Best Youtuber: PETER OAKLEY vs PHILIP LESTER

Peter Oakley (20 August 1927 – 23 March 2014) was an English pensioner and Internet personality, who posted YouTube videos under the Internet pseudonym geriatric1927. Making his YouTube debut in August 2006 with Telling it all, a series of five-to-ten minute autobiographical videos, Oakley gained popularity with a wide section of the YouTube community. Amongst the autobiographical details revealed in his videos are that he served as a radar mechanic during World War II, that he had a lifelong love of motorcycles, and that he lived alone as a widower and pensioner. His unforeseen rise was widely reported by international media outlets and online news sources and blogs. After resisting all media attention for a long time (including requests for interviews, photographs, and attempts to identify him), insisting that he only wished to converse with the YouTube community in an informal and personal way, Oakley finally gave his first interview, for the BBC's The Money Programme, which was aired on BBC Two on 16 February 2007. By mid-2006, Oakley was the most subscribed user on YouTube. His rise to the #1 position took place in just over a week. In the process, he displaced users who had been around since the site's launch, including NBC-signed Brooke Brodack. In November that year, he had 30,000 subscribers. Oakley also holds the record for being the first user on YouTube to reach the milestone of 25,000 subscribers. He uploaded 434 videos between 2006 and 2014 covering several topics from childhood memories to setting up a Google account. He also set up a second channel dedicated to music, Geriatric1927Blues, in 2009. Oakley was later diagnosed with cancer which was too far advanced for treatment. He posted his final video on 12 February 2014 and died a month later on the morning of 23 March 2014.

See statistics

Philip Michael Lester (born 30 January 1987) is an English YouTuber and radio host. He is best known for his YouTube channels AmazingPhil, which has over 4 million subscribers, and DanAndPhilGAMES. Together with frequent collaborator Daniel Howell, he presented Sunday night entertainment show Dan and Phil (radio show) on BBC Radio 1 from January 2013 until August 2014, and from September 2014 to April 2016 the duo were monthly hosts on the station's The Internet Takeover slot. Lester appeared on The Sunday Times’ 2019 list of the top influencers in the UK. At age 19 on 27 March 2006, Lester posted his first YouTube vlog titled "Phil's Video Blog" on his main YouTube channel, AmazingPhil. Since then he has posted over 200 videos on his channel and, as of August 2018, has over 4.2 million subscribers and 556 million video views. He reached 1 million YouTube subscribers on 6 July 2013, 2 million on 29 August 2014, 3 million on 12 October 2015, and 4 million on 14 March 2017. Lester also has a second channel, LessAmazingPhil, which has over 1.2 million subscribers and 38 million views, as of August 2018. He occasionally broadcast hour-long live shows on this channel, as well as YouNow livestreams, but now uses the channel to archive his current style of YouNow livestreams. From 2009 to 2011, Lester participated in RTÉ's Ireland-based cross-media show, ApartmentRed. In 2010, Lester and Howell took part in the live, annual 24-hour internet broadcast "Stickaid", a fundraiser for charity UNICEF. In 2011, Lester and Howell created a collaborative YouTube channel through the network My Damn Channel. Titled The Super Amazing Project, it featured the duo discussing and investigating paranormal events. Segments included "Viewers Spooky Happenings", where the audience of the show would send in "scary" items for the video bloggers to react to, and "In The News This Week", where the duo recapped recent light-hearted news items and viral videos. In October 2014, it was announced that as of that month Lester and Howell would not carry on working on The Super Amazing Project in order to concentrate on their Radio 1 show. Lester and Howell later announced that the Super Amazing Project would be hosted by new presenters, Alastair James Murder and Victoria Atkin, found by channel owners My Damn Channel.

See statistics