A man who became famous for sticking a whisk in his mouth on Come Dine With Me has now finally started to cash in on his bizarre online popularity 10 years after the fact. Check out his sales pitch below.
You’ll probably remember Kev Riley for being one of the most relatable characters on the Channel 4 dining roulette show, as he shoved a whole utensil into his gob whilst preparing a cheesecake for his guests.
Well, despite his fame he never managed to turn a profit from it until he discovered Cameo and found that there are actually loads of people who would pay to get a short video from him.
The DJ from Burnley works in a call centre to supplement his music earnings, and now he’s got a fairly lucrative side hustle in making bespoke Cameo videos at £25 a go.
Still, his popularity has been such that he’s decided to up that price.
He told Metro: “I’ve had 20 requests in in two days.
“I started low thinking I’m Z-list at the very best so I looked for the cheapest and did it as that, but then I got an email straightaway from Cameo and they know what they’re doing, saying ‘you’re too cheap, you know, put it up!’.
“I put it up to 30 quid, but they’ve emailed me again saying you could get more but I’m just going to leave it at that.”
So, Cameo takes a 25 percent cut of anything that he earns, but even with their share taken out he’s still turning over around £240 per day, and can earn as much as £1,000 in a week.
It’s not before time, though.
Whilst others have cashed in on their viral fame – although not the Come Dine With Me star we all want a message from – he’s never made so much as a penny before now.
He explained: “I’ve never made money from Come Dine With Me,
“But other people have. They released 30,000 Come Dine With Me Christmas jumpers two years ago, Netflix has bought the rights to show it and then I’m the face of that on their channel.
“But all this is nothing for me.”
His new found fame started out when a friend encouraged him to do a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) that went stratospheric, and he’s not come down just yet.
“I obviously didn’t know what that meant, but then I did this interview on Reddit, which was 30,000 people asking questions,” he continued.
“That went crazy. And then I got Cameo email me off the back of that and just said, ‘we think it would work on the site and would you be interested?’ and I thought, you know, why not? You know, make a penny off it.”
Why not, indeed?
So, he’s on there all the time now with his whisk in hand – ‘why would you book me if you don’t want me to do that?’ he asked – and he’s even had some fairly strange requests.
Kev explained: “The internet is pretty strange.
“I had one woman who said, ‘can you talk about hamsters on video?’ I just named a few random facts about hamsters.”
He concluded: “I thought I’d missed the boat with all this Cameo thing but it just seems to be rolling, rolling.
“I don’t even think I looked that much like it anymore, because I’m 10 years older. You see some of the comments on Twitter and it gets shared, people saying ‘bloody ‘ell, he’s aged!’”
Come Dine With Me is available on Netflix and All4, and – obviously – you should go and book Kev over on Cameo.
Featured Image Credit: Channel 4Topics: Weird, TV and Film, Channel 4, Food And Drink, Viral
Tom Wood