Joe Wicks turned down TV offers to ‘reach more people’.
The fitness guru has become a national treasure since starting his PE lessons online to help everyone keep fit during lockdown.
Since then the father-of-two says he has been approached with major TV offers – including from Channel 4 who he says turned him down early on in his career – but he has stuck to his guns.
Speaking to Men’s Health, Joe said: ‘Fast forward to now, I’ve got Channel 4 asking me to stream these PE workouts live.
‘I’ve got the BBC asking me to sign a contract. All these channels are now coming to me, and I’ve said, “Look, I want to do this on YouTube. I’m reaching more people. Why would I want to do it with you?”’
The success of his videos has meant he is able to give back to the NHS through ad revenue, which he said is a ‘phenomenal amount of money’.
‘Normally I’d be lucky to get 100,000 views of a workout over six months. I’d never seen anything like it,’ Joe said.
‘It’s blown me away. And the ad revenue from YouTube that this has generated – that was totally unplanned.
‘We didn’t even consider it when we set out, which is why we quickly decided to donate that money to the NHS.
‘It’s a phenomenal amount of money and it just felt right, seeing as it was the community that built it. I didn’t want people to think for a second that I had the intention of financially benefiting from any of this.’
The 33-year-old is in lockdown at home with his wife Rosie and their kids – one-year-old daughter Indie and baby son Marley, who was born in December.
Two young babies are a handful in normal circumstances let alone during the current situation, and Joe confessed parenting does stress him out.
But he turns to his favourite thing to help him blow off steam…exercise, obvs.
‘If I’m stressed from dealing with two screaming babies, I have to exercise, because it brings me back down a peg,’ he said.
As for his hugely popular lockdown fitness videos, Joe’s aim is to have them played in schools all over the world. ‘This is what I want to be remembered for,’ he added.
Read the full Joe Wicks cover story interview in the July/August 2020 Issue of Men’s Health, on sale from 11 June. Also available as a digital edition.
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