My video of goats went viral — and I’m a global Goat Correspondent now!
By Andrew Stuart, video producer, Manchester Evening News
You don’t ever think a silly midnight tweet about some goats running around your town is going to go viral, be talked about worldwide, and you’ll be on so many different media platforms your head starts to spin.
But that’s what happened to me on lockdown.
I normally live in Manchester, working for the Manchester Evening News, but for many Covid-related reasons, I’m back at my parents in Llandudno in North Wales.
Llandudno has a herd of wild goats, which date back to the 1800s. They do like to come down the hillside, as seen many, many times previously — and documented extensively by my colleagues at North Wales Live and the Daily Post.
So when I saw them running down the middle of the street at midnight one night, I thought it was odd — and the journalist and photographer in me decided to record some video. I didn’t think much of it. Maybe it would make a few people smile. North Wales Live might be interested… little did I know I would end up having more than 17 million impressions on my Twitter (and counting).
Over the next few days, I kept recording them when I saw them — and adding to the thread. I used my daily outdoors time to go and take videos and photos — I didn’t have to look hard though, they were all over the place.
They are still wary of people and human life. Normally, they are put off going much further than the bottom of the Great Orme because of how busy it is (in relative terms — this is still Llandudno after all, and not inner-city Manchester). However, thanks to the Covid-19 lockdown, the goats didn’t have any traffic, people or noise stopping them — so they ventured out. They ate shrubs, bushes, hedges, climbed on walls and houses, sunbathed in the churchyard, and blocked traffic — and caused an international stir.
I’ve been on American radio, Canadian radio, Irish radio, so many different BBC national and international outlets I can’t put a finger on it, ITV Wales, Wales Today, interviewed by the New York Times, Associated Press, and I’m due to go on Jason Manford’s show on Absolute Radio.
This went massive thanks to him — my Twitter was wild already, and then he put it on his Facebook page and tweeted it. That’s it — notifications off. So, so many people have said they saw Jason Manford tweeting it.
Another account that used some of my photos and tagged me in had gone pretty big — and as people clicked through to my account, they saw all the photos and videos on the thread.
The domino effect of liking, retweeting and sharing sent it around the world, and it has given the world a good news story at a time they really needed it — and me a new title (goat correspondent) and a story I can use for a long time to come!
