Influencer lands podcast award nomination

Phillip Stonemanand
Bridie Adams,West Midlands
Tatty Lomas A woman with her hair in rollers and wearing sunglasses and a T-shirt reading "born to slay forced to work" sits on a double bed surrounded by makeup products, hair styling tools and shoes. She is holding a magazine.Tatty Lomas
Tatty Lomas first started posting videos on social media in the Covid lockdown

An influencer from Staffordshire who began by filming herself applying makeup and telling stories in her bedroom has been nominated for a national podcast award.

Tatty Lomas, from Biddulph, started posting short makeup tutorials during the Covid lockdown, paired with lip synced "story times" of dramatic and shocking anecdotes.

She is now approaching 1.5 million followers on TikTok and has more than 100,000 followers on Instagram.

Her podcast Tea and Two Sugars is up for Podcast of the Year at the National Influencer Awards.

Tatty Lomas A women wearing a blue football jersey, with her hair in rollers, holds a vintage-style pink phone.Tatty Lomas
The podcast Tea and Two Sugars features Ms Lomas telling stories sent in by her audience

On the show, Lomas reads "wild, juicy and downright barbaric" stories submitted by listeners and users of the social media site Reddit.

She described her audience as a "beautiful community".

"It is an absolute honour," she said. "We have the most open conversations and it's very two-way."

"It's really nice that people trust me so much to have compassion for their story, tell it in a respectful way and give advice where necessary," she added.

Lomas left her job to pursue content creation full-time after her videos started to gain traction online.

"My mum always says, 'jump and the net will sometimes appear,' and I jumped.'

Within a week, her gamble paid off and her following surged by hundreds of thousands in a matter of days.

"I was like, I'm doing something right here. This could be a winner," she said.

Tatty Lomas A woman wearing a black blazer, with her eyes closed and her fingers making peace signs, stood in front of a TikTok logo, which is a black, blue and pink music note, and balloons in the TikTok colours.Tatty Lomas
Ms Lomas has almost 1.5 million followers on TikTok

Apart from posting on social media, she handles business tasks including tax and invoices, and has also had to learn how to manage the pressures of online life, including negative comments.

"If you don't have my number I don't take your opinion of me seriously," she said.

Her audience stretches far beyond Staffordshire and the UK, with Lomas saying that she had received messages from as far away as Kenya.

"That is just incredible that my little self in my room with my panel light has reached Kenya," she added.

"It's just insane that you can just plonk a video online and you're all over the world."

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