Absolutely awful guy.

Dismal, Intolerable and basic and low intellect more additional tube.

Put it on my gravestone.

A basic and low intellect british Youtuber.

No sentence has summarized me better than that.

So it turns out a lot of people on amazon hate me.

Like really hate me.

And in this video I'm going to explain why that is and also weirdly why I agree with them.

I hate myself too.

I know a great little ramen shop around the corner.

I'll meet you there and explain why in a minute.

But there is one comment I do disagree with and it's the one where the word youtuber is in quotation marks as if there's some sort of reasonable doubt that I am a Youtuber.

I mean we cleared that up years ago, didn't we?

Are you Youtube are Yeah.

Mm delicious.

Give me my Oscar So there are some videos I've made or presented over the years that I can't watch videos where I would rather stuff my fingers into a blender than sit down and hit the play button today.

I'm gonna talk about one of those videos.

It's not a video that I made.

It's a documentary that I presented back a few years ago, but one that continues to haunt me to this day no matter how much I tried to forget about this every other day.

I received a message from a viewer somewhere in an exotic land like Sweden or new Zealand who switched on the tv and see me in a room full of cats asking me what on earth's going on, why am I doing that chris, I was flying on an Emirates flight and I watched you feed half a dozen cats on the in flight entertainment.

How did this happen?

Honestly imagining someone flying over the Himalayas watching me struggle to stroke a cat on in flight entertainment brings me immense joy.

But let's talk about one of my greatest failures.

Let's talk about the time I absolutely failed to present a documentary called Cat Nation.

This is pure cat craziness guided by a bewildered british guy.

This is a refresher that smells like a cat's forehead cancelation was a documentary are presented back in 2016 that was released in 2017 exploring japan's cat obsessed culture.

Uh, and why the japanese love cats so damn much.

And we went to some pretty unique places throughout the documentary including an office where you can bring your cat into work a train station with a cat stationmaster.

It's just a cat with the hat is very clever, very lucrative as well as we'll discover.

Also the cat office might sound good on paper, like a little bit of fun, isn't it, bringing in your cat bringing mr cuddles.

But the reality is inside the office outside the back of every computer.

The cables were just chewed in half and cats were literally just strolling over the keyboard where people were trying to work and the whole place smell like one great big toilet.

Now, the first thing I need to say about Cat nation is it's actually really well shot and directed and everyone thinks I was involved in that.

I wasn't.

I just presented it.

It was actually produced and directed by a guy called Tim is from Australia.

He did a great job finding the interviews, finding the locations and producing a really slick documentary on a decent budget and in terms of sales, clearly it did very well because it's on tv networks around the world.

It's on amazon prime, it's on Emirates.

Well done tim.

I wish I'd taken a cut of the sales.

Why did I do that buck?

But I do have one big gaping criticism of Cat Nation and that is the presenter which is me.

So now you know that this is the most cat focused documentary ever committed to video.

It's important to point out, I'm not a big cat person, I like that.

So I don't dislike them.

I think they're cute and fun and awesome, but I don't really go out of my way to do anything cat related and I've never bought any cat merchandise apart from the Alright, I realized there's a big Manekin Echo, lucky cat over my shoulder, my favorite neon light in the studio.

But apart from that and the puppet cat mister snuggles from years ago.

Apart from those two examples, I've never bought anything cat related.

And one reason is that I have a cat allergy.

So if I touch a cat makes my handle itchy, I get a bit sniffy li it's not really fun.

So I've always kept my distance from cats, something that's painfully obvious in the documentary.

All right, so right now, you're probably thinking, wait a minute, you're not really into cats, You have a cat allergy, You certainly can't stroke a cat.

Why in the world of fuck did you choose to present the documentary exclusively about cat Rewind to 2016 when the documentary was filmed and I just started doing YouTube full time.

It was a very scary make or break year 2016 I had no money.

I had to take out a bank loan of like £10,000 to sort of survive and get through it.

And it was a sort of poker chips all in sort of situation and the future looked a little bit bleak.

I think there was like 100,000 subscribers, but it wasn't that much to survive off in terms of that revenue.

You know, if somebody walked up to me and thrown down 500 yen coin and said, dance motherfucker, I would have danced and I would've got the 500 yen and had a hamburger with all that in mind when I received an email out the blue from this Australian field director.

He was like, hey there chris, I like abroad Japan doing a documentary about cats and I'm thinking you'd be great to present it.

I was like okay, this is a cool opportunity.

I did say, I'm not sure, I'm really the right man for the job on this.

There's lots of loggers in Japan that do you like cats?

And tim was very kind, he sort of said I want the british, sarcastic, cynical persona to contrast with the craziness of the cat culture.

And I said well yeah and I've also, I've got the looks as well and he went, yeah, no, inevitably the subject of money came up and I was like well there will there be any any money involved in this?

And he said, oh yeah man, I think we got a little bit of budget and I was like well fucking love cats, what are we waiting for?

