Holly Laing is a British social media star who is known for her retail related skits involving brands such as Sports Direct, Poundland, Wilco and Cineworld, which landed her in the official ad for Cineworld. She got recognition on TikTok for such videos, although she originally started making fan music videos on the Video Star app and put those on her YouTube channel.
Early Life
Holly Laing studied drama at Northampton School for Girls in 2015-16 before pursuing an acting course at Northampton College in 2018. She performed in theatre in both school and college.
Career
Holly Laing had just turned 14 in March 2013 when she created her YouTube channel HollyLolly999 and posted fan cover music videos for songs like Out Alive by Ke$ha and Werk Me by Hyper Crush that she made with the Video Star app. These became very popular at the time, prompting her to make several more in the following months, and she sometimes still gets recognized for those. She also gradually started to make diverse types of content including funny skits, vlogs, Q&A’s, tag videos, challenges and so on. She became less active on YouTube during the late 2010s, but has become active again in 2023.
During the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, she started posting dance videos on her TikTok profile @holly_laing. She worked in some of Britain’s biggest retail chains and made videos about how shoppers in Poundland were always confused when items cost more than £1 or how she saw customers stealing from Sports Direct. She also made videos about Domino's Pizza and Wilko. Such videos earned her so much popularity that she was featured in articles by The Daily Mail and The Sun. However, she was working at Wilco then and some people sent her videos to Wilco head office, following which her manager told her that the head office didn’t want her to make such videos, so she could continue to work there if she stopped making TikToks or vice versa. She had about 200k followers at the time and was already contemplating leaving the job because she was also working on her Depop store, where she sold her used clothes, so she handed the notice of her resignation from the Wilco job then and there.
Family Life
She featured her father in the video MEET MY DAD in May 2014. The same video also briefly featured her younger brother. Her mother has also appeared in her videos. She also often made challenge videos with her friends early on. Starting in January 2017, she began featuring a boy named Jamie in boyfriend-themed videos on her channel. However, he no longer appears in her videos. She has collaborated with fellow YouTuber and TikToker Craig Fitzpatrick aka CraigNotCreg in many videos and she has often been called the female version of Craig by fans. She was dating Craig’s brother Kieran in early 2023 and was featured as the first guest on Craig’s podcast PodKast: With a K in June 2023.
