His beloved cat Bella died recently, aged 17, and the indignities of old age mean a new carpet is in order. The other reason is that Burton, AKA Half-Asleep Chris, is turning his dining room into a recreation of London’s Rainforest Cafe (also RIP – it closed in 2023). There will be temple walls and a talking tree, a fish tank and fronds.
Thunderstorms every 20 minutes. He’s doing most of the work himself, he explains, as we edge past an 8ft fibreglass tapir in the hall. But he’ll need an electrician to rig the starry ceiling and a plumber to check the waterfall for leaks.
I sneak a feel of the tapir: firm yet squishy, foam and five layers of silicone over a steel frame. Most people will only see rather than touch it, yet it has exactly the same amount of give as – I imagine – the real deal. This lack of half-measures is very Half-Asleep Chris.
It is from this detached house on a suburban estate in London’s commuter belt that Burton, 31, makes the videos that have turned him into an unlikely YouTube sensation: more than a billion views, five million subscribers, a PO box deluged with drawings and knitted hats, Instagram DMs full of requests to hang out for the day, or take children to Legoland. Or a combination of the two. Or loopier contraptions he finds creatively fulfilling yet usually prove to be of more niche appeal.
But while that has 2.4m views, Giant Cat Destroys Lego City (basically just Bella inspecting one of his glorious model villages) has 21m. About 45% of his audience are in the US, another 10% from the UK, with Canada, France and the Philippines following behind. Data protection makes it hard to tell what proportion are children, but he does know his biggest demographic is 25 to 40-year-olds – ie, those most likely to be fairly new parents.
His hope is that the videos encourage co-watching. But I want my videos to be family friendly. Nothing rude or obnoxious but not dumbed down.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
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