Hello, goodbye: the rise and decline of the celebrity video-greeting app Cameo

Personalised videos from celebrities such as Elijah Wood were a lockdown hit for a firm once valued at £1bn. Now A-listers have deserted it – though there’s always Nigel Farage

It started, as many things do, with drama in the WhatsApp group. It was 2021, and a loose coalition of my friends and acquaintances was passing the on-again, off-again lockdowns by playing a spectacularly vicious online game called Subterfuge, in which treachery and betrayal are all part of how to play.

Only, this time, people had gone too far and someone had been upset badly enough that they had quit the group. To win him back, my friends came up with a dubious plan – they would have Nigel Farage, of all people, record an ironic apology video urging their departed comrade to rejoin the group.