That One Time I Found Out My Dad Is A Secret YouTuber With Millions Of Hits

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you click on the links and make a purchase, I will receive a small amount of commission. Three blogs in one day. This must be some kind of record. I have a story to tell tonight and I want to share it here. Anyone who has been following my progress over the last few years will know of my Dad. My book, Leger’s Secret is dedicated to him because all those Saturday mornings he spent reading to me when I was a little girl kind of shaped my path in life.

Well, my dear old Dad isn’t the “cool” guy he used to be. He’s almost 67 now. But he’s still awesome because he’s my Dad and he rocks more than the average pensioner. Imagine my absolute shock when I discovered my Dad is a secret YouTuber, with millions of hits. Read on…

My Dad’s always been pretty tech-savvy. We were always the first people I knew to get any new tech. Way back in the mid-90s, we were using the Internet when very few people in Scotland even owned their own PC. But lately, he’s been losing interest in stuff like that. He retired in June this year and a few years ago he took a redundancy package from the well-paid job he had and spent the last few years of his working life at John Lewis. He was happy there, but it was hard watching my parents treat every penny like a prisoner. That’s why I am so frustrated to hear about his YouTube success.

I was telling him about my blog and what I’ve been working on. He asked if I had ever tried YouTube. No, I said. I have an account but I mostly just use it to like other people’s content. I don’t post much myself, except for videos from concerts and that’s not very often. He mentioned, just in passing, like it was completely normal, that one of his videos had over 3 million views.

Wait…What the actual f**k?

I asked what exactly he had posted and he told me it was just music videos. He didn’t even have copyright and they weren’t official videos. Just sound files posted with a picture in the background. It was all old stuff from the 1960s and 70s. I had to know, what was his name on YouTube because I wanted to check him out. It’s Gruntelfluk. I almost exploded.

Gruntelfluk is the name that I gave to the protagonist’s father in Cherry Lips, the hapless wannabe wizard who couldn’t get the spells just right. He came up with it. I asked him what I should call the old wizard dad and he said, many years ago, “Gruntelfluk.” He’s bloody trolled me!

I would be delighted about my Dad’s success, except for one thing. He hasn’t monetised. He hasn’t made a penny out of this. Apparently he kinda thought about it, but decided not to bother. It was just something he did on the night shift years ago to pass the time. He didn’t even realise how much money he could have made. I asked him what kind of engagement he was getting and he didn’t know.

How is it possible that my Dad is an accidental YouTube success and I had no idea that it was even happening. If I had even bothered to Google the word Gruntelfluk, which was his suggestion for the wizard’s name, I would have known. But I didn’t. How has he kept this a secret?