British TikTok sensation Luke Hamnett shot to internet fame during the pandemic, with some ridiculous and very funny videos.

Maybe you’ve seen him slapping his stone-faced mother in the pita bread challenge, or pretending to dance with imaginary club friends.

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In 2021, a video of Hamnett pretending to be a kid’s mom went viral, reaching 100k views in under an hour.

“It was so overwhelming, I thought, ‘I don’t know how to react to this,'” he told the BBC.

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The 33-year-old one-time insurance salesman is recognized on the street now, and earns a lot more in brand partnerships than his former commissions brought in.

“I don’t find this a job, I find it really fun,” he said of his newfound fame.

But life wasn’t always a laugh for the awkward kid from Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire.

Growing up, he was relentlessly bullied.

“I looked like the typical person you would bully: I had ginger hair, glasses, goofy teeth, and I was gay. Well, I was trying to deal with my sexuality,” he told Pink News.

The bullying continued into high school, but Hamnett says he learned to use humor as “a defense mechanism.”

“I used to try to make them laugh as much as possible in order to get in on the joke rather than being the joke, even though it did hurt me a lot.”

At 15, Hamnett worked up the courage to tell a close friend he was gay.

“I didn’t know what my feelings were,” he said, “and it really scared me, especially coming out in 2007 – the world has since changed.”

While he shared that confidence with his close friend, Hamnett didn’t go public, like a fellow student at school who did.

“He got so much hate for it. They used to shout loads of stuff at him, and I remember thinking he was so brave because I knew I was gay, too, and I didn’t want the same heat.”

Sometimes Hamnett even wished he were straight. Maybe “life would be easier,” he thought.

“I wouldn’t even dream of thinking that now,” he says.

A change in scenery inspired the teen to come into his own.

“I lived in fear for 15 years of my life, constantly getting bullied. Then I moved away and became myself.”

Hamnett credits the support he got from his parents and that good friend for giving him the room to grow into the proud gay man he is today.

“Just speak to someone, because you shouldn’t be facing it on your own,” he advises kids like him who face bullying today.

“It does get easier, but confide in someone.”

Asked if he could go back and change anything about those fraught years, Hamnett said absolutely not.

“Because it’s made me the person I am: someone who is strong, knows what he wants, and is unapologetically himself,” he said.

“I’m sticking up for him,” he said of his younger self.

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