Forget DJ Khaled and start following Tim Westwood’s Snapchat immediately

It’s been three years since Timothy Westwood ended his near 20-year stint on Radio 1. But his star is not fading. Suffolk’s finest son is now delivering some of the best work of his career: on Snapchat, where he’s getting loose as “timwestwoodtv”.

Forget DJ Khaled. This son of a bishop turned DJ and car-pimping big dawg is Snapchat’s brightest luminary. Watching the quotidian antics of a man who once put an entire American themed 50s diner in the back of a Ford Anglia for a TV show is my new favourite television show. He has swapped dropping bombs for dropping wildlife observations: like the time he narrated two pigeons having sex on his windowsill. “Yo, that’s the third time he’s done it in a row,” he quipped.

To follow him on Snapchat is to understand his daily routine.

For example, now I know that when he isn’t filming from his new home at the Capital Xtra studios he’s darting to club nights in Milton Keynes and Birmingham, making promises that it’ll be a “wavy affair” and that ladies get free entry until midnight. And I know that in the club, you see the Tim Westwood of old: vintage Tim, channelling the glory of Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Carlisle. He plays bangers to an appreciative audience.

 

The best moments, though, are when he’s filming himself doing the same mundane things we all do. Online, celebrities, even – or especially – the quite budget ones, bombard us with the trappings of their success: first class flights, free Yeezys and clubs we’ll never get into. But Westwood delivers tutorials on ironing socks and making sure none of his many identical shirts are creased. His late night trips to the supermarket for cleaning products and munchies are brilliant. You can imagine the cashier’s face: a 58-year old man, in an oversized polo shirt, shouting about ‘doing it big’ whilst filming himself unloading 60 toilet rolls, 15 tubes of Colgate and eight bottles of Mr Muscle drain unblocker from his trolley at 2am. Westwood is hip-hop to the core – even in the aisles of ASDA.

Other people are loving it: 

Other highlights include watching him bake a rainbow sprinkle cake or filming the speedometer as he drives at 100mph on the way to a show. He details his new coffee bean purchases in the manner of your dealer talking about that new purple haze he’s got in from Amsterdam. You’ll roll your eyes when he drops ‘baby’ liberally, then crease up as he warns: “Yo, all my diabetics, don’t do this at home baby” and tucks into a cake. Once, he guided us through his collection of high-tops, like a teenage vlogger.

And you simultaneously soften to him and cringe when he talks about smoking weed: he sounds like a kid bragging about their first toke. He’s David Brent with spinning rims; Alan Partridge in Air Jordans and a gold chain.

He also just seems like a really nice bloke. Sure, the humour is largely unintentional, but Tim Westwood is a national treasure and the star of one of the finest micro-comedies of the year.