Summary[edit]
Bower first gained an audience on YouTube through WillsWeekends, a documentary series exploring hidden communities and unusual aspects of British life, before later pivoting to build-based entertainment on the separate WillBowerYT channel.
Although both are built around Bower's interest in unusual people, places and situations, the two channels use markedly different formats. WillsWeekends follows taboo and overlooked subjects through first-hand documentary reporting. WillBowerYT centres on large-scale builds, social experiments and attempts to hide unusual structures in public places.
WillsWeekends[edit]
Bower launched WillsWeekends in 2025 as his first serious attempt at long-form YouTube. He described the intended format as "Louis Theroux for Gen Z": accessible documentaries about people, communities and subcultures that rarely receive balanced mainstream coverage.
Rather than focusing on news or current affairs, WillsWeekends explored communities, locations and subcultures that existed largely outside everyday public attention, an investigation into hidden Britain rather than a conventional documentary series.
Episodes have included time spent with nudists, swingers, escorts, predator hunters, hunt saboteurs and people living in a remote British settlement of teepees. Other videos investigated what Bower described as the allegedly most racist man in Britain, a town allegedly overrun by secretive religious groups, the UK's dogging capital, and Soho's hidden adult-entertainment scene.
Rather than approaching its subjects as exposés, the series generally places Bower inside unfamiliar environments and allows the people involved to explain their lives in their own words. Bower has said the appeal came from meeting people normally reduced to headlines or stereotypes and discovering the reality behind their lifestyles.
His personal favourite episode, I Found London's Hidden Adult Playground, explored Soho's hidden sex scene.
The channel accumulated approximately 14,500 subscribers and nearly two million views. Clips from its documentaries also received millions of views across short-form platforms including TikTok.
WillBowerYT[edit]
Bower launched a separate channel, WillBowerYT, in 2026. It was conceived as a new creative project rather than a continuation or rebrand of WillsWeekends.
The first uploads experimented with a range of formats before I Built a Fake Skip for Stealth Camping established the direction the channel would subsequently follow.
Hide in Plain Sight
The series began with I Built a Fake Skip for Stealth Camping. For the video, Bower constructed a convincing imitation skip containing a concealed living space, placed it in public and attempted to remain inside overnight without being discovered.[1]
The video prompted Bower to develop the idea into a broader series based on building unusual objects and testing them in the real world. The videos combine construction, comedy and documentary-style jeopardy: a typical episode follows the project from an initially implausible idea through design and building, before ending with a real-world test in which the creation may fail, attract attention, or be discovered.
Creative evolution[edit]
Although both channels are built around curiosity, they approach it differently.
WillsWeekends documented unusual people, communities and places through first-hand reporting. Producing the series required travel, access to contributors and the ability to enter unfamiliar worlds.
WillBowerYT instead places Bower at the centre of the story. Rather than searching for unusual situations, he creates them himself through large-scale builds and real-world experiments. The change also allowed him to work closer to home while retaining the unpredictability that characterised his earlier documentaries.
Bower has described the transition as less of a departure than an evolution. Although the subject matter changed, both channels are driven by the same curiosity about how people react to unusual situations. He has described the transition as returning to the kind of videos he first made as a teenager, while combining the production and storytelling experience gained through his work in marketing and media.
Gallery[edit]
Latest upload[watch channel]
Selected videos[edit]
WillsWeekends
- I Found London's Hidden Adult Playground
- I Investigated the UK's Dogging Capital
- I Investigated the Town Overrun by Secret Cults
- I Found a Hidden UK Village Where People Still Live in Tipis
- I Found the UK's Area 51
- I Investigated Predator Hunters
- I Investigated the People Who Hunt Hunters
- I Investigated Manchester's Cottager's Cove
- I Found London's Secret Swinger Parties
WillBowerYT
- I Built a Fake Skip for Stealth Camping
- I Built a Fake Tree for Stealth Camping
- I Turned a Bath Into a Car
- I Built a Floating Pub
References[full press archive]
- Sussex Express. "'Nobody noticed' — Worthing YouTuber spends night sleeping inside a skip".
- The Argus. "Worthing man spent night sleeping inside homemade skip".
- The Argus. "Worthing bath fanatic creates motorised bathtub scooter".
- Yahoo News Australia. "Man builds motorized bathtub".
- Yahoo News UK. "Man builds motorized bathtub".
