Screaming expletives at the football or a video game on his computer screen from his bedroom while being watched by millions earned him the moniker Angry Ginge.
The ‘Ginge’ part, of course, came from his recognisable shock of red hair and freckle-sprinkled face.
His real name is Morgan Burtwistle, and on the surface, he seems like a perfectly ordinary 24-year-old man, licking fast food grease from his fingers as he banters with his friends online.
Except, what’s not so ordinary about this young man is that he earns more than £1million a year doing so.
In 2020 Burtwistle, a Manchester United fan, became one of the 90,000 creators to stream on gaming platform Twitch, filming for up to ten hours a day in what has become a form of chat show.
Twitch, founded in 2011, has become known as the ‘Gogglebox of the internet’ and Burtwistle is a key, and very successful, player in this world.
How it works is this: streamers, and there are millions of them, make money through subscriptions, donations and sponsorship deals, and the more viewers they get, the more cash they make.
At his peak, one of Burtwistle’s broadcasts attracted 17,506 viewers. It seems his ‘brand’ – sudden outbursts punctuated by swear words and derogatory jokes about other peoples’ mothers – are irresistible to a certain subsection of the internet, and have seen him grow into something of a sensation.
Morgan Burtwistle seems like a perfectly ordinary 24-year-old man. Except what’s not so ordinary about this young man is that he earns more than £1million a year doing so
This foul-mouthed, barely-turned-adult is now the favourite to win I’m A Celebrity and is being considered in ITV boardrooms as the unlikely ‘saviour’ of the broadcaster
So much so that this foul-mouthed, barely-turned-adult is now the favourite to win I’m A Celebrity and is being considered in ITV boardrooms as the unlikely ‘saviour’ of the broadcaster.
Because everything about Burtwistle is unlikely, it’s made him the embodiment of Gen Z’s answer to the age-old rags-to-riches tale.
Raised in a single-parent household on a council estate in Eccles, Salford, Burtwistle moved in with his grandparents at 17 to alleviate the financial pressure on his mother, Michelle, who was struggling to look after him and his sister, Tasha, with her teaching assistant salary of just £12,500-a-year.
His first stream in 2020, when he was 19, attracted a peak of just 40 viewers and earned him £12.44. He nearly gave up. However, after his grandfather died from Covid a year later, he became more consistent with his content and gained 1.5 million subscribers.
But it wasn’t until June, after he took part in the charity football match Soccer Aid, that ITV bosses had even heard of him, let alone considered him as a potential candidate for I’m A Celebrity.
I am told they have long been chasing YouTube star KSI, who joined the judging panel of Britain’s Got Talent in February and is a guaranteed magnet for younger audiences with his 75 million social media followers.
But as the 32-year-old, whose real name Olajide Olayinka Williams Olatunji Jr, said himself, he turned down the offer ‘several times’ as ITV couldn’t offer him enough money ‘to live with bugs’.
Soccer Aid approached Burtwistle’s management earlier this year because the match was being held in Manchester and he’s a huge United fan. It was here that bosses at ITV – which broadcasts the match – first saw him.
‘Everyone at Soccer Aid, including the ITV commissioner who oversees both Soccer Aid and I’m A Celebrity, absolutely loved him,’ I’m told.
‘When he wasn’t performing for the cameras during the game, he was warm and unique, getting on with the rest of the squad and that’s when the penny dropped about what he could bring to the jungle.
Because everything about Burtwistle is unlikely, it’s made him the embodiment of Gen Z’s answer to the age-old rags-to-riches tale
‘Everyone realised he’s that perfect combination of being tapped into what Gen Z audiences want, sensationalism and instant entertainment, while also possessing an unseen loving side that would make the older audiences fall for him.
‘He is absolutely seen as a future prime time presenter, and that’s one of the reasons ITV moved quickly to secure him for the jungle before anyone else could. Morgan is considered by ITV as not only the future, but a saviour.’
Indeed, putting a relatively unknown streamer into the Jungle alongside Spandau Ballet’s Martin Kemp and model Kelly Brook has paid off as I’m A Celebrity is the third most watched show this year after Netflix hit Adolescence and The Traitors. Some 11 million people watched the first two episodes.
A large section of this viewership, no doubt, are the scores of swooning girls tuning in. For it can be revealed another string to Burtwistle’s bow is that he has become the show’s ‘heartthrob’.
Since the series began, the internet has teemed with young women sharing videos professing their love for him. As one wrote on social media, ‘I’m out on a run and can’t stop thinking about how much I’m in love with Angry Ginge,’ with the video receiving more than half a million likes.
Fans have become so desperate to date him that they are using AI to generate pictures of Burtwistle embracing them to claim they are in a relationship with him.
So commonplace did the images become that a spokesman for the star put out a statement, saying: ‘Ginge is single, but you wouldn’t know from the amount of AI girlfriends popping up online.’
Burtwistle unknowingly fanned the flames of infatuation this week when he revealed that, beneath his foul-mouthed exterior, he was a ‘romantic person’.
Speaking to campmate Ruby Wax, he said: ‘I am a romantic person, for my ex I put rose petals from the front door all the way up the stairs and then it opened to my room. There’s a teddy bear, there’s a rose and then I officially asked her to be my girlfriend.’
He went on to say she broke up with him last year by text while he was streaming but he had to ‘carry on for another six hours’.
Putting a relatively unknown streamer into the Jungle alongside Spandau Ballet’s Martin Kemp and model Kelly Brook has paid off as I’m A Celebrity is the third most watched show this year
As soon as it was mentioned, the mysterious ex became a ‘person of interest’ to his legion of admirers who tried to identify her.
For someone who is chronically online, Burtwistle has kept his romantic life almost untraceable, with the question mark over who she was still looming large.
But the most likely contender, the Daily Mail can reveal, is Olivia Stelfox, 21, who has left a series of breadcrumbs online that she is the ex-girlfriend in question.
Less than an hour after Burtwistle’s revelation, she posted a picture on her TikTok account with the caption: ‘Still good friends and it was agreed.’
But Ms Stelfox has not confirmed it was her, and is unlikely to, considering the vast number of comments saying she had committed ‘the biggest fumble’ if she was the girl that dumped him.
There is another woman whose name crops up in relation to Burtwistle’s romantic life: fellow content creator Jolie Sharpe.
The pair are close, often filming together and spending time with each other’s families, yet have repeatedly shut down rumours that they are secretly dating.
But the Daily Mail can reveal Ms Sharpe, 23, appears in the family photo Burtwistle has been seen clutching in the Jungle.
Lying on his camp bed during Tuesday night’s episode, he became emotional staring into the photo showing the ‘Best day of my life’, which was Soccer Aid.
Breaking down into tears he said: ‘I knew that family photo was a bad idea.’
And Ms Sharpe has been watching – and streaming – as she filmed her reaction to Burtwistle arriving in the Jungle. She told her followers, ‘I’m so happy for Ginge, he’s 24 and he’s in the Jungle.’
And while Burtwistle insists comments about him and Ms Sharpe are ‘infuriating’, his fanbase believe them. So if he comes out of the Jungle victorious, there might be a happy ending to this very unlikely, modern love story.
