Phil Lester

Philip Michael Lester (born 30 January 1987) is an English YouTuber and radio host.

He is best known for his YouTube channels AmazingPhil, which gained over 4 million subscribers, and DanAndPhilGAMES.

Lester was born on 30 January 1987 in Rawtenstall, Lancashire.

He has an older brother, Martyn.

Before he made vlogs and radio presenting his full-time profession, he was a dog walker and car washer, worked at a veterinary clinic and at WHSmith, and had an acting role as Tim in Faintheart.

He attended Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School.

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 300 videos on his channel and, as of September 2022, has over 3.9 million subscribers and 659 million video views.

In 2007, Lester appeared as a contestant on The Weakest Link, making it to the final round.

He later graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in English Language and Linguistics in 2008 and a Master of Arts in Video Postproduction with Visual Effects in 2009, both from the University of York.

He also played the role of Tim in 2008 film Faintheart and appeared in a Confused.com advertisement later that year.

At the time of making the advert, he had around 27,000 subscribers.

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.

Lester was interviewed with other internet entertainers on Channel 4 News in October 2012 about the increased popularity of YouTube and video blogging as a profession.

Together with frequent collaborator Daniel Howell, he presented the Sunday night entertainment show Dan and Phil 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.

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 million subscribers and 26 million views, as of September 2022.

He occasionally broadcast hour-long live shows on this channel, as well as YouNow livestreams, but has since used the channel to archive his more recent streams.

In 2013 Lester and Howell appeared on Friday Download, a BAFTA award-winning CBBC TV show.

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.

Lester has also appeared alongside Howell in Benjamin Cook's twelve part web series Becoming YouTube, and was interviewed on the various topics Cook covered.

On 12 September 2014, Howell and Lester posted the first video on their new gaming YouTube channel, DanAndPhilGAMES.

From 2014 to 2016 Howell and Lester hosted the worldwide YouTube livestream of the Brit Awards as well as making backstage videos for their channel.

On 8 March 2015 the channel hit 1 million subscribers.

It was officially the fastest growing channel on YouTube.

DanAndPhilGAMES reached over 3.1 million subscribers.

Popular recurring and annual series on this channel include their Sims 4 series, Spooky Week, and Gamingmas.

On 1 April 2015, Lester and Howell launched a spin-off crafts-based channel, DanAndPhilCRAFTS, as an April Fools joke.

It featured a single video of them creating square snowflakes out of paper, with an amateur editing style and humour throughout.

It reached over 154,000 subscribers and 500,000 total video views in one week.

In 2015, Lester and Howell had voice cameo appearances in the UK cinema release of Walt Disney Animation Studios' Big Hero 6 as Technician 1 & 2.

However, this version is not in the UK home release.

Additional videos were uploaded on April Fool's Day in 2016 and 2017.

The channel went on hiatus from December 2018 to October 2023.

Lester appeared on The Sunday Times’ 2019 list of the top influencers in the UK.