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On July 6, 2019, four friends in their mid-twenties from the Midlands met up in Birmingham for a night on the town.
Two of them, Alex Lacey, a plumber, and Jamie Phillips, had known each other since going to the same state school in Coventry. Jamie and Kevin Rooney met through working together in the car industry. The fourth, tattoo artist Connor Humpage, got to know them via their shared love of the gym.
As they made their way out, they asked a passer-by to take a photo of them in their finery – skinny jeans so short that might prompt your grandmother to ask ‘why don’t you put some jam on your shoes and invite your trousers to tea?’, tattoos on display and tans topped up with a sunbed or two – outside an All Bar One. The drinks and banter flowed as they hit a couple of other spots, before the four went home around midnight.
The photo that sparked the abuse. Alex Lacey, Jamie Phillips, Kevin Rooney and Connor Humpage in their tight trousers, posing outside All Bar One on a night out
Connor Humpage, a tattoo artist, with his fiancee Chloe Rogers, an interior designer
The stars of the ‘four lads in jeans’ meme have been immortalised with a statue near the spot where the original photo was taken
The next day, Kevin uploaded the photo to Instagram with the caption: ‘We give (sic) Brum a good go last night!’ Connor also posted it on his Instagram, joking: ‘Tight trousers chose us’.
It was just the sort of picture that thousands of people have taken and shared after a night out; a snap that is ‘liked’ by their friends then forgotten about. The four never imagined what was about to happen – or how huge an impact that innocent photo would have on their lives.
A few months later, it was somehow picked up by a viral Facebook page and memes – a kind of internet joke – of them – dubbed ‘four lads in jeans’ – spread worldwide. Incidentally, only two of them – Kevin and Connor – were actually wearing denim.
But such minor details were the least of their worries. In the troll-filled mire of social media, the four soon became targets of unimaginable levels of unprompted hate.
First, they were mocked for their fashion sense, which they didn’t mind. They could even laugh about it. Anyway, skinny jeans were in vogue when the photo was taken – but those commenting didn’t see the picture until the following year.
Then things took a darker turn. As the pandemic and lockdowns took hold in 2020, keyboard warriors with too much time on their hands went into overdrive.
Based solely on their appearance, they stereotyped them as a certain genre of young, white, British man.
They were cruelly and unfairly deemed to be dim, shallow, self-obsessed ‘divs’ and ‘Love Island’ wannabes who held dumb or obnoxious views.
It reached its nadir when a meme (since deleted) was circulated referencing the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests. ‘It’s sad what ‘appened to that black geezer in America but all this rioting and looting is just not on, mate,’ read a caption above the picture of the four lads, a made-up quote falsely attributed to them joking about the stereotypical reaction of young white British men to the BLM movement.
They started getting messages baselessly accusing them of being racists, and were even sent messages encouraging them to commit suicide.
What made it harder to cope with was that at the time they had plenty of real-life issues on their minds – not that anyone on social media gave a damn about that.
Alex had just set up his own business, Connor was grieving after the death of his father from cancer at the age of just 54 and Kevin had recently become a dad.
Former competitive bodybuilder Alex was hit the hardest by it and became ‘very depressed’. Although he is 5ft 11in, trolls targeted him for looking short in the picture – the other three lads are all over 6ft 3in. He received prank calls to his work mobile. The haters even left messages on his mother’s social media saying she should be ashamed of him.
At the start of 2021, however, the tide turned and a new meme became popular, which made the boys look like they were singing a popular sea shanty. A Twitter user shared a ‘deepfake’ video of the group singing ‘Wellerman’ by Scottish singer Nathan Evans, that went viral on TikTok at the end of 2020.
Attention shifted away from the horrific George Floyd meme, and just like that, the nasty comments faded away. In the fickle world of social media, all was forgotten, and now everyone was laughing along with the boys.
In a wise move, the four came out in public to show that they were decent blokes who knew how to laugh at themselves. They got a manager and appeared at the Brit Awards in their skinny trousers, joining host Jack Whitehall in a skit. The comedian, also wearing tight jeans, joked: ‘I’m going to get the fire brigade to cut us out.’
They did a tour appearing in nightclubs and signed commercial deals with a fast-food chain and a drinks company. A statue of them was even erected outside the All Bar One where it all began for the Birmingham Weekender arts festival in 2022.
Most importantly, however, they have been involved in campaigns around online abuse and mental health, with more planned for this summer.
And recently, nearly five years on from the photo that sparked this extraordinary saga, Birmingham’s Bullring shopping centre asked the four lads to take part in its style hunt campaign and they picked out what they liked and posed for a photograph in an updated look – now sporting on-trend baggy jeans and cargo pants.
But it isn’t just the trousers that have been a’changin’ since that night out. Things have changed for the ‘four lads in jeans’, as the Mail discovered when we spoke to them this week…
ALEX LACEY
Alex Lacey, a former competitive bodybuilder, who runs his own plumbing and heating engineer business, with his fiancee Kerrie Cook. The couple are due to marry next month
Alex with Kerrie after she gave birth to Lily Rose, which opened a new chapter in their lives
Alex’s fiancee Kerrie Cook, a domestic abuse support worker, helped him through his darkest moments
Alex Lacey, 29, lives in Coventry with his fiancée Kerrie Cook, 34, a domestic abuse support worker. They have a two-month-old daughter, Lily Rose, and are due to marry next month – with the other three lads as groomsmen.
