YouTube channels…?

Walking the Ground is a good spin off from the We Have Ways podcast.

WW2 TV is good for a deep dive in niche subjects.

Retropower

Harry's Garage and Harry's Farm

Number 27

Iain Tyrrell

Jay Emm

This one is great.

My most watched are:

Beau Miles

The Hoof GP

Geoguesser (but only for his missions)

And a random selection of running shoe reviewers.

Mine is a bit car focused and random infrastructure.

Number 27 - Good for a quick dive and summary of random cars.

AutoAlex - Stupid but funny, bunch of guys buying up and running shit boxes

TDC/Top Dead Center - Spinoff from AutoAlex, similar thing but somehow funnier

Colin Furze - Silly, massive engineering undertakings

Auto Shennanigans - Proper middle age guy stuff, looking at random roading infrastrucutre

Robbie Cumming - Nice bit of slow TV with a guy living on a canal boat.

I can't believe no-one else has suggested this one : http://www.youtube.com/@classiccarclips3292
https://youtu.be/ZltfPfd1wQk

Dale Stone and Dangerous Dave for me for stunning British Colombia views and superb mountain biking. Jeff Pelletier for trail running with great insight and , once again, great views.

I'm just resurrecting an old old Marshall guitar amp from it's decades of inactivity.  So this fella is someone I've been watching lots of in the past couple of weeks, learning more about what's going on (and what goes wrong) in my 55 year old box of valves and hand made electronics.

Stuart UKguitarampguy

If you're not into guitars or electrical stuff or repairing things rather than expanding landfill, it may not be your bag.

James Hoffmann on everything coffee.

Only fair to mention Lance as the Hoff has had a mention above, for everything else you've probably never needed to know about coffee https://www.youtube.com/c/LanceHedrick

Darko audio, Hannah Morris Climbing are a couple of others I drop into from time to time. but interested in what others watch.

These are my favourites...

Bikes:
Remy Metailler
The Ride Companion
McTrail Rider
The Singletrack Sampler

Moto:
Raha TV

Snowboarding:
The Bomb Hole

Music:
AudioTree
From the Basement
NPR Music

Random:
Exploring the Unbeaten Path

Maximus Ironthumper for all of your wholesome needs - https://www.youtube.com/@maximusironthumper

I've been watching Ghost Town Living for a few years. It's essentially the video diary of a guy who bought the uninhabited mining town of Cerro Gorda in the Inyo Mountains in California. You see him learn to live up in the mountains in a desolate part of California as he had to move there during the Covid lockdown.

Videos cover the history and significance of Cerro Gordo, increasingly ambitious construction projects as he maintains and renovates the town, and exploration videos of the miles of mines underneath the town.

It doesn't sound that exciting on the face of it, but you'll find yourself gripped and absolutely rooting for him.

chess24 and similar. Matthew Sadler, Anna Cramling. Possibly a bit niche (but perhaps not in the way you're thinking) 🙂

Scimandan debunks flat earthers so is good for watching flat earth videos (for laughs).

Captain Disillusion. It's mainly break downs of how special effects are done. But it's very funny and clever. Also good to show how with the right tools you can fake anything.

https://www.youtube.com/@CaptainDisillusion

The Charismatic Voice, an opera singer who does reaction videos to a wide variety of songs. More skews towards rock, punk, metal et al. But she also takes a lot of time to explain how the singers do what they do. Utterly fascinating.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheCharismaticVoice

Completely randomly some of my favourites

M539 Restorations - guy restoring 90's Beamers, in the same vein, Soup Classic is restoring various projects, but much of it is in stop motion. Auto Shenanigans is just bloke wittering on about roads, but again funny and actually interesting (in a very nerdy way)

Of bike channels, Always Another Adventure, GCN (especially now they're doing more in depth stuff) Berm Park.

Other random stuff - Sampson Boat Co - The sail boat restoration channel, Vox for quirky short form documentaries, and Dark Skies for weird military aircraft.

https://www.youtube.com/@InheritanceMachining

Petter's other channel: MentourNow!
Science: Sabine Hossenfelder
Cars: Late Brake Show
Boats: Oceanliner Designs
Hics with cars and a welder: Grind Hard Plumbing Co
Flying: Matt Guthmiller (needs careful selection as it can get boring, but the c47 across the Atlantic is glorious)
Drumming: El Estepario Siberiano
Italian car dribble inducing time thief: Davide Cironi Drive Experience

I'll watch quite a few of Simon Whistlers channels like Mega Projects

Thoughty2 for general stories

Curious Droid Science and tech, really good channel which I think I subscribed to when he had under 50k subs now over a million

Anton Petrov for some more Science

And like Jeff mentioned above Auto Shenanigans. This showed up in the recomended videos one day I was bored and I've watched everyone since, no idea why but the presenter John makes them worth watching.

