At Home With The Buckleys | Noctis Digital Cover

‘At Home with the Buckleys‘ is a YouTube channel run by British couple James and Clair Buckley, known for their hilarious, down-to-earth content that offers a glimpse into family life. James, best known for his role as Jay in The Inbetweeners, and Clair, a lifestyle and parenting content creator, bring their signature humour and relatability to their
videos. From daily vlogs and funny challenges to candid chats about life, marriage, and parenting, their channel is a mix of entertainment and authenticity.

“Well, the YouTube channel is, I suppose, a bit of a boring answer, but that came off the back of being bored during lockdown. Really, I got bored, and I like to think I’m a creative person, and I wanted to sort of busy myself. And I’ve been wanting to do vloggy bits and pieces. I’ve been making YouTube content for a long time, actually, and I did a lot of gaming stuff and things like that. But I wanted to do more ‘Day in life,’ like what we get up to during the day sort of sort of stuff. I’ve always found the boring side of life quite amusing and quite funny, and something that we can all relate to. But I knew that the most interesting thing about me is being married to Clair. And the most entertaining stuff is my favourite thing to do in the world is wind Clair up.”

LEFT – James wears: Top, Cardigan and Trousers – Ioedle // Jewellery and shoes James’ own
Clair wears: Blouse and Skirt Wiggy Kit // Earrings – Grzegorz Syperek // Amber Cuff – stylist’s own // Bracelet and Ring – Clair’s own

RIGHT – James wears: Top – Sealskinz // Suit Twisted Tailor // Jewellery and shoes – James’ own
Clair wears: Dress Marc Cain // Jewellery and shoes – Clair’s own

With this in mind James had previously run another YouTube channel based on gaming using a famous line from his best known character ‘Jay’ Entitled “Completed it Mate” which he had success with. This new exploit was to be something different and something completely new, an essential diary of their day to day. For most people this can seem mundane, even occasionally for them.

“I won’t say it’s interesting. But I mean, obviously James is still acting, and, you know, he’s done a couple of plays and a TV show and a film all while we’ve been doing our YouTube channel. So I think you know the difference. It can be so different, where, if James isn’t working, we are literally at home with the kids, with the dog, you know, emptying the dishwasher, talking nonsense. And then sometimes, you know, James gets to take the audience along, and you know, suddenly they’re backstage at a West End Play, or they’re, you know, seeing how filming works on a day to day for gems. So it’s a good mixture of stuff. But what we have found is that the audience who watches it, and most of them have been there since the beginning, it’s the same sort of core audience we’ve got, and they tend to like it better when we’re just at home, annoying each other.”

“My favourite thing is being with my kids and being with Clair and being in my house. So ever since I’ve been a dad, really, I’ve only done stuff if I think it’ll be really fun, or if I need to pay some bills or something like that. I do, I do try and not work as much as possible.”

Since starting the Youtube channel, ‘At Home with the Buckleys’ has evolved into a podcast and book, although this wasn’t always the plan both Clair and James seem happy to decide on what they want to do and love being offered new opportunities. With people consistently approaching them they have an interesting outlook on what they like the idea of.

Yeah, but we’ve always had all this stuff come about from us just saying ‘yes’ to stuff, people have just come to us and gone, have you ever thought about doing this? We go, ‘no’, we’ve not thought about doing that or whatsoever, but we’ll give it a go. So I think that’s a nice way to sort of live.

James wears: Top, Cardigan and Trousers – Ioedle // Jewellery and shoes James’ own
Clair wears: Blouse and Skirt Wiggy Kit // Earrings – Grzegorz Syperek // Amber Cuff – stylist’s own // Bracelet and Ring – Clair’s own

One thing that is instantly striking from seeing the channel is the way that the Buckley’s are shown. The colour palette could almost be pulled from a 70s sitcom but there may be more behind that than meets the eye, especially when speaking about how they met and their approach to their style and ideals.

“We’re sort of enablers, really, because we both originally bonded over our love of music and the bands that we like. We both like the same stuff, and music is one of the cornerstones of our whole lives. It’s, it’s our love of the Beatles that that sort of what, why we ended up getting married and having children, really, which is sort of terrifying when you think about it, if the Beatles didn’t exist, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t be living the life that I’ve got.”

James wears: Top – Fred Perry // Jewellery and shoes – James’ own
Clair wears: Dress – Gert-Johan Coetzee // Earrings – Grzegorz Syperek // Ring (right hand) – Thomas Sabo // Shoes – Clair’s own

Whenever speaking with both James and Clair there are always going to be discussions about their past and why people are still tuning into them now. There is always going to be something which may be discussed for the rest of their lives but neither of them have any resentment towards “the Inbetweeners” and the sway it still holds on today’s public. When asked about the past James is straight of the gun:

“It’s just funny, I’ve never taken it that seriously, and I do. I am a fan of ‘The Inbetweeners.’ When I read it, I thought it was hilarious. I didn’t think anyone else would find it funny, to be honest. And when we were making that first series, me and all the boys were like, no one’s going to find people going to think this is so rude. No one’s going to find this funny. It’s so childish and stupid. But I thought it was hilarious, and I still find it hilarious, and I still laugh when people, when people shout a catchphrase or something like that. Like I’m more than happy to talk about that all day long. I love it. I’m really proud of it, yeah.”

