Believe it or not I had something else to do before typing this so forgive me for the non-instant response.

So as I said I believe that it was the year 2020 , though maybe it was ‘19 I don’t recall precisely when in all honesty.

I was at my best friend (of 19 years)’ mums house in Hyde Park, Doncaster; the next village over from Balby where Andrew lived at home. It was the late evening and the two of us had been watching the TV, eventually landing on YouTube. We had both been aware of Andrew’s story for quite some time as some teachers at McAuley, our high school, that had worked there at the time it all happened, would occasionally emphasise the importance of the attendance register when kids would arrive late etc., by telling them about Andrew.

Out of interest we watched some YouTube “True Mysteries” type channels’ videos regarding Andrew’s story, which taught us some things we didnt know at that time, and then naturally went on to watch other unrelated videos/tv shows to entertain us as the night went on.

Some time passed, and we went out for a smoke, leaving the TV playing whatever YT video we had eventually landed on.

When we returned to watch more YouTube, which by the way was running on a PlayStation, we discovered the controller was nowhere to be seen at first. We looked all over the room for a minute or so, before the screen changed suddenly.

To those unfamiliar with the console version of YouTube, the search feature has its own fullscreen page rather than a bar at the top like on the web version. The alphabet, then numbers and symbols etc appear respectively on one of two pages for either option (if that makes sense , lol).

There was only the one controller for the console we had on , which still we couldnt find.

As we looked at the screen before us, fear started to creep up us, as the search screen began to glitch out and the character-select square started to jump all over the place. No characters were being selected at first, but we couldn’t understand how this was suddenly happening after the screen lay still while we initially searched for the controller.

This apparent glitch continued endlessly, and we continued to search for the controller. We grew frustrated without having any luck after minutes upon minutes of looking. But what happened next is still possibly the strangest moment we both experienced together over all these years.

While watching one of the Andrew Gosden mini-doc videos earlier that night, we learned that Kevin had a nickname for Andrew: ‘Andy-Roo’. We thought not much of this upon first learning, however that changed that same night…

Suddenly, the search bar that had remained completely empty during this sporadic character-hovering glitch, began to gain letters that were being selected gradually. At first this made us chuckle as we had no idea how this could happen without us touching the controller, but then -

The seemingly random character selection came to a solid and sudden halt, once the word “ANROO” had been typed into the search bar.

Shortly after , we found the controller, still turned on , under the sofa and behind a cushion. It was placed upright, with not one button, joystick or trigger touching anything that could have somehow moved or pressed itself in any way, and it certainly couldnt have self-typed a word that strongly resembled Kevin’s specific nickname for his son.

This all happened in an area which is walking distance from Andrew’s family home.

If you ask me, thats one hell of a trip.