Let's go.

The main thing I was worried about was the presentation style And back in 2016 I wasn't a good presenter, I'm not a good presenter now.

But back then I wasn't confident like sitting in front of a camera stand in front of a camera talking about things presenting on tv is very different to youtube on Youtube.

I think it's more authentic, you actually just listening to someone talk about their actual opinions, it's like listening to a friend, but because this was a documentary and I knew the viewers wouldn't know who I was, I felt really conflicted on how to present it and I think Tim just wanted me to be the usual, sneering, sarcastic monster that I am, that kind of persona, but I felt like it wasn't going to really work, I wanted to tone it down, I wanted to be more boring and less opinionated, I felt like people wouldn't appreciate it if I just sort of walked into a room and when it's a cat with a hat on like dr Zeus isn't it?

At the same time, I could understand what tim was going for, It wouldn't have been interesting if the person had gone in being overly enthusiastic, who wants to watch someone going around Japan going, oh my God, is that a jumper for a cat?

That's amazing, no way, is that 500 cats in the stroller, So incredible!

Oh my God, is that a cat with a hat, I'm going to have a stroke, but it wasn't the producer or the director, I was just the guy who got paid to turn up and present it, so I shut up and got on with it and when ha ha, it's a stroller full of cats in it, that's weird, So strange, Japan, Sukhoi and unsurprisingly, most of the negative reviews revolve around that presentation style, hence the basic and low intellect british, youtuber now, allegedly in the documentary, I say the words, creepy, crazy weird quite a lot, as I said, I haven't really watched the documentary back, I can't bring myself to do it, but it seems that I didn't appreciate Japan's cat culture enough and yet, I don't know, maybe it is a bit weird and creepy, putting a hat on a cat and making it work at a train station surrounded by people all day, taking flash photos and shouting loudly.

Maybe objectively.

There is a little bit creepy and an odd, but apparently what I should have done when I saw the cat with the hat on, I should have gone, oh my God, It's a cat with a hat.

There is a train station in Japan where the cat, where's your hat?

This is the essence of what makes Japan so great.

It is a culturally significant phenomenon that dates back 15 years.

Or how about the scene where I drank some cat wines, literally some like wine for cats and it's essentially sugar water mixed with paint stripper and just sh it and it was awful.

I spat it out.

I wasn't respectful to the culture enough.

I should have loved the cat wine like never before.

How about the cats air freshener?

Right?

There was some air freshener in the video that smelled like a cat's forehead and I had a sniff like it smelled honestly, it smells like sandpaper mixed with a special sauce.

And I had, I went, oh, that's a bit weird and people like, oh doesn't respect the Japanese traditions.

Cat air freshener dates back 3000 years.

Fuck me.

Honestly, it was crazy.

It was wacky.

I know I used the words too much, but it was legitimately ridiculous and I can't sugarcoat that.

What about the stroller?

Right in one scene there's a guy who goes through Harajuku with a stroller stuffed full of cats.

There must have been 567 cats in that stroller and it is a little bit sinister, I did say, oh, that's weird, that's a bit creepy and odd.

Again, disrespectful to japanese culture.

What I should have done is go, well, cats of Japan like to be pushed around Harajuku all day suffocating as their owner pushes them around a tradition that dates back before the beginning of time itself.

I can't defend the indefensible, I can't defend my presenting, it is awful and I am to blame for that partly.

But again, I don't feel I was the right man for the job on this.

My main takeaway from this is never hire a presenter who is genuinely interested or passionate about the topic they're covering in a documentary or video, right?

That lack of enthusiasm, it really comes through the screen, I think, and I feel bad for people around the world sitting down who love cats and just want to see, you know, some cats get pushed around or a cat in the hat, you know, I get it, you want to enjoy the cats and not see a guy with a dismal and intolerable personality being a bit snarky and a bit sarcastic, I completely get it and since then I've avoided doing like a lot of tv stuff.

I've been on tv a few times.

It's never really fun.

You can't be yourself seriously until someone comes up to me and proposes a documentary called fried chicken Nation.

I'll stay the hell away from presenting a tv show ever again.

This wasn't like a clever ruse by the way to get you to watch Cat Nation, even though a lot of people have enjoyed it.

I think if you've seen abroad in Japan and know what to expect that it's watchable and it's not the worst thing I've ever done.

Maybe I'll talk about that in a future episode if I can bring myself to talk about it.

But also another criticism of the documentary is that I have a weird choice of clothes.

It does honestly look like I've rummaged through a bin bag, just pulled out the first thing I found and worn it.

I've come a long way since then of course now I'm the king of drip, I've got the most trip on the cheap, more drift than the river Nile don't say a word, but thank you for watching guys.

I'll be back in the next few days for the next episode of the 12 days of christmas and I hope you're having a great start to the christmas season so far if you don't mind me, I'm getting back to eating my imaginary ramen goodbye.