Politicians are to blame for ‘Cakegate’, not the pub, says content creator Helena Moody
TikTok creator and comedian Helena Moody almost choked on her Victoria Sponge when a London pub asked for £7 a head for the privilege of eating her girlfriend’s birthday cake under their roof but she believes politicians not publicans are to blame for the cake tax.
When I first saw the word “cakeage” in the email from the London pub my girlfriend Rhianna had booked for her birthday celebrations, I thought it was a joke.
She’d booked a section of a pub for her party, but when she showed me the screenshot asking for £7 each from the 20 invited guests, I just thought, “Does Mary Berry run this pub? There’s absolutely no way we’re paying that.”
I emailed the pub asking for confirmation that they were serious, to which they replied they were, 100 per cent.
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I thought, “I feel sorry for the poor sod who’s going to have to actually come over and charge for that.” But there was no way my girlfriend was having a birthday party without a cake, so we brought one anyway.
On the night, I spent £15 on a standard supermarket chocolate cake, which we hid in a bag under the table because we were too scared to get it out in case we got slapped with a massive bill. I love cakes, but I don’t love spending £140 on one.
In the end, we decided to light the candles and sing happy birthday on the pavement outside, but as we were doing that one of the staff came out and said, “you can’t do it there, you’re going to have to cross the road and do it there,” which was insane. They didn’t even let Rhianna make a wish before we crossed the road.
I’m a social media content creator and since I posted the story onto TikTok and Instagram it’s racked up 1.4 million views. Everyone keeps telling me to name and shame the pub in question, but I have no intention of doing that. It is estimated that one pub a week is closing in the UK, which is really depressing.
Do I think that £140 to bring your own cake is crazy? Of course I do. But do I think that pub deserves a review pile-on, which will massively hit their finances? No, I don’t.
My hope in posting that video was that the pub might indirectly see it and decide not to have the ridiculous cakeage fee, but we shouldn’t be attacking pubs and trying to close more of them.
The people ultimately responsible for “cakegate” aren’t publicans but billionaires and politicians.
Operational costs for pubs are rising, whilst the disposable income of their clients is falling. Being able to break even, let alone make a profit in this current political and economic climate is mission impossible for pubs right now. If you’ve been to a pub in London recently, you’ll know about the wild price of a pint, or a glass of wine. I’ve tried to make a reservation, and been charged a deposit so high it felt like I should be buying the table, not booking it.
We should be trying to help them exist in this system without having to take advantage of their customers. If politicians had been smarter with our money, pubs wouldn’t need to go to such extreme measures in order to stay afloat.
Some have suggested that because so many people watched my cakeage video on Instagram and TikTok, I’ve been able to monetise this situation but sadly that’s not true.
You do receive a certain amount of money per 1000 views on a video – I have no idea what it’s raised, but it most certainly won’t be £140.
I make more of my income through working with brands and even my most watched video wasn’t directly profitable.
I used to work in social media marketing, but I’ve been a comedy creator for about 18 months now as a full-time job.
I’ve now got 140,000 followers on Tik Tok and almost 100,000 Instagram followers and even an agent – one of my early posts, where I talked about being particularly pasty and pale, was watched 23 million times. That obviously dwarfs the cakeage video, but because the threshold of monetising your content on TikTok is 10,000 I made precisely nothing – though I did raise my profile and basically launched my creator career.
It’s hard to say what I earn now but I’d say this financial year has been my first proper year of earning since I launched, and as long as I can afford my rent and afford to pay my bills then I’m happy with that, as I’m doing something I love.
As for eating cakes, I definitely won’t be stopping doing that. I’m essentially a non-fictionalised version of Bruce Bogtrotter so there’s literally zero chance of me not eating cakes, but maybe pubs need to meet their customers half-way.
Charging a per-head fee seems ridiculous and clumsy – who wants to collect a few quid from everyone round the table? But obviously there are post-cake plates and cutlery to be cleaned, so how about just charging a reasonable flat fee, maybe twenty or thirty quid?
That way, we can all have our cake and eat it.
Helena Moody was talking to Nick McGrath
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