KSI on joining BGT: "People will question me as a judge, but I’ve been making content for years"

I have a beige, L-shaped sofa with orange pillows, and there’s a nice carpet underneath it. Right next to the TV is a massive cat tree for my two sphynxes.

What have you enjoyed watching on telly recently?

I enjoyed Severance on Apple TV, and I’ve just finished the second series of Silo. I’d highly recommend that. I also thought The Traitors was really good.

How do you think you’d fare on The Traitors?

Whenever I play among friends, I’m always the first to get voted out. People instantly don’t trust me!

You’re joining Britain’s Got Talent as a guest judge. Were you nervous?

A bit! It’s something different and the audience can be quite intimidating – especially if you say, "No, this is terrible." There can be a lot of booing…

You have 25 million subscribers on YouTube — do you think you landed the BGT gig because you pull in a young audience who otherwise might evade mainstream telly?

Britain’s Got Talent saw my audience and how engaged they are and obviously wanted to tap into that. But I’m from the YouTube world – I’m cut-throat and straightforward. Some people aren’t going to like that. It’s quite polarising! I’m not just going to guest-judge and be the same as everybody else. I bring my own style to it. If I think something is bad, I’ll say.

What was the worst audition you saw?

There was a person who did impressions and they were awful. You could tell he was really trying. When I told him how bad it was, he was visibly upset, on the verge of tears – but I just said, "I know you travelled all this way, but that was bad, bro. I’m sorry man." There will be people who watch it and say, “You don’t have what it takes to be a judge. What gives you the qualifications?” But I’ve been making content for years. I’ve seen the best of the best and the worst of the worst. I’m very qualified to see what will do well and I’m not going to sugarcoat it.

As someone who has forged a career on the internet, you must have had your fair share of online criticism…

I’m resilient, but obviously some stuff does get to me. If you truly believe in yourself, then it doesn’t matter. If I make a video that I think is good and someone says otherwise, I don’t care. What I care about is making sure people are engaged enough to want to say something. If people are watching it and moving on and not speaking about it – that’s bad. I want emotion. I want you to really love or really hate me.

There’s a lot of pressure on social media companies to take responsibility for content that’s posted on their platforms. Do you think we need more individual responsibility?

It’s like trying to say the police have to monitor every single thing a person says in public – it’s not possible. We live in a free country, there’s freedom of speech. And a lot of the time, if you try to restrict certain people from speaking, you give them more power – whereas if you ignore them, they lose power because no one cares.

YouTubers are moving into mainstream TV — you’ve got Mr Beast with an Amazon Prime Show [Beast Games] and your YouTube show Inside is moving to Netflix for series two. Is online video still the future or are we seeing a move to the mainstream?

YouTube is a platform where you can build an audience – you can then take that content to Netflix and Amazon. I don’t think YouTube will ever be King, and I don’t think Netflix will ever be King. They go hand in hand. The streaming services have great content. But on YouTube it’s the wild, wild west – you can put whatever you want out there and see if you can build an audience.

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Britain's Got Talent starts at 7pm on Saturday 22nd February on ITV, STV and ITV.

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