TikTok sensation Spudman has spoke of his frustration after being booted off his pitch where he has been trading from for the last 21 years by the local council.
Ben Newman, 39, has shot to unlikely online fame after sharing videos of his daily life as a humble jacket potato seller in the market town of Tamworth, Staffs.
Ben Newman, 39, has shot to unlikely online fame after sharing videos of his daily life as a humble jacket potato seller in the market town of Tamworth, Staffs.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 I'm having...
00:02 Anything else?
00:03 No but on the other one.
00:04 Yeah.
00:05 I want cheese and...
00:06 Kerry, Hannah from Mansfield.
00:08 It took us an hour and ten minutes to get here.
00:11 Juicy.
00:13 Did you have a drink?
00:14 No.
00:15 We didn't, we planned to.
00:16 Oh!
00:18 Need a bag?
00:19 Yes please.
00:20 Fanta from Tito, where Tater Man is, and I'm going to enjoy my dinner today from here.
00:25 Tuna please.
00:26 Cheese and tuna, no butter.
00:29 Been here 21 years, in Tamworth.
00:32 Why did we get started on social media?
00:36 Came back after Covid and we needed to let people know we were here basically.
00:41 So it was, how are we going to do this?
00:43 One of my lads put TikTok in front of me.
00:46 We made a few videos and I think my second or third video got half a million views.
00:50 And it opened my eyes to the power of TikTok and social media and never looked back really.
00:56 We posted every day, you know, three, four, five videos every day on TikTok.
01:01 And we've grown this amazing following.
01:04 And then all of a sudden in October, video after video after video started going viral.
01:12 One of them nearly 100 million views.
01:23 People genuinely see how much I enjoy my job.
01:26 And I love coming to work and I love serving the people of Tamworth.
01:29 Obviously our lovely jacket potatoes.
01:35 These are grown 10 miles away.
01:37 Local farmer that we use.
01:39 We use a variety called Melody.
01:41 Really nice, really nice one.
01:44 What do we put on it?
01:46 We've got beans, curry, chilli, minced beef, pulled pork, coleslaw, tuna mayo, sweet corn and cheese, of course.
01:56 We like to support local farmers.
02:08 I grew up, my grandad was a farmer and so supporting local is, you know, essential to us as well.
02:15 It is nice to keep the money in the area.
02:19 So the free day was an idea I had six months ago before we really went viral.
02:33 And it was a nice way to give back to the community.
02:37 Basically, we just wanted to give everyone we possibly could a jacket potato for free.
02:45 It grew into a far bigger event than I ever thought it would.
02:48 We had queues of nearly four hours long at one point.
02:51 We served 2,200 potatoes in five hours, which is no little accomplishment.
03:00 I'm sure there's some kind of world record in there somewhere.
03:03 Amazing atmosphere.
03:04 We raised nearly £11,000 for kidney research.
03:12 It's charity very close to my heart.
03:14 I've been on dialysis for 12 years and three failed transplants.
03:18 So yeah, kidney research is a big thing for me.
03:21 And it also brings so much trade to Tamworth.
03:29 Yes, we were giving away freebies, but I spoke to the other food vendors
03:33 and they were all busy and had really good days for the time of year.
03:37 So it was really nice to see Tamworth buzzing and lots of people coming in and spending their money.
03:43 Yeah, it was good. It was fun times.
03:46 Hi, I'm April. I heard about this through TikTok and we're from Telford.
03:50 And we came up today to just give it a go.
03:52 I've got a jacket potato with tuna and cheese.
03:55 And we probably only queued for about 10 minutes to get it.
03:58 Hi, we're from Birmingham. My name's Jason.
04:05 Hi, I'm from Birmingham. My name's Sue.
04:07 And we're here to enjoy the lovely spud from Spudma.
04:10 I've got cheese and coleslaw.
04:12 And I've got pulled pork and cheese. It's lovely.
04:15 It's lovely.
04:17 [Tram sounds]
04:19 The queue's not going to end in a minute now.