“You! Fat! Bastard!” jeers a van driver as he speeds past the Muffin Man pie bakery in Wigan’s suburbs. The chant is aimed squarely at the man next to me, whom I met less than a minute ago. Kalani Smith, a larger-than-life twenty-something with long black hair flowing on to a metal band T-shirt, is briefly winded. “I’ve never had that, someone saying something negative in person,” he says.
Seconds later, another man stops his car, and steps out. “I thought it was you,” he says, pointing at Kalani’s jet-black Stetson. “I saw the hat!” As he strides over, I immediately tense up, but there’s nothing to worry about. The local man, called Nick, is a huge fan of my companion and wants to chat. He’s not alone. The same thing happens at least 30 times over the next two days. Word spreads fast online when Kalani’s in town.
Kalani, who also goes by the name of Kalani Ghost Hunter, is a big deal on social media. More than three million TikTok followers watch videos of him eating, drinking and generally mucking about across the UK. There are plenty of content creators travelling round Britain with a clip-on mic, but one of the things that separates Kalani from most of them: he’s not British.