His final shoot was in a derelict swimming pool in Bolton. The model was a skinny, nervous lad named Callum, a picker at an Amazon warehouse. The roof leaked, and the only light was grey and wet. James didn’t even use a flash. He just stood there, clicking his ancient digital camera, while Callum laughed about his nan’s dog that only ate cheese.
Ninety percent told him to piss off. The other ten percent, the ones with a glint of mischief or a desperate need for new tyres on their hatchback, got in the van.
“They’re not ‘content,’” he’d snarl into his Nokia brick phone. “They’re lads. From England. It’s right there in the name.” james nichols englishlads
He’d founded EnglishLads in the mid-2000s, a tiny, rough-around-the-edges website born from a simple, almost anthropological obsession. He was tired of the airbrushed, Californian surfer boys who looked like they’d never had a fight or a kebab. He wanted the builders, the brickies, the lads from the estate agents and the Saturday football leagues.
James Nichols of EnglishLads was not a man who dealt in the abstract. While other site owners spoke of “communities” and “platforms,” James spoke of lads. Real lads. The kind who kicked a scuffed-up ball against a brick wall in a Manchester drizzle, who smelled of Lynx Africa and last night’s chips, who had a laugh that could peel paint off a garden shed. His final shoot was in a derelict swimming pool in Bolton
His star discovery was a kid named Liam from Doncaster. Liam was a roofer’s apprentice, nineteen, with ears that stuck out like jug handles and a smile that was half-charming, half-feral. James shot him on a discarded sofa in an alleyway, drinking a can of warm Fanta. The set cost nothing. The result was pure gold. Subscribers called it “the poetry of the pavement.”
“You, son,” he’d say, leaning out the window. “Ever fancied making a few hundred quid?” James didn’t even use a flash
Three weeks later, the server costs doubled. The payment gateway froze his account. EnglishLads went dark.