Performed by the author, Tim Minchin. Animated by DC Turner.

You read that right. You’ll have to wait until the end to find out the V-day connection.

This kid, Charlie McDonnell, if you’re unfamiliar with him, happens to be the #1 most-subscribed person on YouTube in the UK. I know what you’re thinking. Surely a man whose mum buys him novelty gifts for Valentines Day cannot possibly be the #1 most-subscribed of even the Fake Moustache Club. But it is one of these truths about the British Isles that cudgels reason.

He actually seems quite charming. I much prefer him to Fred…

If you’d now like to get Fred out of your head, might I suggest Charlie’s top-rated video, a message to himself ten years from now.

They Charge A Lot

They charge a lot at SoHo stores
but trust-fund girls and fashion whores
can’t wait to buy them out of stock.
To purchase (sixty bucks a sock!)
French-label made-in-Singapores,

designer jeans and pinafores–
the shoppers south of Houston flock
with plastic; swiping into hock,
they charge a lot.

Waists thin as sapling sycamores,
they cluster at the merchants’ doors
to be the first, at ten o’clock,
to burst inside and buy amok.
Like bulls at red-tagged matadors,
they charge a lot.