Draw my Life
Hey guys, so this is Phil and I’m going to draw my life. I was supposed to be born on Valentines Day, but fetus me obviously didn’t like the idea. So I escaped the uterus early. I was born on January 30th in the middle of a snow drift in the northern hills of Manchester. Maybe this explains why I like snow so much. Apparently my dad wanted to call me Richard or Jason, but my mom thought I looked like a Philip, so that was the name I was given.

My first memories are my granddad teaching me how to tie show laces and playing scrabble with him. Unfortunately, he died when I was four, so those are the only memories I have with him. I also remember visiting Portugal and watching a lot of animal documentaries on TV. I was obsessed with animals. I knew from an early age, I either wanted to be a vet, a zoo keeper, or a weatherman. I’m not sure where the weatherman thing came from. I also really wanted a dog. But instead my parents bought me a surprise house rabbit. She was called Holy and she lived in the house and kind of acted like a dog. Weirdly, me and my older brother got on really well and have done my whole life. We also used to secretly watch horror films like Alien at 1 in the morning which was never a good idea and I had nightmares for the most of my childhood.

I was lucky as my house was on a hill, so I had loads of woodland and fields to explore. I have just made myself sound like a squirrel, but I had about five friends. We had our own street gang called the Kool Katz. See, it had a Z because it was cool. One of my clearest memories of school is playing trains in the playground. I thought it would be a good idea to stop in front of a wall, so the entire train slammed into the back of me and I crushed my face against the wall breaking my nose. I remember — Oh My God, that’s a horrific face. Okay wait, I’ll rub that, that’s better. I remember dripping blood into a girl’s hair and she screamed a lot.

Then came the time to leave to secondary school and I was the only person from my school to go to the one I went to. It was big, scary and intimidating and had loads of year 11’s that were like giants. I also developed a massive obsession with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She was on my wall, she was inside my locker and I still stand by the fact that it is the best show ever. Seriously, it’s the best show ever. In the final year at school, I did some work experience as a vet. I had to watch a dog getting its jaw removed with a saw and I ended up fainting. Turns out being a vet was not for me.

I moved on to college with the same friends and I studied arts, media studies, English, and psychology and I really enjoyed it. I also got my first girl friend woooo hooo – who lasted for about a week, but was then stolen by a guy called Ian who I initially hated, but then we actually became best friends. Hi, if you’re watching, Ian. Towards the end of college, I stumbled upon YouTube. I was inspired by lonelygirl15, Andrew Bravener and Smosh to make my own video blogs and they were really bad at first. I filmed them with no editing on a black and white camera that I got with some tokens from cereal. What happened to toys and cereal? Hmm? And I’d update these video blogs every few weeks and a year or so later, I started university in York. I loved York, it has really cool castle walls and the uni campus was completely covered in ducks. Apparently you could kill a person and return after your prison sentence, but if you kill the duck, you are banned for life.

I was in a house of 10 people; six girls, four boys and one shower. Mornings were never that fun. At this point, I got a job working at a giant stationery store over Christmas which kind of destroyed my soul. I used to hide in the stock room and read all the books and magazines, hoping the manager wouldn’t notice. I actually quit the job after a crazy lady threw a chocolate orange at my head. That was a pretty low point in my life.

My final year at University is kind of blur as unfortunately one of my best friends who I had lived with for three years died suddenly. It took a long time, but eventually I swapped some of the sadness for funny memories we had together as I know for sure he wouldn’t want me to spend the rest of my life being sad. He also made me realize I should probably embrace some of the crazy opportunities I was getting instead of shying away from them like I would have done in the past. And the first thing I did was audition for a movie and I got a small role as a shop worker in the Viking comedy, Faintheart which you might see on Film4 every so often. And I also appeared on a TV quiz show called The Weakest Link.

I then finished uni and moved back home and around this time, I discovered there was a whole community of people making YouTube videos in the U.K. and I met a guy called PJ who invited me to a New Year’s eve party where I met loads of other YouTubers. These crazy creative people inspired me to try even harder and I kept making the videos which began to gain popularity at a completely unexpected rate. I also met Crabstickz and later that year, my friend Dan. He was studying at Manchester Uni, so we hung out a lot and made loads of videos, which you guys seem to love. Dan needed somewhere to live in the second year of uni, so we moved into a Manchester Floor, the 19th floor of a sky tower. It was weirdly cheap. I think someone may have died there before we moved in or something. It was brilliant living with another YouTuber though and we were given some great opportunities like visiting Jamaica with CTFxC going to Playlist Live and Vidcon.

We also started working really closely with Radio One and we had two Christmas shows and then went to Edenborough with them, which was amazing. I also discovered that I really enjoyed making radio shows. We decided that at this point it would be best to move to London, which was a big deal for me being from a sheepy northern town. But I’m really loving it so far and I’m probably the happiest I’ve ever been. And excitingly in January 2013, we were given our own Radio One show. The first live show was probably the scariest thing I’ve ever done, but now we’re in the swing of things. I’m actually loving it.

So now that shy, weird kid from school is now a YouTuber or Londoner and also a radio presenter and probably never will be a weatherman unfortunately, but I still can’t believe how many people watch my videos. I’m so grateful to everyone who does and I still read every single comment. Yeah, even if you just type one now, I’ve read it. Well, that’s it. I’m excited about the future and as it’s my birthday, I’m going to go eat some cake.

Feel free to make your own Draw Your Life video. This was inspired by Sam and Casper and I tag everybody, especially PJ as he can draw way better than me. Please give this video a thumps up and if you would do, I would draw you an eagle shark. Skreee – And also click here to subscribe to my videos. Okay, see you soon. Bye, guys.