Pauls Hardware for compter related stuff

Kurzgesagt for science and other randome things

Steve Marsh for travel videos although he started just dotting around Scotland hes now moving further afield

Whisky Whims as I like whisky and work With Stuart so watch his videos

Astro Biscuit for some astronomy

Ben Collins Drives & Jimmy Broadbent for some car stuff Along with Aidan Millward for motorsport although mainly F1

Jonathan Pie just because everyone should watch his take on political matters

Screen Crush and New Rockstars for film and TV easter eggs

I watch virtually no TV but a lot of YouTube 🙂

I wasn't going to plug my own as it felt wrong but if WCA can do it who am I not to follow the example?

Auto Shenanigans – Proper middle age guy stuff, looking at random roading infrastrucutre

I really like this one. He did a history of motorways one, he does some occasional shorts on particular items and at the moment there's a "Great British Road Journeys" series where he drives around places of interest using a 1923 Michelin Guide Book and the maps of that time, trying to stay on original roads and routes where possible.

GCN is usually pretty reliably good.

I like SciManDan too - science stuff and flat earth / science conspiracy debunking.

Matt Armstrong, ex-BMXer buys smashed up cars and repairs them on the cheap. Interesting to see how bits in the cars work and it's occasionally quite funny

High Performance. Jake Humphreys interviews successful people. Quite a few F1 people like James Vowells & Ollie Bearman, but also plenty like Tom Pidcock, Keely Hodgkinson & Michael Johnson

Astrum - Astronomy related stuff, in quite easy to understand format.

PBS Spacetime - Phsyics & astronomy related stuff, in depth & very technical in places

bigclivedotcom - takes apart random electricals and tells you how/why they will kill you or what's wrong in the design

I forgot to list Map Men! Two comedians discuss weird oddities in maps, countries, borders etc. "Why British Cities Make No Sense", "The world's silliest time zones" , "Bir Tawil – the land that nobody wants"

Warning: excessively ear-wormish theme tune

Cars

Mat Armstrong Mk1 & Mk2 - Although the novelty is starting to wear off.

JayEmm on Cars

The Late Brake Show

Special Stage

Skiing

Laurie Taylor Ski - GP Slalom Ski Team racer (what I used to do)

Cody Townsend

Random

Harry Dwyer - sailing around the UK in a small powerboat (very very good series)

Joe Marlers Things People Do - funny

Biking

Greg McCahon - Brilliant series cycling the length of the Americas

Jono Jones

Matt Jones

LrTime - humerous German couple who tinker with LR Discovery's

WhistlinDiesel - takes stuff apart.....

Cars -

Retropower. Love the weekly updates from their workshop. The cars they turn out are outstanding.

Salvage Rebuilds - bit like Wheeler Dealers but better. Chris, the guy that does the doing is a very clever guy

Driftworks - Phil, the owner has an amazing collection of cars and goes into some real detailed updates of his various projects without being all YouTubery

Bikes

2nd Life Bikes - repurposing old bikes

Old Shovel - very relaxing builds

Bernard Kerr - bit marmite!

Also enjoy watching Flawless Cleaning, such a nice guy that helps people out.

I like watching ppl actually work (as I work in IT)..

Mr Hewes - Tank restorer
Dean Doherty - Fixes power tools
IFarm WeFarm - Irish diary farmer
Marty T - NZ guy who fixes plant kit, usually where it's been abandoned for 20 years..
Project Farm - should always get an honoury mention for his amazing testing series.
Geoffrey Croker - NZ guy restoring a series 1 landrover (he might finish one day) and a lathe and other machinery

and lot of other stuff, but those are one I look out for as they don't produce video regularly..

