About

That Would Be My Nephew Thomas, He's Very Handy is a catchphrase that stems from a viral video by the Instagram page @king_trout in which a man can be heard asking, "Who did the electrical work in this house," to which his elderly woman client responds, "That would be my nephew Thomas, he's very handy." The man then asks when Thomas's house burned down, to which the client responds with surprise, "Oh about two years ago, how did you know." The sound is typically used by handymen and construction workers on TikTok to share shoddy construction work in a house.

Origin

On January 13th, 2024, Instagram^[1] user @king_trout posted a video in which he can be seen examining some wiring in a house. After he sees some subpar electrical work, he asks his client, "Who did the electrical work in this house," to which his elderly client responds, "That would be my nephew Thomas, he's very handy."

King Trout then asks when Thomas's house burned down, to which his client responds with, "Oh about two years ago — how did you know his house burned down?" The second question posed by King Trout implied that Thomas's wiring work put his client's house at risk of catching fire as well. The video gathered over 330,000 likes in six months (seen below).

Spread

The aforementioned video was cropped and reposted to TikTok^[2] by user @premiumjlong on March 22nd, 2024, who gathered over 12 million plays and 1.6 million likes in three months (seen below, left). On March 26th, TikToker^[3] @badbobbyc posted a video showing sparks flying off of a pipe in an under-construction home using King Trout's audio clip. The post gathered over 26 million plays and 2 million likes in three months (seen below, right).

Various other TikTokers posted electrical and plumbing fails set to the sound in subsequent weeks, including TikTokers @johnny.utah165^[4] and @notconnornewberry^[5] who gathered over 11 million and 9 million views, respectively, in two months (seen below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References