| “ | Hey guys! So... | ” |
―Phil’s Intro. | ||
AmazingPhil (born: January 30, 1987)[2] is an English[1] Youtuber, Actor, Writer and former radio host at BBC 1 and Weakest Link contestant. He is the part of Dan and Phil channel.
Personal Life[]
On June 30, 2019, Phil came out to the public with his YouTube video "Coming Out to You " stating that he is gay. He felt it was time to share his story in the hopes it would help others to come out of the closet.[3]
On October 13, 2025, Dan and Phil revealed they have been in a relationship since 2009.[4]
Pets[]
In August 2019, Dan and Phil adopted a betta fish, which they named Norman after the character from Bates Motel. Norman has featured in Phil's content a number of times since then, such as "Doing A Makeup Tutorial Inspired By My Fish", the recurring 'NormanCam' in liveshows, and Norman Fest 2020 which was streamed on April Fool's Day. It was announced that Norman had passed away on January 12th, 2021.[5][6]
He also owned a pet brine shrimp named Simon, who sadly died on May 3rd, 2011, and was in Phil's videos. In May 2019 Phil grew a triop from some powder, which he named Tony and which lived until July 2019.
History[]
Phil uploaded his first YouTube video on February 2006. It was called "Awaiting the Tide" and has since been made private by Phil, as has over 100 other of his early videos. The earliest remaining video on Phil's channel is from March 27, 2006. It is his third video and first vlog, called "Phil's Video Blog – 27th March 2006." It was filmed on a black and white camera that he later on said he won out of a cereal box.[7]
Phil also used to have a recurring joke segment at the end of his videos called 'Draw Phil Naked', where he showed fan drawings of him naked yet somehow covered up. He ended this in September 2015, saying, "This has been a long time coming... I just felt there were only so many ways people could draw me naked in a non-creepy way, and we reached that limit a while ago." A famous quote from Phil is, "It's a good thing to be strange; normalness leads to sadness."
The Fantastic Foursome: (from left to right) Phil Lester, Dan Howell, PJ Ligouri and Chris Kendall at Vidcon 2013.
Phil was formerly associated with the "Fantastic Foursome", a group of English YouTubers which included Daniel Howell, Chris Kendall (aka crabstickz), and PJ Liguori (aka KickThePj). The four of them appeared in several YouTube videos together in 2012/13. Phil Lester is also the creator of the 7 Second Challenge on youtube, along with the Toilet Tag and the Tumblr Tag. In 2015, he and Dan turned the 7 Second Challenge into a mobile app, which was eventually discontinued in 2018.
In October 2015, Dan and Phil released a book, The Amazing Book Is Not On Fire, which topped the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Alongside this, they went on a UK tour entitled "The Amazing Tour Is Not On Fire", and followed this with North American, Australia and European dates in 2016.[8] In November 2017, Dan and Phil announced a second world tour called "Interactive Introverts" to take place in 2018. The tour kicked off on 28 April in Brighton, and visited places across the UK, Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Asia. The premiere of the DVD took place in São Paulo on 28 November 2018.
In June 2024, Phil announced his third tour alongside Dan, Terrible Influence. The tour spanned September 2024 until February 2025 in locations including Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. Due to a high demand, their UK dates were extended.
In the Media[]
Phil has appeared on TV numerous times including being on The Weakest Link, a Confused.com advert, the Jeremy Kyle audience, Blue Peter and Friday Download.
He has also been in a movie called "Faintheart". He was also in an Oreo advert, which was advertising the Oreo Lick Race. It included clips of Phil and Daniel Howell doing their Oreo Lick Race, along with other YouTubers. It has since been deleted for the reason that it was not made clear that the video was an advertisement.
On 15 April 2013, Dan and Phil interviewed Fall Out Boy in New York City on their comeback tour. They also appeared briefly in the audience on Fuse TV for Fall Out Boy's appearance. They have also interviewed One Direction at the 2012 Radio 1 Teen Awards. Dan and Phil also appeared in the movie Big Hero 6, as Technician 1 and Technician 2 respectively. (UK Cinema version only).
Radio Career[]
It was announced in November 2012 that both Dan and Phil would host BBC Radio 1's request show on Sundays 7pm-9pm, starting on 13 January 2013. The show was fully interactive, allowing listeners to call in to request a song and doing challenges to get it played ("fan wars"). On the website, music videos were shown which fans had made and emailed to Dan and Phil. The entire show was streamed in video, live on the BBC Radio 1 website.
