Colbran, 52, and Chef Dave, 30, represent the two most intriguing characters on the card. Scrolling through their content – collaborating with p*rn models, getting hammered with students, appearances in high street clubs up and down the land – there’s more than ahint of tragicomedy. Yet, both men gave up successful careers to pursue TikTok full-time. And for both conversations seem like achance to finally get afew things off their chest.
Chef Dave’s content on the platform is certainly distinctive. Hard-man grimace, spiky hair, permanently polo-shirted, beer in hand, #badgein. It’s an image so well constructed that it seems almost too good to be true.
“My current thing is wearing Stoneys and getting the badge in,” he tells me over the phone. “I should be getting sponsorship because I’m always wearing them.” But, much like Colbran, Chef Dave is aman of multitudes.
Until lockdown, Dave Marshall was the head Chef of Porterhouse by Barlows, asteakhouse in the market town of Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire. And his Facebook feed details arather different side to the TikTok party animal persona. Alongside the awards he’s won for his cooking, it shows Marshall as apillar of community, raising thousands of pounds to buy toys for kids around Ashfield at Christmastime, then delivering them with help from the local emergency services. During the pandemic, he became extremely involved at his local food bank.
“Long story short, just before lockdown, my missus of 10years cheated on me. Iwas dead f*cking depressed, to the point where Iwas suicidal. Then lockdown happened and Iwent from doing 60hours aweek to spending all day locked in the house. And that was when Idecided, I’m just gonna try and help out. So Istarted helping out at food banks, and it pretty much saved my life, to be honest.”
The Facebook livestreams of his cooking lessons on abudget even caught the attention of Marshall’s local MP Lee Anderson, who praised Dave’s work in Parliament as part of his controversial contribution to the food poverty debate back in May.
Colbran, who currently lives in Tunbridge Wells, also had asuccessful career before making the pivot to full-time TikTok – the hotel and spa complex he ran for eight years even made it into a2013 episode of Channel 4B&B show Four in aBed. But before moving into the hospitality business, his passion was for football. In his youth, Colbran tells me he had trials for Brighton and Crystal Palace, and even spent aseason with TuS Celle FC, aclub currently in the sixth tier of German football.
The day before he was due to accept atwo-year apprenticeship with Brighton, he contracted glandular fever. “The doctor said Iwas literally two or three days away from dying,” he says. After his playing career was cut short, he became ajourneyman manager, touring the likes of Chipstead, Redhill, Worthing and Horsham, Eastbourne Borough and Eastbourne United in his time.
It’s fascinating how different platforms can offer aportal into alife pre-fame. On TikTok, he’s Simple Simon, dancing outside of Poundland, the Eastbourne Allardyce, hanging out with OnlyFans models and training for aboxing match with aman 30years his junior. But on Twitter, he’s Simon Colbran, director of Tunbridge Wells Retreat Hotel, Royale Retreat Spa (both now closed) and Chairman of Crowborough Athletic, posing with his kids in his profile picture. That account was last active in 2018, however, and he’s since sold the business.
“My work was 24/7, it was quite crazy, quite stressful. So after eight years, after I’d built it up, Imanaged to sell it and tried to retire, enjoy my life and relax.” It’s clear that didn’t quite go to plan.
He was with Southern Combination’s Langney Wanderers when lockdown happened.
“I was really bored. And, well, Iwas managing afootball team, so football was my life. But in the lockdown that [team] went bust, so Ididn’t have amanager’s job. And Iwas bored, really bored, so Ithought, let’s start doing TikTok. Ididn’t realise how big it was gonna get.”
His mercurial rise hasn’t been without its struggles. Colbran is 52 and single, and puts his recent lack of success in the dating market down to his newfound TikTok stardom.
“It’s adifficult one. People either want to be with you because they’re after clout, or they don’t want to be with you because they can’t deal with what’s happening. You go to arestaurant, and are having something to eat, and people just come up to your table. It’s difficult to find somebody for the right reasons.”
Right on cue, Colbran interrupts our phone call for aphoto with afan; he’s out on his daily coffee run in Tunbridge Wells, where he now lives. It sounds like apleasant interaction, but others have been less friendly.
“One lad walked past me, about 18 or 19, and went: ‘You paedo!’ Istopped and went: ‘Excuse me mate? Why did you just call me that?’ ‘Well, Idon’t know, that’s what you get called, innit?’ he replied.” Colbran then spends anot insubstantial amount of time convincing me that he’s nothing like the numerous hateful comments he gets online.
What do his family, aside from Keeley, make of it all?
“I always talk to them before Ido anything, or if anything happens, I’ll ask their opinion on things. Ikeep them involved, but Idon’t want them to get fully involved.”
There’s more than ahint of sadness to the way Colbran describes his life. “People laugh when Isay Iain’t got much of my life left. But at 52, you’d expect to be settled with somebody, enjoying your life, going on holidays and stuff like that. It’s one of the hardest parts of it all, to be truthful.”
“People think, ‘Oh my God, your life must be lively and happy’, and all that. But it’s alonely place. Sometimes it’s areally really lonely place. Ihave my little girl round three nights aweek [Colbran has five children ranging from seven to thirty-two, and three grandchildren] which is fantastic, but it’s not that adult companionship. All you’re doing is collabs, you’re doing promos, you’re doing videos and stuff like that. And that’s quite alonely place, believe it or not.”
“Chef” Dave Marshall is slightly younger, more energetic, and has used his TikTok presence to make his life “constantly surreal”. We speak afew days after he was invited to create content for the annual Soccer Aid match, at which he interviewed Petr Cech and Robbie Keane, and rubbed shoulders with Robbie Williams and David Beckham. Like so many characters in the BritTok story, it all relates back to football. ANotts County fan, he calls his fans the “Chef Dave firm”.
Marshall has never really been properly in with afirm himself (though he once got his jaw broken by aMansfield fan). But there is abit of rose-tinted nostalgia in how he describes his upcoming fight with Hunt.
“It’s gonna be [like] apub car park fight. We’re gonna get in the ring, kick the f*ck out of each other, then have afew beers. Ours is the people’s fight,” he says, with all apparent sincerity.
