Interview with The Mac Twins

The Mac Twins are a DJ and presenting duo hailing from Edinburgh. Whether performing all over the world for Diet Coke, Armani, MAC Cosmetics, on tour with the UK’s biggest music institution The Official Charts or opening festival stages, The Mac Twins’ unique talent is their ability to connect with any audience – large or small – and keep it real.

In the past year they've broadcast live from all the Summer festivals, warmed up for Jess Glynne and Fleur East at Wembley Arena, headlined Festifeel and Fashion Undressed festival on the Southbank for Mastercard and performed bespoke intimate sets at the Groucho club, for Gok Wan’s Magazine and for brands such as Urban Decay and @london to name just a few. Even in the past few weeks they DJ’d at the EUFA Champions League Final party, at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone and played alongside Lulu and Pixie Lott for Simon Cowell’s Annual Midsummer Ball.

The girls were named 1 of 4 Scottish Cultural Innovators by Ted Baker and their first chat show Mac Yourself at Home was a complete sellout at the Edinburgh Fringe, where they had the Fringe’s biggest stars like Russell Kane and Joel Dommett on the sofa for a natter. Recently the girls have filmed and recorded for Radio 4, Channel 4’s Food Unwrapped and BBC Horizon, all airing this Summer and can regularly be seen popping up on ITV Daytime and Channel 4.

The twins are speaking about The World of Influencers at The Marketing Society Scotland's Digital Day on October 5.

You have a weekly show on Virgin Radio, presented at The Brits and have performed at some of the UKs biggest gigs and festivals including a sell out at Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival. What’s your most memorable event?
Warming up for Jess Glynne at Wembley was a massive one, purely for the sheer volume of people and the wall of noise that comes back at you and we recently just DJ’d for Simon Cowell at his Midsummer Ball, which was a bit of a surreal one, mostly because we had the room jumping around in ball gowns!

Your opposite music tastes make your sets a unique battle – definitely making for a lively and varied gig! How do you make it work so well for you, and your audiences!?
I think strangely it started as a bit of a problem solving exercise, as we saw our differences as a barrier for so long as people wanted to put us into the same box, then we realised that it's the very thing we should be embracing!

What’s it like working so closely with one another?
We fight like cat and dog! But our personalities and strengths are totally opposite, even if they don't always compliment each other (!) so it actually makes for a good team.

You’re both big supporters of science and are currently ‘chief guinea pigs’ for the British Gut Project. What was the drive behind your website, www.thegutstuff.com?
Twins are a great constant for medical research and we became the “chief guinea pigs” for the British Gut project where we discovered that despite us having 100% the same DNA our guts have only 40% the same microbiota, which could explain why our bodies behave so differently. Thus our ‘gut journey’ began. All this research is so new and literally just coming into public consciousness. But what really surprised us was how much is going on in the ivory towers of academia and science research and how the information doesn't necessarily trickle down, so that's where we wanted to step in!

What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned from your work on Gut Stuff?
It's tough to choose as we’ve learnt so much but, we met with a lead epidemiologist as part of our first series and she told us that what we eat not only affects our kids, but our grand kids too - so it's really really important.

You’re seem to have a pretty hectic schedule! How do you balance The Mac Twins, Gut Stuff and y’know, life?
It's difficult as both business require two totally different head spaces, attitudes and have opposite working hours, so we regularly work 18 hour days. We write lots of lists and have a lovely office now which helps us focus - when we’re not working we’re trying to sleep. We’ve always had a good work ethic; Mum sent us out to work in the chippy from when we were 13 so we’re used to the graft and wouldn't have it any other way.

The Mac Twins will be speaking at Digital Day on October 5th in Glasgow.

The Mac Twins on Twitter