bigclivedotcom is a channel on YouTube containing web videos focused principally on the disassembly and analysis of piss-cheap Chinese electrical items from places such as eBay and Poundland, as well as more mundane electrical items and explanations of technical concepts, and dolls that shoot flames out of their genitals. The creator is an Isle of Man-based Scottish YouTuber named Big Clive. In his videos, he is perennially calm, knowledgeable, and sardonic while also being all too willing to do very stupid things on camera. The channel is available here on YouTube
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bigclivedotcom videos contain examples of the following tropes:
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Clive particularly enjoys taking apart electronics or doing reckless things while drinking, like playing with explosives on his workbench and interfering with an unsafe Russian gas igniter.
- Ass Shove: Clive ran a poll to discern whether he should put a particularly nasty BDSM anal electrode up himself. Of course, the poll said he should. So he did. He didn't enjoy it much.
- Character Catchphrase: "One moment, please," so much so that in the "Self heating "pork cartilage" noodle bowl" video, which takes place in a crowded space, as Clive goes to say his famous catchphrase, everyone else in the room says it for him.
- Don't Touch It, You Idiot!: "DO NOT OPEN! - (Challenge accepted)". The video description reads "Apparently this valve actuator is dangerous to open. Let's open it." Clive suspects that the danger lies in a powerful spring. He is correct, but forewarned is forearmed, so he avoids injury.
- Don't Try This at Home:
- Clive does a lot of rather dangerous things, often with very little warning other than "this is very dangerous", with a notable exception being the time that he decided to put 240v mains current across his chest arm to armnote and was spurred to add a very long content warning at the start of the video.
- "Wood fracking" or "fractal burning" is the process of using electricity to make pretty patterns on pieces of wood. "The Most Dangerous Project on the Internet" is about the extreme dangers of using microwave oven transformers as a power source: Clive says that over 30 people in the USA are known to have been killed by them, and compares the power output to overhead power lines and the electric chair. The thumbnail shows Clive holding an MOT, with the text THIS WILL KILL YOU.
- Clive does a lot of rather dangerous things, often with very little warning other than "this is very dangerous", with a notable exception being the time that he decided to put 240v mains current across his chest arm to arm
- Made in Country X: A lot of the products Clive "reviews"/takes to pieces are cheap Chinese-made electronics sourced from eBay. A common thread is them being faulty, actively dangerous to people who try to use them or simply poorly constructed.
- Offer Void in Nebraska: Clive has gotten at least one online seller to stop shipping to Isle Of Man.
- Once per Episode: Clive often says "One moment please" before pausing the camera.
- Precision F-Strike:
- So precise that it's one of a tiny number of uses of the word "fuck" across his entire channel, he lets loose a baffled "what the fuck" when he opens the HOPI power meter he's been using for ages to discover that there's a button on it that he literally had no idea of the existence or function of. It turns out it's used to change the calculation of annual power consumption in various ways.
- Similarly when he decides to try tasting methylated spiritnote
- So precise that it's one of a tiny number of uses of the word "fuck" across his entire channel, he lets loose a baffled "what the fuck" when he opens the HOPI power meter he's been using for ages
- Shout-Out: The Double-death gay Dalek camping light intro and title is a reference to the "Gay Daleks" sketches from Victor Lewis-Smith's TVOffal series.
- Take That!: The TOP ECO DIY TIPZ video is an extremely sarcastic imitation/teardown of channels like DIYPerks, who attempt to "DIY" various electrical projects with varying degrees of competence and safety.
- Translation Train Wreck: Wonky translations do sometimes feature in his videos, but "Electron go out mosquito Small a night lamp" takes the cake, what with the name and the completely garbled and incoherent instructions that inexplicably feature the word "de".
