of things on fire, or nearly so, as a wee bairn electrical engineer before wising up. He orders his cheap Chinese eBay crap in pink whenever he can, because it amuses him.

One of the most charming things you'll learn is that Clive loves things that light up. Really. Once upon a time, he designed circuit boards for fairground lighting controllers, and he spent like thirty years working on the municipal Christmas light displays in Glasgow's George Square. I'm not sure what he works on these days (he's still a jobbing engineer, in addition to running the YouTube channel), but in his spare time he builds stuff like psychedelic mushroom lamps out of his spare parts bin, plus the electrically-dodgy remains of some of the eBay crap.

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