''Gap Yah'' is a

comedy sketch Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches" or, "skits", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. While the form developed and became popular in ...

that gained widespread popularity and press coverage, especially in the

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, after being published on the video-sharing site

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

in February 2010. It was created and performed by the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

graduate

Matt Lacey Matt Lacey (born 1987) is a British actor and comedian. He is best known for his recurring role as Ben in the BBC television series ''Cuckoo'' and as Orlando in the Gap Yah viral comedy sketch. Life and career Lacey was born in the United Kin ...

of sketch comedy theatre troupe The Unexpected Items. The video was produced and directed by VM Productions and The Unexpected Items. The video became a

viral The word ''Viral'' means "relating to viruses" (small infectious agents). It may also refer to: Viral behavior, or virality Memetic behavior likened that of a virus, for example: * Viral marketing, the use of existing social networks to spre ...

hit, with 660,000 views in its first month and around 50,000 views a day in late March 2010. As of January 2024, the original video has been viewed over 6.9 million times. The video depicts a student named Orlando describing to his friend Tarquin several of his experiences and encounters during a

gap year A gap year, also known as a sabbatical year, is a period of time when students take a break from their studies, usually after completing high school or before beginning graduate school. During this time, students engage in a variety of educatio ...

in Tanzania, Peru and Burma, all of which resulted in him vomiting—or "chundering"—everywhere. The video is a spoof of the British upper-middle-class ex-public school students (using distinctively drawn-out vowels)—commonly known as '' rahs''—who boast about their experiences, typically in the

third world The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Southern Cone, NATO, Western European countries and oth ...

, prior to attending university. The sketch has resulted in the term being increasingly used in schools and universities across the United Kingdom. An online following has developed, with tribute

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pages as well as several remixed versions of the video having been created by others. Phrases from the video have become cultural

memes A meme (; ) is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ...

, with the phrase "...and then I just chundered everywhere" being added to satirise election posters of Conservative Party leader and former UK

prime minister A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...

David Cameron David William Donald Cameron, Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton (born 9 October 1966) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016. Until 2015, he led the first coalition government in the UK s ...

as well as events such as the eruption of the Icelandic Eyjafjallajökull volcano. ''Gap Yah'' is described by its creator as follows: Lacey also states that "depressingly, there are a lot of these people and I even have elements of them myself." A sequel to the sketch, entitled ''Gap Yah 2: Afterparty'' was released on 26 April 2010, it was also highly successful, reaching over 1.4 million views by September 2018. It featured Orlando, again chatting to his friend Tarquin on his mobile, while he and his friend Pandora place posters around a town to advertise a fund-raising event for "

Haiti Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti, is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of the Bahamas. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, which it shares with the Dominican ...

, in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

". An official Gap Yah single called 'Gap Yah ft. The Banter' was released in June 2010 and ''Gap Yah 3: Intahnshup'' was released on 12 December 2013.{{cite video, url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLm2wv4r2ss, title=Gap Yah 3: Intahnshup, publisher=The Unexpected Items (YouTube), date=12 December 2013, accessdate=1 April 2014

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