Charlie McDonnell
Charlie McDonnell
Born	Charles Joseph McDonnell (1990-10-01) 1 October 1990 (age 21) Bath, Somerset, England[1]
Nationality	British (English)
Other names	charlieissocoollike, coollike
Ethnicity	British
Years active	2007 – present
Known for	Comedy, vlogging, music
Notable work(s)	The Challenge Charlie series, How to be English, Duet with Myself, Purple Man, A Song About Acne, My American Accent
Home town	Bath, Somerset, England
Parents	Lindsay Atkin
Internet information
Web alias(es)	charlieissocoollike charlieissoboredlike CharlieAtE3 Coollike
Signature phrase	"You've just had the almost imponderable joy of watching charlieissocoollike which makes you, like, cool!" -Voice over by Stephen Fry.
Website
charliemcdonnell.com

Charles Joseph "Charlie" McDonnell (born 1 October 1990) is a British vlogger and musician from Bath, Somerset, England.^[1] As of May 2012^[update], his YouTube channel, charlieissocoollike, has almost 1,500,000 subscribers.^[2] On 15 June 2011, his channel was spotlighted on YouTube's front page in the Entertainment category after being the first UK channel to reach a million subscribers. As of May 2012^[update], his YouTube videos have over 236,376,000 views.

Early life and background[link]

McDonnell was born and raised in Bath, Somerset with his younger siblings Bridie and William McDonnell. He was educated at Beechen Cliff School,^[3] a state comprehensive foundation school in Bath.

YouTube[link]

After setting up the YouTube channel, "charlieissocoollike" in April 2007, McDonnell started posting video blogs or "vlogs" to a small audience. He first came to prominence when his video entitled "How To Get Featured on YouTube" became very popular after it was featured on YouTube's UK homepage. His audience jumped from just under 150 subscribers to over 4,000 in two days. ^[4]

In January 2008, in celebration of gaining 25,000 subscribers, McDonnell asked for challenge suggestions from subscribers, and he is completing them in a series of 25 videos entitled "Challenge Charlie". He has completed 22 of these challenges as of March 2012^[update], one of which was suggested by TV presenter, Phillip Schofield, and his daughter Molly, challenging McDonnell to perform the dance that accompanies the song, "Hoedown Throwdown", made popular in the film Hannah Montana: The Movie. McDonnell has since posted a wide range of videos on the site including his most viewed "Duet with Myself".^[5]

In 2008, McDonnell participated in a video-blog collaboration with four other YouTube personalities, entitled "FiveAwesomeGuys," a spin-off project of the "FiveAwesomeGirls" which featured hayleyghoover and italktosnakes and ran from 28 January to 31 December of that year. In May 2009, McDonnell created an alternate YouTube account, "CharlieAtE3", which followed McDonnell when he traveled to E3 2009. In January 2010 McDonnell created another alternate YouTube channel, "charlieissoboredlike", for the videos he makes when he has "nothing better to do".^[6]

In June 2011, McDonnell became the first YouTuber in the United Kingdom to ever reach 1 million subscribers. He made a celebration video in honour of the achievement, with references to the game Portal 2 and YouTube congratulated him by featuring him on the front page of the website after he posted the video. As of May 2012 McDonnell has more than 1,496,000 subscribers and is currently ranked 35th in the world in YouTube subscriptions. McDonnell is also currently ranked 2nd in Britain in YouTube subscriptions. It is estimated that his channel gains approximately 5,000 new subscribers weekly.^[7] McDonnell's videos currently end with an outro by Stephen Fry.^[8]

Musical history[link]

Chameleon Circuit[link]

McDonnell performing with Chameleon Circuit at VidCon 2011.

McDonnell is one of the founding members of Chameleon Circuit, a band known for creating music inspired by the British television series Doctor Who. Along with fellow vloggers Alex Day ("Nerimon" on YouTube) and Liam Dryden ("Littleradge"), former member Chris Beattie ("CowInParachute"), Chameleon Circuit released their self-titled debut album on 1 June 2009.^[9] In July 2010, their song "Count the Shadows" also appeared on DFTBA Records, Volume Two, a compilation sampler that was given for free in the grab bags at VidCon 2010.^[10] At the beginning of 2011, Chameleon Circuit, in their new line-up following the departure of Beattie and the addition of Ed Blann ("Eddplant") and Michael Aranda ("MichaelAranda"), began work on their second album Still Got Legs. It was released on 12 July 2011.^[11]

Sons of Admirals[link]

In 2010, McDonnell, along with three other YouTubers, Alex Day, Ed Blann ("eddplant") and Tom Milsom formed a new project entitled "Sons of Admirals". Their first single was released via YouTube on 14 June 2010 on McDonnell's channel. The group covered Cat Stevens' song "Here Comes My Baby" featuring all four members on vocals. The track peaked at No. 61 in the UK.^[12]
In October 2010 the band released an EP including "Here Comes My Baby"; an acoustic version of the same song; a cover of "Believe in Yourself", which is well known as the theme of children's television show Arthur; the video of "Here Comes My Baby"; and a behind-the-scenes video. The band has been known to perform a cover of "You're Not There", originally performed by band member Ed Blann, and a cover of Radiohead's "Creep".^[13]

Sons of Admirals is not a band in the traditional sense. They are all solo artists, but as well as having their solo careers, they come together to form one group. The idea of this came from the Admiral's Men, which was a Shakespearean group of actors that came together to perform, while still retaining their individual careers.^[14]