https://m.youtube.com/c/KrisHarbour /videos

~~~~~

Young chap living off the land in Wales and building a farm, hydro power, and wood workshops

Living the dream yet humble and honest about the journey 

(+1 Mr Hewes, Project Farm, and Last Best Tool)

Another auto shenanigans fan here.

John malaky for woodwork etc

Walk with me Tim for holiday/hotel fun.

Breadmeatsfood - food eating comps.

Morten Hilmer nature photography

Harry Dwyer, another Cote for this one. Little speed boat round Britain.

I got pretty addicted to HeavyDSparks- a heavy off road recovery channel. I didn't make the Diesel Brothers connection at the time, but, it's the Diesel Brothers in post-law-suit form. Like all youtube channels it gets more desperate for content and creates more and more "accidental" reality-tv disasters over time, lots of intentionally doing it badly but if you go back earlier it's much more natural feeling (ie, they were still doing it badly but more because they didn't have a clue, it's amazing they never killed anyone). The presentation and production values are good, it can be absolutely beautiful sometimes. Plus big trucks.

Came on to suggest HeavyD - Northwind beat me to it. It also crosses over into the Cero Gordo Ghost Town mentioned above.

Ryan Van Duzer is always worth a watch too - some great bike packing and running stuff from a really enthusiastic guy!

twoodfrd, amazing guitar repairs

gorilla guitar repairs, same

maximus ironthumper, making and fixing things

in the woodyard, chainsaws, wood processing

Dr Bart Kay,  nutrition

Dr Ken Berry, nutrition

Jesse Chapus, nutrition

Kent Carnivore, nutrition

Has anyone mentioned Mr Hewes yet?

It's bloody marvellous.

Mighty car mods is my go to car viewing channel along with lowdown transporters.

For randomness Wheelie yellow. My kids love it!

Other than that i tend to just scroll until i find something.

Oh and Colin Furze.

All the ones I watch have been mentioned except Storror. All the dangerous rooftop stuff is behind a paywall now because YouTube demonetises it but it's still fun to watch them messing around in cool places.

I Did a Thing is good but inconsistent. He's a maker/inventor who likes dangerous ideas. The twist is that he has no skills and a really bizarre sense of humour. I've cracked up laughing at a few of his videos but they're not all great.

It did lead me to a few other Australian channels like FriendlyJordies. An eye opening look at organised crime and general lowlife scumbags. He touched someone's nerve and had his house burned down which was an interesting saga.

Dave Simpson if you're into Guitars
Big Clive for disassembly and reverse engineering of random electricals

No love for Street Pigeon?

No love for Street Pigeon?

I didnt include any biking ones in mine as I thought there would be plenty mentions. I do watch him but I dont watch many biking ones to be honest.

Charlie Rolls - where farming content meets world class trials riding content.

Goonzquad    - USA Performance cars and some Construction

4WD247. - Australian 4x4

Matts Off Road Recovery

Single track sampler

Blot Outdoor Show

Tom Lamb

He's a farmer.

Mate of and appears in Colin Furze videos. Messing about with big machinery.

Just watched the first two episodes of this new channel, its been lingering in my recommendations for a few days but ignored it as I thought it was just going to be a rant/tale of sorrow about being rejected by Grand Designs.  Decided to give it a watch as its only 6 minutes and looks like it has potential to be a decent long term series. (and it wasn't a rant, just ended with an invite to Kevin to pop in for cuppa!)

Creative? Tick

Big Machines? Tick

Mic'd up? Tick

Shared Oopsie's? Tick

Animal Sidekick? Woof

https://www.youtube.com/@RejectedbyGrandDesigns

Some of my favourites in no order

SuperFastMatt - clearly clever bloke making questionable engineering choices.

Wris****chrevival - watch servicing, I find automatic watches fascinating for some reason.

Finnegans Garage - Redneck car and boat builder.

C90 adventures - This guy’s seen a lot of the world on the back of a Honda c90.  Childish sense of humor.

Babish - New York cooking fella

Superfast Matt is funny in a dry way. However, I am very much in his camp for "good enough" when it comes to most projects. He's also good for finding out how you should probably not doing things.

If you like cars as art, Larry Chen's channel is pretty good. He gets to see a lot of very nice cars around the world.

I wish I could think of a good idea for a YouTube channel. It seems like a potentially fun way to make a living as long as you don't commit to a gruelling weekly upload schedule that sees you constantly repeating yourself. (most UK mtbers)

It's also completely tapped out. Literally anything you can think of is already on there.

Gosforth Handyman  https://www.youtube.com/@GosforthHandyman

And his 'gardening' channel: @AndyMac"> https://www.youtube.com/ @AndyMac

Others have already mentioned some of the channels I follow. I do like some of the content on Always Another Adventure (plus he used to work with my dad at the Beeb):  https://www.youtube.com/@alwaysanotheradventure

I have been known, occasionally, to stumble upon a particular gravel related channel, that may, or may not, have been mentioned previously... 😉 <wink emoji>

+1

Retropower

M539

Harry's garage

Jay Leno's garage

And also Hackshop Garage

(you may have guessed it's all mainly about cars?)

Stick to football/The overlap is very funny, as is the 'Roy and Mica ' series ( On Skybet YT sadly, but very funny nonetheless) IMHO

