But now, in his eighth decade, Barrymore has found a new audience. Since joining TikTok and posting his first video in 2022, he has built up a formidable following by adopting the formats and language used by other young social media content creators. He often posts multiple times per day, and his bio reads: “This is a very happy place to be…” Some of his videos are clips from his TV shows in the 1990s - Kids Say the Funniest Things features heavily - others are skits or behind-the-scenes footage from his day-to-day life, featuring his Jack Russell, Dave.
Barrymore is astonishingly well-versed in Gen Z pop culture: in one recent post, he wrote, “gang I just woke up to find that Sabrina Carpenter [the 25-year-old pop star] knows I exist. I am fangirling so hard right now!!” In another, he wrote: “That one time I was just trying to meditate in the park and JoJo Siwa [another Gen Z singer] walked past.” He has posted videos about what is in his bag, his #ootd (outfit of the day), and making viral recipes such as a “fluffy coke” (marshmallow fluff combined with ice and Coca-Cola). He uses soundtracks from artists such as Charli XCX, Kendrick Lamar and Chappell Roan.
He is fluent in the language of a generation 50 years his junior, peppering his videos with terms such as “cringe”, “aura”, “photo dump”, “fr” (for real) and “GRWM” (get ready with me). They, in turn, are flooded with adoring comments from his followers. “I’m just disappointed that my Dad knows who Michael Barrymore is but I missed out [...] what a legend,” says one. “Can we be besties,” says another.
Mark Borkowski, a crisis PR consultant and the author of the book The Fame Formula, suspects Barrymore may have a social media assistant helping him cultivate his youthful personal brand and get him back in the public eye. “Someone’s clearly helping him, because a lot of the language and references he uses connect with Gen Zs,” Borkowski says. “Whether or not he has an agreement with someone… he’s a natural. Barrymore was built to be a performer, a clown, a comedian.”
Gen Z “don’t realise how big a star he was - he was ITV’s biggest talent,” Borkowski adds. “His fame was in the 80s and 90s, that’s 40-plus years ago. So along comes this guy who has a talent for entertaining and they’re rediscovering him. But he’ll always have this shadow hanging over him that will never allow him to be as big a star as he was.”
Barrymore’s reinvention as a social media personality is surprising given how much his star had waned following the incident involving Lubbock. He never made it back onto primetime TV. For the previously adoring British public, the events of 2001 were the final straw. By that point, Barrymore’s career had already weathered several controversies, including a stint in rehab. Then came further turbulence: the breakdown of his marriage to his wife and manager Cheryl Cocklin following his coming out as gay in 1995 while on stage in an East End pub. After Lubbock’s death, Barrymore’s contract with ITV was terminated and he all but disappeared from public life.
He never entirely gave up on showbusiness, however, and made multiple attempts to re-start his career with varying degrees of success. A one-man show he staged at London’s Wyndham’s Theatre in 2003 was pulled after a few days. In 2006, he had a semi-successful stint on Celebrity Big Brother, finishing as runner-up. But there was more controversy to come. In December 2011, he was convicted of cocaine possession and fined £780 ($1654). In 2019, it was announced that Barrymore would join the next series of Dancing On Ice, but in December that year had to pull out due to a broken wrist.
Esther*, a 25-year-old TikTok user, saw Barrymore’s videos in her TikTok feed long before she knew about the scandals surrounding him. “He was popular for a reason at one point. He’s pretty charismatic. I think he’s done a good job of rebranding himself for the younger generation,” she says. “He makes the exact same kind of videos as a 20-year-old woman.” Esther had no idea what had happened to Barrymore in the early 2000s until she listened to a podcast episode which discussed the unsolved mystery of Lubbock’s death. Despite years of investigation and several arrests, no one has ever been charged in connection with his death.
Still, even those who are aware of Barrymore’s chequered career history are undeterred. “I’ve followed him on TikTok for as long as I can remember,” says 24-year-old James*. “I feel like he’s had a tragic life and I like the fact that the public are showing him love and he’s having this new lease of life. He comes across well, although I have noticed how he acts younger than he is. Rightly or wrongly, he has been accused of a lot in his life and he is just trying to show a different, more fun and casual side.”
Emma*, 21, agrees. “His style of content, which involves ‘come with me to do x, y or z’, really appeals to Gen Z,” she says. “He comes across as very friendly and down to Earth.”
Several of Barrymore’s videos make self-deprecating jokes about his age or sexuality. A recent clip of him on holiday is captioned: “The trip I’ll tell my kids all about some day (I’m 72 also I’m gay).” Another says: “I might be 72 but my mental age is… 18.” In one, he even mocks the downfall of his television career, writing, “When you check your bank balance after being out of work for 20 years” on top of an audio clip from Peppa Pig.
Clearly, Barrymore has proved successful in reinventing himself as an entertainer for the social media age and reaching a new audience - crucially, one which perhaps isn’t old enough to have witnessed, or remember, his shocking fall from grace. “The people likely to be consumers on TikTok have no idea who he was, and probably don’t have any idea about how big the story was when his whole career collapsed over Stuart Lubbock being found dead,” Borkowski says.
Barrymore, for his part, seems happy with the new direction his career has taken. Last year, he told reporters he is “the busiest I’ve ever been and I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.” Currently, the 72-year-old is planning a move to Barcelona and has documented packing his London flat on - where else - his TikTok page.
A recent comment posted beneath one of his videos sums up his peculiar transformation - and the fate of the medium on which he initially found fame. “Get back on TV,” said one user. Barrymore replied: “TV is a mess… No one watches it anymore.”
