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Charlie McDonnell
Background information
Birth name	Charles Joseph McDonnell
Born	1 October 1990 (1990-10-01) (age 19) Bath, Somerset England[1]
Nationality	British
Web alias(es)	charlieissocoollike coollike
Period active	April 03, 2007 - present
Host service(s)	YouTube, BlogTV, and Twitter
Genre(s)	Comedy, vlogging
Notable work(s)	How to be English
Official site	Homepage

Charles Joseph "Charlie" McDonnell (born 1 October 1990) is an English vlogger and singer/songwriter from Bath, Somerset. He is the second most subscribed YouTuber in the United Kingdom as of March 2010.^[2]

Background

McDonnell lives in Bath, Somerset in England where he resides with his mother Lindsey ("liliesarelike" on Youtube), younger sister Bridie, and brother William. After setting up a YouTube channel in April 2007, Charlie started posting Video-Blogs to a small audience. He first came to prominence when his video entitled "How To Get Featured on YouTube" became popular when it was coincidentally, featured on the front of the UK YouTube homepage. His audience jumped from just under 150 subscribers to over 4,400 in a mere two days^[3]

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", or CC. He has completed nine so far, one of which was suggested by TV presenter Phillip Schofield and his daughter Molly, for McDonnell to do the dance that accompanies the Hoedown Throwdown.^[4] McDonnell has since posted a large range of videos on the site, including his most viewed, "How to be English".^[5] He has over 300,000 subscribers as of February 2010.^[2]

McDonnell also once video blogged every week on another YouTube account along with four other YouTube personalities. The name given to this collaboration was "fiveawesomeguys", a spin-off of the American "fiveawesomegirls" collaboration. In a vlog posted on 28 October 2008, he announced that the project was set to end on New Year's Eve 2008.However, for a week in October 2009, all five guys(JohnnyDurham19, nerimon,fallofautumndistro and toddly00) returned, mainly to promote the ChartJackers Project(see Charity Work).^[6] Charlie's videos currently end with an outro by Stephen Fry.^{[citation needed]}

Musical History

On 6 August 2008, McDonnell showcased his musical talent with a song titled "Blink", based on the popular TV program Doctor Who episode of the same name. This song was in the musical genre "Time Lord Rock" (or Trock, shortened by the same convention as the Harry Potter fandom's Wrock), which was named by McDonnell's contact Alex Day (known as "Nerimon" on YouTube). However it has been pointed out that Trock isn't a genre, as it is part of a wider genre, "Rock" ^[7] "Blink" was the second song to be classified as Trock, following Day's "Awful Lot Of Running". Although Day invented the label "Time Lord Rock/Trock", fans of the long-running series have been writing songs about Doctor Who since shortly after its inception in the early 1960s, including the hit single "Doctorin' the Tardis" by The Timelords.

Chameleon Circuit, a Trock band consisting of Day, McDonnell, Liam Dryden, and "Ginger" Chris Beattie, released a self-titled album on 1 June 2009.^[8] Since Trock's conception, Doctor Who Magazine^[9] has written about it and Chameleon Circuit.

McDonnell occasionally posts YouTube music videos, such as "A Song About Acne" and "A Song About Love".

McDonnell was also involved with the musical ChartJackers Project (see Charity Work).

McDonnell is currently working on his debut album.

Charity Work

On 30 September 2008, to celebrate his 18th birthday, McDonnell and his friend Alex Day dyed and then shaved their hair off whilst live on BlogTV for a period of 7 and a half hours, in aid of Cancer Research UK.^[10] They managed to raise over £5000.^[11] 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 £5000 and did so about a month later with help from Kristina Horner (known as "italktosnakes" and Monday on the collab-channel "fiveawesomegirls" on YouTube).^[12]

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.^[13]

ChartJackers

McDonnell featured with three other YouTubers in the series ChartJackers on BBC Switch - James Hill (Jimmy0010), Jonathan Haggart (JohnnyDurham19) and Alex Day (Nerimon). The project involved them attempting to achieve a UK Singles Chart hit within 10 weeks, using resources provided by other YouTube community members. Over the course of the project they solicited lyrics, music, performers, stylists and so forth to record the song and video via the "chartjackersproject" YouTube channel.^[14] Their progress is shown on brief BBC Switch updates on the "ChartJackers" YouTube channel.^[15] An unofficial Children in Need single, "I've Got Nothing", was released via iTunes on 9 November 2009. It reached Number 36 in the UK Singles Chart and Number 1 in the UK Independent Chart.

Press

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.^[16]

He featured as a guest on Robert Llewellyn's web series Carpool in the episode released on 15 May 2009.^[17]

In early June 2009, McDonnell visited Los Angeles to attend the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2009. He attended Microsoft's Xbox press conference, where 'Project Natal' was announced. Two days later, he was invited to a "special area of E3" and was one of 30 exclusive people from around the world to try out Natal. He explained this in one of a group of videos he produced and uploaded to a new channel on YouTube for the trip called "CharlieAtE3".

References

External links

• charlieissocoollike on YouTube
• Charlie's Official Website