A few days ago Sam Pepper deleted all his posts on social media.

His YouTube was blank, and his Twitter page contained just one tweet: "I give up".

He gave no reason for the deletions to his two million YouTube subscribers and one million Twitter followers.

That is, until a link to a new 20 minute video appeared in which he sets out his reasons for removing everything.

"I might as well talk to you guys first and tell you everything from the beginning… and be real and be honest and be 100% myself, because that's not what I've been," he said.

Prank videos are how Sam Pepper made his name on YouTube and they were also his downfall.

"All these other prank channels started coming out and they'd be doing more and more and more crazy stuff.

"So I worked out I could do these pranks the other channels are doing - and I could just fake them.

"What I wasn't thinking this whole time was that if I have to fake a video that means that it's too crazy for me to actually do for real."

Things started to go wrong for Pepper when he posted a video in which he hid his hand under his jumper so he could pinch womens' bums while asking for directions.

The backlash from fans and fellow YouTubers was huge, and a number of women accused him of sexual harassment.

"I didn't know how to handle all that hate", Pepper explains and it's why he claimed the videos were a staged experiment.

"My first instinct… why don't I try and twist this into something else?"

He struggled to win back viewers, which led to the now infamous Killing Best Friend Prank.

He describes watching reactions to his online "character" and thinking "I can either play that character or give up".

At the end of the video he explains he's ashamed of his previous work.

"I'm really asking you guys please give me a second chance and I can make content that represents me as a person, that inspires... that's why I've deleted every video on this channel and I'm only going to put up the ones that represent me."

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