Chicken Shop Date’s Amelia Dimoldenberg: I wouldn’t invite Andy Burnham on my show – but I’d love a chat

I meet Dimoldenberg not in a chicken shop, but in a studio in BBC Broadcasting House in central London. She’s OK with that though (“I love the pot plants,” she says. “It’s fantastic. I’m very happy to be here.”)

It’s been more than a decade since she set up Chicken Shop Date. Since then, she’s interviewed everyone from Cher to Ed Sheeran, and has become a celebrity in her own right.

The show is based around her trademark dry, awkward flirting style. In person, I find her inscrutable. You get the sense she’s judging your questions (I was secretly relieved when she told me later they were great).

But she visibly lights up when talking about her free summer course, the Dimz Inc. Academy, which she launched to train up people aged 18-24 and help them get into the creative industries.

The course offers guaranteed paid work placements, mentoring and an opportunity to gain experience across digital media. She is now bringing it back for a second year, and has extended it from one week to four.

“I started Chicken Shop Date as part of a youth club, and we made a magazine, and everything I learned there, the connections I made, the mentoring I got, set me up for the career that I have today,” she explains.

“So it was always such a big ambition of mine to be able to give that back to young people when I was able to.”

Behind it is a serious issue. Dimoldenberg points to the high number of young people not in employment, education or training – a group known as Neets.

“That’s really a big crisis. So there is no better time to be trying to do what I can to support the next generation of young people,” she says.

She added that while Burnham may not be welcome on her YouTube series, she would “100% love to have a conversation with him” about what he’s doing to tackle youth unemployment.

“I think having more training schemes, apprenticeships is really, really vital in helping young people,” she says.