When I first saw the word \u201ccakeage\u201d in the email from the London pub<\/a> my girlfriend Rhianna had booked for her birthday celebrations, I thought it was a joke.<\/p>\n She\u2019d booked a section of a pub<\/a> for her party, but when she showed me the screenshot asking for \u00a37 each from the 20 invited guests, I just thought, \u201cDoes Mary Berry run this pub? There\u2019s absolutely no way we\u2019re paying that.\u201d<\/p>\n I emailed the pub asking for confirmation that they were serious, to which they replied they were, 100 per cent.<\/p>\n New FeatureIn ShortQuick Stories. Same trusted journalism.<\/p>\n I thought, \u201cI feel sorry for the poor sod who\u2019s going to have to actually come over and charge for that.\u201d But there was no way my girlfriend was having a birthday party without a cake<\/a>, so we brought one anyway.<\/p>\n On the night, I spent \u00a315 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\u2019t love spending \u00a3140 on one.<\/p>\n In the end, we decided to light the candles<\/a> and sing happy birthday on the pavement outside, but as we were doing that one of the staff came out and said, \u201cyou can\u2019t do it there, you\u2019re going to have to cross the road and do it there,\u201d which was insane. They didn\u2019t even let Rhianna make a wish before we crossed the road.<\/p>\n I\u2019m a social media<\/a> content creator and since I posted the story onto TikTok and Instagram it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Do I think that \u00a3140 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\u2019t.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t be attacking pubs and trying to close more of them. <\/p>\n The people ultimately responsible for \u201ccakegate\u201d aren\u2019t publicans but billionaires and politicians.<\/p>\n Operational costs for pubs<\/a> 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\u2019ve been to a pub in London recently, you\u2019ll know about the wild price of a pint, or a glass of wine. I\u2019ve tried to make a reservation, and been charged a deposit so high it felt like I should be buying the table, not booking it.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> wouldn\u2019t need to go to such extreme measures in order to stay afloat.<\/p>\n Some have suggested that because so many people watched my cakeage video on Instagram and TikTok, I\u2019ve been able to monetise this situation but sadly that\u2019s not true.<\/p>\n You do receive a certain amount of money per 1000 views on a video \u2013 I have no idea what it\u2019s raised, but it most certainly won\u2019t be \u00a3140. <\/p>\n I make more of my income through working with brands and even my most watched video wasn\u2019t directly profitable.<\/p>\n I used to work in social media marketing, but I\u2019ve been a comedy creator for about 18 months now as a full-time job.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve now got 140,000 followers on Tik Tok and almost 100,000 Instagram followers and even an agent \u2013 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 \u2013 though I did raise my profile and basically launched my creator career. <\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to say what I earn now but I\u2019d 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\u2019m happy with that, as I\u2019m doing something I love.<\/p>\n As for eating cakes, I definitely won\u2019t be stopping doing that. I\u2019m essentially a non-fictionalised version of Bruce Bogtrotter so there\u2019s literally zero chance of me not eating cakes, but maybe pubs<\/a> need to meet their customers half-way.<\/p>\n Charging a per-head fee seems ridiculous and clumsy \u2013 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?<\/p>\n That way, we can all have our cake and eat it.<\/p>\n Helena Moody was talking to Nick McGrath<\/p>\n Your next read<\/p>\n
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