TikTok: Will Calum Maclean be the next Khabane Lame? – Susan Dalgety

Scottish rock star Lewis Capaldi may have to change his tune.

Aberfeldy-based author Calum Maclean is a wild swimmer and Gaelic language activist

In a chart listing Scotland’s most influential TikTok stars, Capaldi was beaten into sixth place by, of all things, a Gaelic language activist. Now don’t get me wrong, I have no beef with Gaelic. It’s a beautiful language, part of our national heritage, and as such should be supported.

But I was mildly surprised that Calum Maclean is so popular. He’s a bearded bloke who, when he’s not promoting Gaelic, posts videos of his other pastime – cold-water swimming. Hardly a rock god.

As a non-swimmer who thinks beaches should be bathed in sunlight and preferably on the Mediterranean coast, I don’t get the obsession with swimming in freezing cold Scottish water. Seems like unnecessary torture to me, but then what do I know? I have never been the outdoorsy type.

Nor am I a big fan of TikTok. Twitter is my preferred social media platform. Words, not 25-second videos, are what I find entertaining. I did set up an account on the Chinese-owned app a few months back, to see what all the fuss was about. But I soon got bored watching pouting make-up tutorials, and switched off.

But millions log on every day. There are around 17.5 million TikTok users in the UK, with 1.2 billion across the world. My grandson watches it instead of TV, scrolling through scores of short videos in one sitting. One of his favourites – and currently TikTok’s biggest star – is Khabane Lame, who has an astonishing 153.7 million followers (poor Lewis Capaldi only has 4.7 million).

No, I had never heard of Mr Lame either. Turns out he is a 22-year-old Senegalese Italian bloke who makes short silent films mocking life-hack videos. He only joined TikTok in 2020, after getting laid off from his factory job during the early months of Covid, and is now on the verge of global stardom.

This month he moves to Los Angeles to pursue a career on the big screen, where he hopes to emulate his heroes, Will Smith and Eddie Murphy. So who knows, the wild-swimming, Gaelic-speaking Calum Maclean may be the next big thing, and not just in Scotland.