Daniel Howell British YouTuber Born 1991 in Wokingham

Early life

Daniel James Howell was born on 11 June 1991 in Wokingham, Berkshire, and grew up in nearby Winnersh. He attended Bearwood Primary School and The Forest School. As a teenager he took part in Wokingham Youth Theatre and held part-time jobs at the retail chain Focus DIY and later at the supermarket Asda. After finishing school in 2009 he took a gap year, during which he began uploading videos to YouTube as a hobby. He enrolled at the University of Manchester in 2010 to study law, but left in 2011 to work in online video and radio full time.

Career

Howell posted his first video, "HELLO INTERNET", on 16 October 2009. Friends, among them Phil Lester, encouraged him to upload regularly. His main channel, originally called danisnotonfire, became popular through anecdotal storytelling and series such as Reasons Why Dan's a Fail and Internet Support Group. In 2017 he renamed it Daniel Howell. He also runs a second channel, danisnotinteresting, and from 2013 to 2018 he broadcast weekly live shows on YouNow. In 2012 he won the SuperNote competition run by Rhett and Link.

With Lester he started the gaming channel DanAndPhilGAMES on 12 September 2014; it became the fastest-growing channel on the platform for a time and was renamed Dan and Phil in October 2025. Recurring series include their Sims 4 playthroughs, Golf with Friends and Spooky Week. The channel paused between December 2018 and October 2023. A spin-off, DanAndPhilCRAFTS, began on 1 April 2015 as an April Fools' joke, and a phrase from its first video, "Don't cry, craft", became an internet meme. The channel received a YouTube Silver Play Button at Summer in the City 2015. Howell took a break from his own channel between 2019 and 2022, and in May 2022 he explained it in a video titled "Why I Quit YouTube". He then began the series Dystopia Daily, which ran until 2023. As of May 2025 his main channel counted about six million subscribers.

In January 2013 Howell and Lester became the hosts of the Sunday evening entertainment and request show on BBC Radio 1. Within four months it won a Sony Golden Headphones award. In August 2014 they moved to the station's monthly Internet Takeover slot, which ran until April 2016.

He has also appeared on television and in film. In 2013 the pair featured on the CBBC show Friday Download. From 2014 to 2016 they hosted online content for the Brit Awards, and in 2015 they voiced small parts in Big Hero 6. His documentary The Supergamers aired on BBC Three on 2 February 2016, and in June 2023 he presented The Cost of Being a YouTuber: UNTOLD for Channel 4.

On stage and in print, Howell and Lester wrote The Amazing Book Is Not on Fire, published in October 2015, which topped the Sunday Times hardback chart and reached number one on the New York Times young-adult list. Their tour The Amazing Tour Is Not on Fire followed, ending its UK leg at the London Palladium, and during it they performed "The Internet Is Here", later released as a charity single for Stand Up To Cancer. A second tour, Interactive Introverts, ran in 2018 with 80 shows in 18 countries. Alone, he published You Will Get Through This Night in May 2021, a guide to mental health written with the psychologist Heather Bolton, and toured the solo show We're All Doomed! from September 2022 to March 2023. The duo's third tour, Terrible Influence, began in September 2024.

Public roles

In 2014 Howell co-founded the company IRL Digital with Lester's brother Martyn, which produces merchandise for online personalities. In 2017 the charity YoungMinds named him an ambassador, and that November he took part in the Stop, Speak, Support anti-cyberbullying campaign.

Recognition

Among his awards, the radio show won the Sony Golden Headphones award in 2013, and he won the SuperNote competition in 2012. His books with Lester reached number one on bestseller lists in the United Kingdom and the United States.