Dan and Phil with the Sony Golden Headphones Award.
In August 2013, Dan and Phil received a Sony Golden Headphones Award for the UK's favourite radio presenters, voted on by the fans. In September 2014, their radio slot was changed from Sundays, 7:00pm – 9:00pm (UK Time) to Mondays from 9:00 pm – 10:00 pm (UK Time) and was rebranded as the Internet Takeover. Several different YouTubers (such as Zoella, ThatcherJoe, Tyler Oakley, etc.) were given the chance to 'take over' the radio show that week, with Dan and Phil hosting on the first Monday of every month.[9]
In April 2016, BBC Radio 1's "Internet Takeover" was ended by the BBC after it was announced that Dan and Phil were going on tour in the United States for three months.
Other channels[]
Phil has a second channel, named "LessAmazingPhil" where he uploads videos that are either too short or not relevant to anything that he would upload onto his main channel. He also uploads his weekly hour-long liveshows on there.
Along with Dan, he was also one of the presenters of the Super Amazing Project, a YouTube video series from My Damn Channel, encompassing scary/freaky happenings sent in by viewers, challenges between the two presenters, and strange news from the previous week. The show spanned for three series, however Dan confirmed in a YouNow broadcast that except for seasonal specials, there will be no series 4. Its legacy was carried to their radio show.
Dan and Phil created a channel called "DanAndPhilCRAFTS" on April 1st, 2015, announcing on the same day that it was just an April Fools' joke. At Summer in the City 2015, Dan and Phil were presented with a Silver Play Button from YouTube for surpassing 100,000 subscribers on their channel.
Dan and Phil also have a joint gaming channel, DanAndPhilGames. The first video on this channel was uploaded in September 2014. There was a hiatus between 2018 and 2023. Dan and Phil returned to the channel on October 15th, 2023 in Saying Goodbye Forever.
Trivia[]
- He doesn't like any sort of cheese. In his video "The Cheese Challenge", in which he tried previous foods he did not like before, he tried 4 different kinds of cheese, only to find out he still hated cheese.[10]
- His favourite animals are lions; a recurring theme in his videos used to be that he has a little stuffed lion (named Lion) in the background.
- Before YouTube removed annotations, Lion would sometimes 'speak' via speech bubble annotations (this was well before YouTube discontinued the annotations feature in January 2019).
- He is 68.6% British & Irish, 11.5% French & German, 1.9% Scandinavian (Based on his 23andMe DNA Test).[11]
- In 2018, he changed up his hairstyle from "emo fringe" to "quiff". He joked with others that he was the last one standing of the "emo YouTubers". He revealed in "Why I Changed My Emo Hair" that he wanted to do something different with his hair.[12] He then changed his hair again to a different haircut in "Time for a Big Change".[13] He also has dyed it blonde according to Instagram.[14]
- During the summer of 2020, Phil named a pigeon which frequently visited his balcony 'Steve'. After being informed by a Twitter user that Steve had something wrapped around his foot and needed veterinary attention, Dan and Phil captured Steve in a pet carrier and took him to the vet. This was the subject of Phil's video "Trying To Catch And Rescue An Injured WILD Pigeon".[15]
Subscriber milestones[]
Note: The following dates are according to Social Blade. Dates may vary by one or two days due to differences in time zones.
- 1 million subscribers: July 5, 2013
- 2 million subscribers: August 28, 2014
- 3 million subscribers: October 11, 2015
- 4 million subscribers: March 14, 2017
- Decline
- Below 4 million subscribers: October 2021
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 https://www.youtube.com/user/AmazingPhil/about
- ↑ https://www.standard.co.uk/news/tech/amazingphil-youtube-vidcon-interview-a4350266.html
- ↑ https://youtu.be/UqXFKSWniVU
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxe_YMJ4nUs
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9-4fIjn0QY
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D8M6Mc9csw
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0dsyXzmHFM
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24W2a0swcQI
- ↑ https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b051r2q6
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cCyqVrf79g
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_H-Ph0zLU8
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VNVdRLC6s
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu-w4GvoIaQ&t=542s
- ↑ https://www.instagram.com/p/C7hScrSNNMb/?img_index=1
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjhCMBwpAwg
