Published: 16:46 BST, 15 August 2026 | Updated: 16:57 BST, 15 August 2026
His chiselled jaw can today be found on billboards in places as far-flung as Texas, while his podcast has hit an astonishing one billion downloads.
From his humble Love Island roots, Chris Williamson – who appeared on the first series of the ITV dating show in 2015 – has undoubtedly undergone a hugely successful reinvention to become what he is today: an international wellness guru.
His self-help show Modern Wisdom, which aims to extract ‘life lessons from the smartest people on the planet’, has welcomed guests such as Hollywood star Matthew McConaughey, Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and entrepreneur Steven Bartlett.
But the pivot towards personal development hides a rather more tawdry past indeed.
Many will remember the Teesside-born hunk, with his sculpted physique and professional party-boy confidence, frolicking with bikini-clad wannabes on Love Island – a stint he later described as ‘boring’ and prompted him to have what he later described as a ‘mini existential crisis’.
Before that, however, and what is little-known, is Williamson’s connection to one of the most debauched club nights in British student history.
Carnage, essentially an organised pub crawl which was billed as the ‘student party of all student parties’, was linked to at least one death, and the kind of drunken criminal behaviour that one judge described as ‘disgusting and reprehensible’.
Although A-level students celebrating their results last week will be oblivious to the behemoth that was Carnage, it was an iconic part of university life in 45 towns and cities across the UK from 2007 onwards. In its heyday, it attracted 350,000 students who paid around £10 to don its orange and yellow branded T-shirts and chug back pints of cheap beer and £1 shots of Sourz on a trail around local pubs and clubs.
And in its midst was a young Chris Williamson, then a student at the University of Newcastle where he worked as a promoter for Carnage before becoming a franchisee of the company behind it, Voodoo Events Newcastle Ltd. He later became one of its directors.
Chris Williamson, pictured earlier this year, hosts self-help show Modern Wisdom which aims to extract 'life lessons from the smartest people on the planet'
He appeared on the first series of Love Island in 2015 – which he later described as 'boring'
However, as Williamson’s star has ascended, what has happened to Carnage?
The organised pub and nightclub crawls of nearly 20 years ago have ceased to exist, although, as I discovered, Voodoo Events is still running nights in Newcastle, which – when I attended one in 2022 as a student at nearby Durham University – paled in comparison to Carnage’s hedonistic reputation.
Newly examined accounts for Voodoo reveal that its net assets fell by more than half from £8,590 in 2017 to £3,658 in 2022, before net liabilities of £95 were recorded in the financial year ending September 2023.