Sons of Admirals disbanded in May 2011, publishing a statement on their website that "the core goal of the group – to get into the charts, and to increase exposure for the group members' individual talents proved to run against too many of our beliefs and approaches to music and promotion".^[15]

Solo Career[link]

A prominent feature of McDonnell's YouTube channel are the songs which he writes and performs himself, usually on a ukelele, but also featuring other instruments such as the guitar, melodica, and—in one song—a kazoo and a xylophone made of filled water glasses. The most popular of these, and McDonnell's all-time highest-viewed video, is "Duet with Myself." On 1 December 2010, in response to many fan requests to do so, he released his debut album entitled This is Me via DFTBA Records. The album features several songs from his channel that were remixed for the album, as well as several new, previously unreleased songs.^[16]

On 24 January 2012 McDonnell posted a video of him singing an original song Time To Reply on his YouTube channel, which received highly positive feedback.

Charity and media work[link]

On 30 September 2008, to celebrate his 18th birthday, McDonnell and Alex Day dyed and then shaved their hair off whilst live on BlogTV for a period of seven and a half hours in aid of Cancer Research UK.^[17] They managed to raise nearly £5000.^[18] The broadcast viewership peaked at 4,500. Another friend, Jazza John McMillan-Clenaghan (known as "Rhymingwithoranges" on YouTube) promised to shave his head if they hit £4000 and did so about a month later with help from Kristina Horner (known as "italktosnakes" and "Monday" on the YouTube collab-channel "fiveawesomegirls").

In October 2009, McDonnell was named as one of a number of prominent YouTube users who would be participating in a project called "RNLI Shout". The aim of the project is to raise money to purchase a lifeboat for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

On 4 September 2010, McDonnell and fellow YouTuber Myles Dyer co-presented Stickaid, a 24-hour live webshow. Starting from 12:00 noon BST, the two hosted the fifth annual charity event from Middlesex University's Trent Park campus in London. Their goal was to raise £10,000 ($15,900), which they more than doubled.^[19] All the proceedings went to UNICEF.

Science Of Attraction[link]

In November of 2010, McDonnell was part of a group of Youtube videos called "The Science of Attraction" where he hosted a few experiments and had his body digitally swapped with somebody else's. He was a co-presenter with Kat Akingbade and Derren Brown. They only made 8 videos but they were very popular when they first came out and the videos are very insightful.

Chartjackers[link]

In the autumn of 2009, McDonnell featured with three other YouTube users on the BBC Switch documentary series Chartjackers. The programme documented their attempt to achieve a number one single in the UK Singles Chart within 10 weeks, by crowdsourcing resources provided by the online community. McDonnell was cast in the series for his familiarity to young British YouTube viewers and to "act as a Pied Piper to the teen audience".^[20]

Over the course of Chartjackers, McDonnell solicited lyrics, music, performers and stylists to record the final single and video via a YouTube channel named "ChartJackersProject". An unofficial charity single for Children in Need, the completed song was titled "I've Got Nothing" and was sung by vocalists Miranda Chartrand and Adam Nichols.^[21] McDonnell edited the single's official music video,^[22] which was shown nationwide on British music channels such as 4Music and Viva. "I've Got Nothing" was released exclusively through the iTunes Store at midnight on 9 November 2009^[23] and reached No. 36 on the UK Singles Chart.^[24] Sales of the single raised a total of approximately £10,000 for Children in Need.^[25]

[edit] FirstTV

In July 2010 McDonnell was signed up alongside KateModern star Emma Pollard and X Factor contestants Nicola and Fran Gleadall to present a TV show run by Piers Morgan called FirstTV, an offshoot of First News newspaper. On First TV he did a few challenges like trying to break a Guinness world record by typing the alphabet on an iPad keyboard quickest and he got asked to tell a joke.^[26][27] However, after filming four episodes of FirstTV, McDonnell decided to leave the show because he did not enjoy presenting pre-scripted work.^[28]

Press[link]

McDonnell was interviewed on BBC News about his rise to internet stardom. He also participated in the Euro 2008 Zeitgeist Google conference, where he spoke about YouTube along with Mia Rose ("miaarose") and Peter Oakley ("geriatric1927"). This was a conference to honour online users of popular websites. He featured as a guest on Robert Llewellyn's web series Carpool in the episode released on 15 May 2009.^[29] McDonnell has also made guest appearances on Lily Allen and Friends and The Gadget Show.

McDonnell was also interviewed for Outlook on the BBC World Service^[30] and for an article in The Guardian where he talks about the five years of YouTube and his life on the video website.

On 6 June 2010, McDonnell presented the YouTube Audience Award to The Inbetweeners as part of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Television Awards. In mid-July 2010, McDonnell appeared on KTLA with Hank Green, known on YouTube as one of the Vlogbrothers, and Justine Ezarik, known as iJustine, to promote VidCon 2010, the first international conference for online video makers. That October he made a programme with James Max of LBC 97.3 about how to make money on the internet.^[31] In December 2010, McDonnell filmed a series of behind the scenes videos for Doctor Who Confidential during the filming of the Doctor Who Christmas special "A Christmas Carol".

McDonnell was purportedly approached to be a contestant on the 2011 series of Celebrity Big Brother (UK) but declined the offer.^[32]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Charlie McDonnell's channel on YouTube
• Second Charlie McDonnell's channel on YouTube
• Official website
• Charlie McDonnell on Twitter