I wish I could think of a good idea for a YouTube channel. It seems like a potentially fun way to make a living as long as you don’t commit to a gruelling weekly upload schedule that sees you constantly repeating yourself. (most UK mtbers)

It’s also completely tapped out. Literally anything you can think of is already on there.

seems like a lot of hardwork if you want to actually make money from it - you pretty much need to do the video a week thing to make it viable.  Someone I met who had 70k subscribers said for each 1 min of content he had at least 1hr of filming/prep/set up and at least 1/2hr of editing.  Then admin/marketing/promo stuff on top.    After 3 yrs said basically minimum wage - unless you do patreon etc

I wish I could think of a good idea for a YouTube channel.

Honesty, it looks like a hellish treadmill to me. I get that some folks make a good go of it, but the burnout rate must be insane, and if you're reliant on it for your income, then there's probably a truly terrifying moment of leaving what you're doing in order to have more time to create more content in the hope of attracting more views to your channel in order to get paid well enough to leave what you're doing in order to make more content...until you drop dead of mental exhaustion.

It's noticeable to me at least that had you asked this forum a couple of years back what we were watching; many of us would list some of the POV mountain biking channels, that they don't really exist anymore - or are both fewer and generate less output than they did, tells me how precarious it must be.

I'm hooked on this channel at the moment - it's very easy "slow" TV.

He's bought a ruined chateau and is rebuilding it - looking at the quantity of materials and machinery needed I've no idea where the money's coming from, but it's nice to watch.  There's loads of "episodes", but they're mostly in 10min chunks so easy to watch here and there.

https://www.youtube.com/@escapetoruralfrance

I’ve tended to to follow the van life ones tbh but just think that the whole ‘wild’ camping thing is a bit off and overly freeloading when applied to some of the park ups and I’ve lost the love.

I’ve been watching a lot of  Quad-bike videos but apart from the bloke rebuilding them (Michael Sabo)they can be annoying.

(In Spain the Suzuki LTZ-400 is very popular although you can’t buy a new one so a young one is 2008, they did an updated efi version but I’m not sure if ever seen one here for sell.)

as per @z1ppy

IFarm WeFarm – Irish diary farmer
Marty T – NZ guy who fixes plant kit, usually where it’s been abandoned for 20 years.

Both very good and strangely relaxing.

Watch Wes Work - US car mechanic

2Vintage - guy fixes motorbikes

JC Smith projects - bloke builds and repairs trucks, welds a lot

SuperTruckerDan - American HGV driver - delivers things in a big lorry.

One I forgot on my list is

Good Bloke Outdoors

Bloke from Bradford (my old home town) . Couple of years ago gave up drugs/city life and now goes walking / wild camping. He’s quite funny in an awkward kind of way.

Very well produced and edited

c90adventures

Drew Builds Stuff

The Late Brake Show

This is pretty interesting!

True Blue Travellers is also worth a look - a likeable couple converting vans and then travelling in them

This crowd-funded North West Passage series is interesting, four parts so far.  If you like bears then you're in for a treat.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fMj7ncNA1E

Part 4:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xrMBgMPjHM

The Late Brake Show

I really enjoy the Barn Finds.

I’m currently watching those happy days - they are vanlifers going to Lapland for Xmas for some no real reason other than getting into off-road , they have a demountable  on loan complete with ford ranger double cab and imho pretend to live in it full time but utterly clueless .

Zero experience of driving 4x4 or any mechanical sympathy or ability so I’m sure it’ll all be fine.

I’m not sure if it’s actually fair sport to watch them for the fail IMHO but sometimes watching stupid just sucks you in.

(I think they found that being clueless with a tuk tuk in India generated the views as opposed to their usual overnighting in ldl car parks )

I find this guy doing helicopter jobs in Canada strangely fascinating viewing:

BushPiloting - YouTube

I wish I could think of a good idea for a YouTube channel. It seems like a potentially fun way to make a living as long as you don’t commit to a gruelling weekly upload schedule that sees you constantly repeating yourself. (most UK mtbers)

It’s also completely tapped out. Literally anything you can think of is already on there.

I think the main thing is writing a plan and a script and doing the necessary research in advance of the filming and then the editing. There's huge amounts of total shite on there from people who say umm and ahh every other word, who clearly haven't researched their topic or who can't select the required highlights and who post a 30 min video with about 2 minutes of actual interesting stuff in amongst the fluff or who simple cannot present for love or money, people fumbling with kit ("is this on?" / ""is this working?" / "yep, just checking my mouse is working..." )

That's the kind of crap you expected in the early days of MS Teams from the IT-clueless employee, not something you should ever see from a supposedly professional content creator.

If you can do all of that first bit and come up with a proper well-put-together video (sorry, *edit*), you'll already be near the to of the tree, regardless of if there's a dozen other channels doing the same thing.