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3. KSI was really shy and introverted at school

I just wanted to be controversial and just annoy people… at the time I thought it was funny. I thought it was cool.

KSI

“A lot of my friends at school would never have guessed that I’d be who I am today,” KSI says. He grew up in Watford where his dad ran a bingo hall. He says his parents “worked so hard… and they put all their money into us,” sending KSI and his brother to a private school. “I was quite introverted, and I just kept to myself,” he says. “I didn’t really know how to communicate, really… I just was so shy. I was just so timid. I was just a shell.”

4. He got disappointing A-level results because he was so focused on YouTube

He says of his maths exam: “I remember I looked at the page and I was like, ‘What is this? I don’t know any of this.’” When his results came out, his parents were really upset. He says they had wanted him to go to university and become a lawyer or doctor, so it felt as if all their hard work had come to nothing. “It just crushed me,” he recalls. Eventually, KSI decided: “I’m going to make them proud through… YouTube. As long as I can get rid of all their debts and make their lives comfortable, that’s all that matters.”

5. KSI thinks his book, I Am A Bellend, was a mistake

KSI admits that “I just wanted to be controversial and just annoy people… at the time I thought it was funny. I thought it was cool.” Now though, he regrets things he said in it. “If I could redo something, I’d definitely redo that and just never put it out there, ever.”

6. He says the pressure to get video views pushed him to make more provocative content

KSI says he has apologised for saying sexually inappropriate things to women during a video he made at a gaming conference as a teenager. At the time, he says, audience reactions and the number of views his videos got had started to dictate the content he made. “A lot of the time the edgy things would do really, really well… I saw the likes and the comments, and I saw all of that positivity, and I was like, ‘OK, I’ve got to keep pushing it’”. He says he later realised he wasn’t making content he wanted to make, and “I felt I needed to change that.”

7. KSI has tattoos saying ‘Knowledge’, ‘Strength’ and ‘Integrity’

He got the tattoos after taking a six-month break in 2017. “I wanted to just change as a person, because I felt like I was just all over the place”, he says. During his time away from social media, KSI travelled in the USA, Europe and Ghana, and deleted a lot of his old videos. He says he returned with a new sense of direction and the philosophy that “I don’t care if I don’t get any views… I don’t care if I don’t get any likes. I’m just going to make content that I enjoy.”

8. He ended up boxing in front of millions because of a joke

In 2018, KSI fought YouTube star Joe Weller in front of thousands of people, and millions more online. “I didn’t actually want to fight him,” KSI says. But after joking that he would take on Weller, pressure grew for him to actually do it. In YouTube culture, KSI says, “if the majority of people are saying, ‘This has to be done’, it’s hard to go against it.” In the end, he agreed. “I never knew how to fight, but I learned the hard way... I got myself into insane shape. I worked hard, pushed myself to the brink, and yeah, I destroyed Joe Weller in three rounds.” He went on to take on Logan Paul, another YouTuber, in a fight billed as the biggest non-professional boxing match of all time.

9. KSI’s net worth is thought to be around £15 million

Louis asks if KSI’s net worth is close to the £15 million it’s reputed to be. He says, “I am wealthy, yes. I’ve been doing YouTube for 10-plus years. I have a lot of money coming from different angles in different areas, so it makes sense for me to be worth eight figures, yeah. But that’s also because I invest a lot of my money as well.”

10. He doesn’t think he’s talented – his success is all hard work

“I think working hard beats talent 100% of the time,” KSI says. “I’ve always said that I’m not talented… I just work hard to the point which allows me to reach a level similar to people that would be talented, and then break beyond that.”