A YouTube sensation with over 20 million followers is now making a name for himself on the Strictly dance floor after emerging at the top of the leaderboard for week one. John Nellis, 33, has been paired with Strictly veteran Katya Jones for the 24th series of the beloved BBC show.
Debut Performance and Judging
On Saturday, the duo made their debut performance on the show as a couple and performed a foxtrot to “Ordinary” by Alex Warren. The routine - the penultimate dance of the night - left judges Motsi Mabuse and Shirley Ballas on their feet, while the studio erupted into thunderous applause.
The couple were awarded 31 points, after Anton Du Beke declared the routine “extraordinary” and Craig Revel Horwood applauded the dance as “classy, elegant and graceful”.
From Air Traffic Controller to YouTube Star
The accomplishment is all the more remarkable as Nellis says he had no prior dance experience before taking part in the show. Despite having millions of young followers, many older viewers said they were unfamiliar with Nellis, who now stands to become a household name.
The 33-year-old from Newcastle, County Down, Northern Ireland, first created his YouTube account in 2019, while working as an air traffic controller at Cork Airport. Explaining his decision to start the channel, he said that he “was in a job that was a great job, but it was relatively dead-end”, so decided to start creating sports content as a type of hobby.
In 2022, he took a huge gamble and left his job to focus on content creation full time - at the time, he had 7,431 subscribers. The gamble paid off in spades as his videos have gone on to amass billions of views and have featured some of the biggest sporting names, including Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Personal Life and Strictly Ambitions
He now has a huge 16 million subscribers on YouTube and 2.6 million followers on TikTok, who named him Sports Creator of the Year in 2024. “When I look back, I label myself as delusional,” he later admitted to BBC Northern Ireland. “I don't know how any channel with as few subscribers as I had, in their right mind, would quit the job I had.”
In 2025, he married his partner Shannon McMahon, with whom he shares a child. On joining the show, Nellis said: "I'm still in disbelief that I've been selected for Strictly and, if I'm honest, I'm a little nervous as I've never danced before! It's such an incredible opportunity, and I'm going to throw myself into every moment. I can't wait to meet everyone, learn a new skill and, hopefully, be much better at family parties by the end of it!"
