Zoella: The Secret Life Of A Social Media Star

How did a normal girl from Wiltshire who started a vlog in her childhood bedroom go on to become queen of the internet? Zoella fills us in

- Lottie Lumsden

It’s 10.30am on a chilly Friday morning and I’m meant to be meeting Zoella for an ice cream. Yes, Britain’s most famous YouTube personality only had one request for our interview in Brighton today, and it was that we chat over a scoop in her local gelateria, Boho Gelato.

There’s just one problem: Boho Gelato isn’t open yet. And Zoella is nowhere to be seen.

Instead I find her tucked away in the tearoom next door, a teeny-tiny person sipping on a herbal tea and flanked by her manager, Maddie.

When she sees me, she jumps to her feet and embraces me in a huge hug. “I’m so sorry the ice cream shop is closed,” she says, looking deeply concerned.

Up close, she looks like any other young university student you might find evading lectures on Brighton’s seafront. She wears a long khaki jersey dress, black leather jacket and Converse trainers, the only sign of extravagance a £5,050 Cartier ‘Love’ bangle that jangles on her right wrist. Because make no mistake about it, Zoella’s no ordinary twenty something student. She is one of the most powerful young women of her generation – a social-media star whose combined social accounts gather more eyeballs than Hillary Clinton’s, an author whose first book, Girl Online, sold more in its first week than EL James’ Fifty Shades Of Grey and JK Rowling’s Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone combined in theirs. But mostly she is a vlogger, a vlogger who has the eyes and ears of pretty much any girl [and a fair few boys] between the ages of 13 and 17 worldwide.