Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones, a former geography teacher, turn border quirks and pronunciation traps into brisk YouTube essays that rarely stretch past ten minutes. Launched in 2016, the channel parcels deadpan sketches, split-screen captions and the occasional musical number around questions such as why a slice of Antarctica is technically the United States or why Britons insist on saying “Loughborough” that way. Each clip now clocks between one and five million views, enough to fund a shooting schedule that meanders with their touring calendars rather than television commissioning rounds.
The tone lands somewhere between Horrible Histories and leftover Monty Python tapes, a comparison the pair happily repeat. Visual gags arrive every few seconds: a map tilts, a caption wobbles, Cooper-Jones keeps a straight face while wearing a cardboard crown of Gough Island. In 2021 the Academy of Streamers nominated them for Learning and Education; they lost to Veritasium but collected silverware three years later when TikTok handed its inaugural UK and Ireland video prize to their dissection of unpronounceable British place names.
Bookshops now stock their 2025 hardback This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong (And Why It Matters), meaning the same jokes survive algorithmic drift and can sit on a shelf.
Production Details
YouTube / 5 Seasons / 35 Episodes / 2016
Created by: Jay Foreman Mark Cooper-Jones
Writer(s): Jay Foreman Mark Cooper-Jones
Main Cast
