👆 Barry.
Everyone loves Barry. You might know him as the guy who has a memorial plaque at the bottom of a Scottish cliff. Or as a very cost efficient painter. Or you might know him as the guy who's gonna do it anyway. Or maybe you know as him the "heroin kills stay away from pills" guy.
Wherever you know him from, it's impossible not to love the bloke. He's just so... Barry.
But he's also not exactly what you'd call a huge celebrity. He has less than 6,000 followers on Instagram and his knowledge panel on Google links to the Instagram of some random signing coach from America who is definitely not Barry (which is also very Barry). The BARRIOKE Instagram account that has been live since July has a criminally low 731 followers (BARRIOKE!!!).
Despite that, Barry has a tremendous knack of popping up in the news and staying (kinda) relevant. Whether it be turning up in random places for a sing song or discovering a long lost son he fathered with a juggler from the circus 30 years ago, he's always up to something.
And whenever he does pop up I usually end up Googling Barry off Eastenders. This happened again the other week for whatever reason. And it got me thinking - I wonder how often the rest of the UK are also searching for Barry off Eastenders.
Originally this started off as the Barry scale. I started comparing random z list celebrities that popped in my head against "barry eastenders" in Google Trends. And I noticed a pattern forming. Everyone was falling below the Barry scale.
Rik Waller. Blazin Squad. Paul Danan. Lady Sovereign. Michelle McManus. Rebecca Loos. Abi Titmuss. He was smokin them all.
The fact that there's people searching for Pop Idol and Celebrity Fit Club alumni Rik Waller on a weekly basis really warms the cockles. Celebrity Fit Club. Different times...
Shit he was even coming out on top of Natasha Bedingfield! And Daniel Bedingfield! (how will he get through this).
I needed to raise the bar a little higher. Anyone playing in the Premier League has to be a given right? Nope! Brits love them some Barry nostalgia. Bernd Leno. Nathan Redmond. Todd Cantwell. Luke Ayling. Giovani Lo Celso. Pablo Fornals. All £72m worth of Nicolas Pepe. All searched for in the UK less than Barry off Eastenders.
At this point my week had peaked.
How high could the Barry scale reach?
Well, pretty fucking high it turns out.
I have a list of the most followed celebrities on Instagram. I started plugging them into Google Trends as comparison points.
He was beating some pretty serious names. I get that artists like Anitta, Daddy Yankee, Nicky Jam, Becky G, French Montana and Chance The Rapper aren't as big in the UK as they are in other countries but these are still some pretty heavy names to be searched for less than Barry.
Footballers like Leroy Sane, Serge Gnabry and Casemiro are genuinely big names. Out of the 11 players that started for PSG in the Champions League against RB Leipzig last month, 7 of them are searched for less than Barry!
In the end I got a bit carried away and produced a list of literally hundreds of celebrities that the UK searches for less than Barry off Eastenders.
Here's a list of 100 celebrities that have fewer Google searches from the UK between November 2020 and October 2021 compared to "barry eastenders". I doubt everyone will know who all of these people are so I've included how many Instagram followers they have for some context of how famous they are worldwide.
Admittedly, there's a fair amount of international flavour to that list and that's obviously part of it. Maybe it speaks more to how not all that popular Hip-Hop Music, European Football and Basketball are in the UK?
For context, names like Donovan Mitchell, Trae Young, Jimmy Butler and Carmelo Anthony are some of the bigger names in the NBA outside of the elite level talent like LeBron, Steph and Giannis. Many of the Footballers play for huge clubs like Barcelona, Real Madrid, PSG and Bayern Munich and many also featured during Euro 2020 in the summer.
So lets lower the bar a little in terms of Instagram followers and take a look at UK "celebrities".
Barry gets more searches than a lot of Footballers who play in the Premier League every week. Here's some Premier League players taking an L to Barry - Seamus Coleman, Ainsley Maitland Niles, Anwar El Ghazi, Michael Keane, Mason Holgate, Ryan Bertrand, Miguel Almiron, Steven Bergwijn, Aaron Cresswell. It's a greatly amusing list (to me at least).
More searches than everyone who was on Winter Love Island. More searches than Millie and Liam who won Love Island this year (technically less than "millie love island" but more than their actual names). He's also more searched for than other famous for being famous celebrities like Sophie Kasaei, Lydia Bright, Chloe Veitch, Kady McDermott, India Reynolds and probably many more. They all have more than 1 million followers. Barry has 5,392.
I swear Dermot O'Leary is always on TV and he gets less searches than Barry. Garbine Muguruza is one of the biggest female Tennis players in the world and Barry aces her searches. Bobby Lashley and Kenny Omega are literally two of the biggest names from the world of wrestling in the last year and both have to job out to Barry.
Why Is Barry Off Eastenders Getting So Many Searches?
Caveat time. Any other 12 month period and these results would admittedly look a tad different. Searches for "barry eastenders" were the highest they've ever been since he was pushed/stumbled/somersaulted down a cliff and despite the incredible number of rolls still managed to smash his head on a rock in the next post code area.
This spike came from his beautiful performance during President Biden's inauguration. For context of how big that spike was, here's what it looks in comparison to searches for Thiago Silva.
But there is also a morale boosting steady stream of Barry searches as you can see below, relative to what I call the premium version of the Barry scale - the Ken Barlow scale.
The Nerdy Parts
Data collected using Google Trends with the timeframe of November 1st 2020 - October 31st 2021.
All comparisons are for exact search terms rather than topic comparisons. Not all names were available to be searched for as a topic (which will provide more accurate data) so for consistency I just compared search terms against "barry eastenders". Googles does actually list Barry Evans as a topic which is fantastic but I also don't have 100% confidence how broad that topic goes to fully encapsulate Barry related searches. Plus it's funnier just as "barry eastenders" because it's been nearly 17 years since he was on Eastenders and his name isn't Barry.
For names (mostly Footballers) where their surname is very unique I just compared against their surname rather than their full name. For instance nobody is adding Giovani to their search before Lo Celso but if you're searching for Leroy Sane you're more likely to search the full name. Again, this is where comparing topics would be better for a more academic experiment (which this is not).
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