The couple’s relationship had already begun when the 2019 photo was taken and Alex had recently set up his own plumbing and heating engineering business.
The son of a Jaguar Land Rover worker father and receptionist mother, he credits Kerrie with helping him through his lowest moments during the trolling. ‘She was my rock,’ he said. ‘I’m a closed book as a person and tried to ignore it, but there was a time where I broke and she was there to help me up’.
He was left in a ‘very, very dark place’ by the abuse and temporarily came off social media as a result.
He rails against the stereotype their image was attributed to. ‘I’m just a normal lad who enjoys the occasional night out with the boys. I‘m proud to be British. I like the King and admired the late Queen.
‘There’s a recession on, everyone’s struggling, everyone’s the same. If there’s one thing I could change about Britain, it’d be keyboard warriors. They don’t realise the effect they can have on people’s mental health.’
Alex, who proposed to Kerrie in 2021, said he had been approached to appear on Love Island, but, unsurprisingly, turned it down.
CONNOR HUMPAGE
Connor, with fiancee Chloe Rogers, opened his own tattoo studio in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, in 2021
Connor, on holiday with Chloe, took a stand on behalf of the boys. His father Mark died aged 54 from cancer just as the memes were at their height
Connor Humpage, 31, met his fiance Chloe Rogers, 30, just before the March 2020 lockdown when the original meme was beginning to circulate.
He took a stand on behalf of the four lads over the George Floyd meme, posting on social media: ‘To clarify, this meme is by no means our views.’
The arty couple met just before the March 2020 lockdown and he proposed to her in August last year in Costa Rica where he had taken on holiday for her birthday.
Together, they bought a semi-detached house in Coventry and have been renovating it for the last two years.
He has preferred drawing to sport since he was a child, and left school after sixth form with top grades in art. He started a foundation course in art and design at Coventry University, but dropped out after not enjoying parts of it.
The tattoo studio he owns is touchingly named ‘Making Marks’ in honour of his father Mark, a builder, who died aged 54 from cancer in November 2019.
‘When those memes were going around I was still grieving,’ says Connor. ‘My head wasn’t in a good place.
‘In the end, it all gave me the drive to set up my own business. I tried to turn it all round into a positive.
‘It baffles me why anyone would want to troll anyone. You can only hope that one day they will have a wake-up call because of something major happening in their lives that makes them realise it’s not acceptable.’
The silver lining for Connor, who has tattooed both Alex and Jamie, is that his studio has enjoyed a boom in business due to his unlikely social media fame.
KEVIN ROONEY
The most happy-go-lucky of the four, Kevin Rooney eventually gave up looking at social media to get on with his life in peace
Kevin Rooney poses by the papier mache statue in Birmingham created as a tribute to them after they were trolled
Seemingly the most happy-go-lucky of the four, Kevin Rooney, 33, lives in Solihull, West Midlands and has a five-year old daughter, Ella, from a previous relationship.
Kevin, a production operative in the automotive industry, says: ‘Just before the photo I’d been through quite a big break-up. I’ve had a few little relationships since but I’m happy. As long as I’m happy and my daughter’s happy, I’m ok.’
A Birmingham City FC supporter, he said he is ‘quite thick-skinned’ and although he received hundreds of messages which he ‘couldn’t really get his head around’, he tried to ignore the trolling.
‘At the start I was reading everything on Instagram and TikTok. In the end I thought, it’s just going me feel s**t so I’m not going to look at it,’ he said.
‘People might think we look arrogant or cocky, but once they meet us and speak to us they realise we’re alright. I’m a down-to-earth person.
‘I don’t think you can ever get rid of trolls altogether. But the social media platforms should do more to make it easier to get posts taken down when people report abuse.’
JAMIE PHILLIPS
Jamie Phillips is no longer on social media and doesn’t want to name his partner because he doesn’t want to get her involved in the ‘rollercoaster’
Well, it finally happened – the four lads in jeans reunited nearly five years on from their first picture and they look so different. Most importantly, the jeans got baggy
Jamie Phillips, 31, is originally from Coventry but now lives in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, with his fiancée and their three-year-old son.
He is no longer on social media and doesn’t want to name his partner because he doesn’t want to get her involved in the ‘rollercoaster’.
‘I just want to protect my family,’ said Jamie, who has worked at the same company as Kevin for ten years.
He’s particularly upset by the meme that implied they were racist. ‘We’ve experienced a lot of changes in our culture in this country since the George Floyd murder. I understand the importance of diversity and inclusion in society.’
He added: ‘In my 20s I was going out partying like a lot of lads do. Now I like more wholesome things, like days out with my partner and seeing my little boy grow up. When I hear him call me daddy it melts me.’
The bond between him Alex, Kevin and Connor remains strong. ‘All the lads have hearts of gold and I trust them with my life,’ Jamie said. ‘It was a traumatic time and they are the only ones that really understand.’
And what does he think of the fateful skinny trousers now?
‘I’m convinced they’ll come back into fashion one day.’
