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Episode 2

TikTok drag star Ellis Lloyd Jones reveals the painful truth behind his success. A moment of inspiration turns Laura Mallows' fledgling beauty company into a high street brand.

Last March 21-year-old uni student Ellis Lloyd Jones, locked down and bored on campus, began turning out more and more of the TikTok videos he’d started posting five months earlier. He’d invented a series of humorous female characters to express his love of drag and soon his posts began to go viral. By the end of 2020, he had 140,000 follows and almost six million likes. But behind the success lay the story of a young gay man who grew up an outsider in a valleys town - ostracised and bullied for being different. Ellis talks about his overnight success, records some new material, and pays a painful and poignant visit back to his hometown.

In Llantrisant, Laura Mallows reveals the meteoric and unusual rise of her vegan beauty products company Mallows Beauty. Starting out in January 2020, the pandemic came as a big blow to her fledgling business. But with incredible presence of mind, Laura came up with a way out of her predicament. Her dad worked at a local distillery, and so she became one of the first people in the UK to apply for a licence to manufacture hand sanitiser. Mallows Beauty hand sanitiser has sold in the tens of thousands in shops throughout the UK, and has given her the funds to expand and grow. Her product is already stocked in Accessorize, Pretty Little Things and John Lewis. We follow her and her business partner and fiance Ronnie as they race against time to fulfill their latest order; while Laura reveals the moving truth behind why she decided to open her business in the first place.

And in Mold, OnlyFans underwear model Alaw Haf gets an unusual request from a subscriber.

Despite the pandemic, more under-25s are setting up businesses than ever before. These entrepreneurs are young, Welsh and bossin’ it.

29 minutes

Last on

Fri 5 Aug 2022 23:40

Credits

Role Contributor
Director Jody Cusack
Executive Producer Ian Durham

Broadcasts