Happy 21st birthday today to Charlie McDonnell, the first person in the UK to reach a million regular viewers on YouTube – with fun science videos.
Charlie describes himself as a “video-blogger, musician and nerd”, and his “Fun Science” series had become a major hit on the video sharing site. He has over 1.2 million subscribers to his “charlieissocoollike” channel on YouTube, putting it in YouTube’s top 30 channels in the world.
His videos have been viewed more than 172 million times. One of his latest looks at the science of sound – Charlie plays his ukulele while singing in rhyme about how sound works. He uploaded it in August and it has already had over two million views – and more than 21,000 comments.
Charlie is also much in demand in science and technology events. He has participated in the Euro 2008 Google Zeitgeist conference, spoke at 2009’s Tech@Google and Tomorrow’s Web conferences, and was a guest at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).
Meanwhile he has made enough money through advertising on his YouTube channel to make it a full-time job and move out of home.
