Once Upon A Time In Carrotland: a Gift of Friendship & Community

Image credit: Goodreads

This book, as you might have already guessed, is not exactly a completely non-fictitious autobiography, nor is it actually written by Josh Carrott (although it is inspired by his “root vegetable”-like surname). It comprises chapters of hilariously dramatised versions of events that took place in Josh’s life, and is ghost-written by his best friend Ollie Kendal for his birthday with help from his friends, entirely without Josh’s knowledge. Both of them are British YouTubers behind the channels Korean Englishman, dedicated to introducing Korean culture, and JOLLY, which is more internationally focused and often shows them having fun with their community of friends.   

The book follows Josh as he goes through various life events with an imaginary carrot friend who lives on his shoulder and guides him through life. It starts off with a comedic fictitious account of how Josh’s firefighter-father and police officer-mother met on the job when encountering a burning swan on the train tracks in England, and is based on his real-life experiences moving from England to study in China and then South Korea, as well as how he started the YouTube channels with Ollie and how he met his Korean wife, Gabie Kook. Peppered with inside jokes and subtle easter eggs that showcase the duo’s more-than-a-decade-long friendship, the book ends with a twist that commits them to a promise aptly fitting for Josh’s surname, and the whole theme of this Vitamin A-infused book.

Anyone that knows Korean Englishman or JOLLY will immediately recognise (and love) Ollie’s humour and wit that shines throughout the book, but another thing I love about it is how it can be both funny and insightful at the same time. Ollie is famously known to be a prankster among his friends and family and has a penchant for coming up with comical sentences at the best times in their videos on JOLLY. This quality is shown through various sentences in the book which I had to reread to get its meaning entirely, and then read again just for laughs. The following are just three of such quotes:

“…although he rarely spoke, when he did, he talked about America a lot. He told me how one of his parents worked in an oval office, and the other worked in a pentagon. Americans seem to really love oddly shaped working environments and that was fine by me.”

“Ollie had lived his whole life in London so he knew it back to front, but he always carried a mirror so he could see things from other peoples’ perspective.”

“When I arrived in Korea that familiar feeling of loneliness crept over me again, as it had done on my first day of school. ‘Hello darkness, my old friend’ I thought, but stopped myself going any further for copyright reasons.”

But while this book was meant to be a “joke” (in Ollie’s words), I loved how there were little surprises of motivational-quote-worthy paragraphs which gave the book balance and made it an overall nice mix of fun and seriousness. Here are some of my favourite excerpts:

“You meet people at different stages in your life, some stay for a while and leave, some stay forever, some you get to see occasionally and others never, some you see more than you want to and some you see only in a metaphorical sense.”

“I always say life is a journey and we must pass through life’s phases till the day we leave earth…The good thing about being a student is that there is a routine laid down for you. You go to classes, study, meet friends, play aerial broomstick games and steal social media platform ideas from your friends. But everything changes the moment you graduate, and you wake up on a Monday morning with no idea what to do or how to fill the time on all your digital clocks. It suddenly hits you that in three years of world class education you never learned how to whittle.”

“Thanks for always sticking by me through the highs and the lows. You’ve consistently looked out for me, tolerating my weaknesses and selflessly championing my strengths. You know I wouldn’t have got through the last few years without you, and I’m so grateful for your friendship in it all.”

And the most important element of the book that stood out to me — the community the duo had built that made this autobiography possible. The book was also ghostwritten with help from their friends Jenny Lee and Andy Brierley, with Jenny also being Ollie’s sister-in-law. The cover design was by their designer friend Ben Thomas, their YouTube staff provided support for this “ambitious project,” and Josh’s brother helped to find an important photo for the content. This gift of a book had brought his friends, family, even coworkers, together in a grand gesture of love and kinship, and I really like the close-knit community that they have forged.

For Korean Englishman fans, this book is just another testament to Ollie’s amazing ability to come up with extremely creative gifts and be comical yet insightful with his words. And for those who did not know about the channel prior to reading this, you could see the book as a friend bringing together a community to go the extra mile for a gift that is both ‘carrot-ly’ meaningful and touchingly hilarious.

After all, in Ollie’s words: “Is he a man or is he a carrot? In this ground-breaking autobiography of a YouTube icon, we get to the root of it.”

By: Daphne Yow