LEFT – James wears: Top – Sealskinz // Suit Twisted Tailor // Jewellery and shoes – James’ own
Clair wears: Dress Marc Cain // Jewellery and shoes – Clair’s own

RIGHT – James wears: Top, Cardigan and Trousers – Ioedle // Jewellery and shoes James’ own
Clair wears: Blouse and Skirt Wiggy Kit // Earrings – Grzegorz Syperek // Amber Cuff – stylist’s own // Bracelet and Ring – Clair’s own

With Clair quick to join him: “It’s what gave James success and, you know, and we both count ourselves very lucky, we look around and everything is because of ‘The Inbetweeners’,

I think luckily James is just childish enough where he always finds bus wanker funny.

It seems a rare take that both James and Clair are appreciative of not only the show itself but also of the fans and James is pretty concise in what he believes in that his work for the show may never be finished.

“Also, that’s part of the job. You belong to the people, and I feel it’s the responsibility. I still feel it’s part of the job to just have just spent 14 seconds saying, Oh, ‘Hello, how’s it going? Oh, thank you. I appreciate that nice one.’ That’s part of the job. That is, that is part of your responsibility, and I wouldn’t want to ruin, you know, by being bad because, you know, I’m not always happy. I’m very rarely happy, if anything, but I wouldn’t want to ruin someone’s experience of ‘the Inbetweeners’. You just got to give yourself a shake and just go right this show time. This is it. This is what it’s all about.”

LEFT – James wears: Top – Fred Perry // Jacket Sealskinz // Trousers – Love Brand & Co // Jewellery and Shoes – James’ own
Clair wears: Vintage Biba coat // Sweater – Wiggy Kit // Dress Nobody’s Child // Earrings and Ring – Thomas Sabo // Shoes Clair’s own

RIGHT – James wears: Top – Fred Perry // Jewellery and shoes – James’ own
Clair wears: Dress – Gert-Johan Coetzee // Earrings – Grzegorz Syperek // Ring (right hand) – Thomas Sabo // Shoes – Clair’s own

One thing about talking with both Clair and James is that they have a very strong sense of who they are in the world of what they enjoy and what they like to talk about.

“I’ve always considered myself a glorified clown. I’m not educated. I shouldn’t have a platform to be able to talk about anything serious at all whatsoever. Obviously, I do have opinions, and I do, but they’re half baked and they’re stupid, so I wouldn’t publicly say them. But I think that sort of comes into knowing what your audience is there for. A Buckley’s video for half an hour nonsense. And you know the comment that we get the most is that couples watch. It’s a couple who have been married or who are going out, sitting going, ‘see you do that too, and see she says the same thing.’

This is what has made the show a huge success. An understanding and an honesty which is not seen as much in today’s society. A show about connection and about the small things left. The smiles that we have on a daily basis, rather than the grand big over the top events.

My whole ethos and ambition is just to give people a break for half an hour and just make them, hopefully, make them laugh.

LEFT – Suit – Twisted Tailor // James wears: Top – Fred Perry // Jewellery and shoes – James’ own

As we begin to talk about the idea of how honest the two appear we stumble upon an interesting subject. The transition from the traditional media of television to online, it’s something that both feel truly passionate about.

“It’s a trend that I’ve noticed a long time ago, and obviously I sort of have one leg in each. I’m standing in both areas. But even years ago, I would mention it to people that I would be working with making TV shows and there was a bit of a snobbery about it.

It’s, you know, if you’re on television, that’s a real achievement. And there was an attitude of, like, these people were just on the internet because they can’t get on television. But I never thought that. I saw a bunch of people doing whatever they wanted to do without having to jump through hoops and having to ask permission to do stuff and just going out, coming up with an idea and going, we can make that ourselves, and just do it.
Obviously it was very, very rough and ready, sort of in the early days, but now these people have a whole production company, and they run studios and stuff like that, and they’re really having the last laugh.

What I love about comedy is, at the moment, you’ve got so many young, funny people at the moment on places like Instagram and Tiktok, and they have such a great idea of what they’re making things for, because when you do stuff on the internet, it’s so instant. You instantly know if people are enjoying it. And the idea is to try and get the idea to try and get as many people watching and enjoying it as possible, and that’s all they do. I don’t think that’s the, you know,

I don’t know what the goal is with TV and stuff anymore.

So what does the future look like for The Buckleys With their hugely popular Comedy Podcast ‘The Buckleys’ and vlog ‘At Home With The Buckleys’ Clair’s response to what comes next shows that both are excited for the future:

“James, you know, primarily as an actor, and you know that will always come first. So this, you know, the podcast and the YouTube channel, we’re so proud of it, it’s doing so well, and we work hard on it. We absolutely love doing it, but it’s sort of that feeling. But anything that comes along, we’ll always just be like, That’s good. We always just take it as, oh, this is exciting.”

James on the other hand shows that at essence ‘At home with the Buckleys’ is him at his happiest. Making something with the people he loves.

“I was in ‘The Inbetweeners’ years and years ago. I don’t expect that people should be asking if I want to do a book or if I want to do a podcast. We’re still very grateful. We still can’t believe our luck, and I am. I am the luckiest person in showbiz, I suppose I really am, and I know that. I know that deep down, and I’m happy with that, because, you know, I overachieved.”

And a lot of people were like, Oh, you haven’t really done much since ‘The Inbetweeners’. I’m like, well, that’s enough init. Isn’t that enough?

One final question for the pair seemed like a nice sign off in tone with what the podcast and channel are really about.
What life advice would you like to give our listeners?

“Just find something, find something you like, find people that you like, and try and fill your life up with that as much as possible. I suppose that’s all I’ve ever done. It’s easier said than done, Also I mean, if you’re reading this, thank you. Go and check out The Buckley’s podcast and check out our vlog.”