PewDiePie may have held YouTube’s top spot for a record-breaking six years, but he didn’t do it alone, with editor Brad by his side since 2015.

Last year, the YouTube star – real name Felix Kjellberg – was involved in one of the biggest moments of internet history – the battle with T-Series for YouTube’s top spot.

Although he eventually lost out, the world was enthralled by the pair’s race to 100 million. All except for Brad, that is.

‘I think I was sat in my front room watching season two of Iron Fist and drinking tea, I missed the whole thing,’ he laughed.




‘Some of the general magic of being caught up in the hype from the outside is completely lost on me, because I’m sitting here filming the thing and not really enjoying the thing.’

Helpfully providing an analogy, he explained to Metro.co.uk: ‘You know when you’d go to see your nan, and she says, “Oh my god, you’ve grown!’ but you don’t think you’ve grown, she just hasn’t seen you for a year…We’re kind of just doing our own thing but on the outside it was this huge movement.’

It’s clear the pair have got an incredibly similar sense of humour, with Brad deadpanning at one point: ‘I think he has 10 houses now, fully paid off. I just don’t think he’s going to stop until he has at least 25, one in every country really.’

However, they weren’t always this close.

A self-proclaimed ‘sarcastic nihilist’ and ‘cynical old man’, Brad met the YouTube star on a double date with their girlfriends Marzia Bisognin and Emma Pickles – and the rest is history.

But, as it turns out, Brad might have been the one person in the world who hadn’t heard much about PewDiePie.

‘He was like, “I need an editor”, and I was like “I need a job”,’ Brad recalled. ‘I didn’t know him at all, I didn’t even watch much gaming on YouTube.

‘He was definitely the number one most subscribed at the time, I hadn’t seen much of his content so we got on really well and I think he appreciated the fact I didn’t know who he was – I wasn’t just immediately snaking him for views!’

Although the editor began as the behind the scenes man – or in his own words, the ‘Wizard of Oz’ – he was eventually placed in the spotlight, playing ridiculous roles including Felix’s now fiancé Marzia.

‘We have like a PewDiePie Cinematic Universe,’ he laughed. ‘It’s definitely weird, at first I didn’t really want [to be in the spotlight]. I think neither did Felix because nobody had editors five years ago because it took away the personal touch that YouTube had.’

He added: ‘It’s a weird double edged sword because sometimes it’s fun and sometimes I can monetise that… But then sometimes I’m just treated like PewDiePie’s customer service!’



An audience of almost 100 million could seem just a little terrifying to some, but Brad appears to take it in his stride – sort of.

‘I think if I truly think about it I’ll just be hit by a wave of anxiety that will cripple me so I just don’t imagine them as individual people, these waves and waves of millions of people.

‘I’m more aware when there’s some sort of scandal or something horrible goes wrong,’ he admitted.

It’s no secret that the 29-year-old has built a habit of hitting headlines over the past few years, with a petition even being created to remove his channel from YouTube.

‘It’s a weird one, each one is case by case,’ Brad told us of the scandals. ‘It’s strange for me because I always feel like I’m involved. It’s one of those situations where I am the Wizard of Oz, I’m there a lot of the time.

‘I’m not personally too worried but I’m concerned for Felix as my friend sometimes. Especially when things are being taken out of context.

‘When he screws up on his own, I’m just there with everyone else with the pitchforks,’ he joked.

‘He messes up with things and he words things poorly. It’s just a situation where I take each one that happens, [and say], “Lets see where we are and where I stand on it.”’

And, while Brad’s quick to joke about the YouTube star, he reveals that his association has had real consequences for his working life.


‘I’ve genuinely had situations where people have said they won’t work with me on a project due to my association with Felix,’ he revealed.

‘I see it like I dodged a bullet. Like, I don’t want to work with you anyway. I kind of like it when people respond to me in that way. It’s like an immediate red flag.’

Despite jokingly dubbing him a ‘sociopath’ and a ‘a horrible person’, Brad describes his friend simply as a ‘decent guy’ in a rare moment of sincerity – and it’s partly for this reason that he can’t see Felix ever slowing down, despite the barrage of scandals.

‘He’s been shot by a couple of silver bullets and they’ve not put him down,’ he explained. ‘I don’t know what he could do at this point other than intentionally sabotaging himself.

‘The thing that comes out from all of his scandals is he’s a decent guy. He’s very down to earth, he’s very normal…That’s the reason he got to that position in the first place.

‘I really have never seen him as King PewDiePie of YouTube – probably in real life he’s a little underwhelming!’ he added.

Felix held YouTube’s top spot for a record six years (Picture: YouTube)

However, Brad’s not too keen on the direction in which YouTube seems to be going.

‘I hate it all. I genuinely hate the absolute state of YouTube for the most part. I don’t think it’s entirely the creators’ fault [but] I think there are a lot of creators that abuse the system to quickly blow up their channel and their ego along with it,’ he lamented.


‘Just the way that YouTube works now, funnelling the money and views upwards, forces YouTubers who wouldn’t do that kind of content to do it.’

Despite this, Brad, who also has a YouTube career of his own with his channel WorldOfTheOrange, can’t see himself and Felix going their separate ways.

‘I imagine I’ll just be in the same boat really…working with Felix until we break up in a huge YouTube diss track thing that people do, and we’ll clickbait that,’ he considered. ‘We’ll probably have a boxing match at the end of it.’

‘I imagine I’ll be on board all the way,’ he added, warily pointing out: ‘Unless he kicks me off for saying he has 10 houses or calling him a sociopath in an interview.’

Valid point.

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