Comedy graduate Karl Porter goes viral with football celebration video

Karl Porter, who graduated from BA Comedy Writing and Performance in 2015, has been watched millions of times around the world after his clip at a London club went viral last week.

In the clip, Karl does a slow-motion physical comedic performance of a footballer scoring and then celebrating a goal.

Within 24 hours of being uploaded last week, the views rocketed to 30 million as it was shared around the globe and Karl found himself being interviewed by the likes of Sky News, ESPN, TalkSport, the BBC and Canadian Breakfast Television.

Karl said: “I remember going to sleep on the Monday night [after posting the clip] and I kind of turned to my girlfriend and went, I’ve got 300,000 views, which is still insane. And then I think in the morning, she woke me up and said, oh my god, it’s over a million! And I was just like, oh wow!

“For me it’s come as a big surprise but I feel like its maybe opened doors, where I can kind of go on to build myself up to more bigger shows or get into television.

“Its captured a lot of people’s attention who are thinking, all right, we can do something with this guy now. So its exciting to see when it can go from here. I definitely think its just a really big step, just out of nowhere, to kind of get me on the map.”

“I hope it’ll just give me more opportunities.”

Karl currently works at Blackpool Winter Gardens but each week gets on trains after work to head around the North West and perform his act after waiting a few years of graduation to fully immerse himself in the comedy circuit.

He said the technique for the clip was developed from the course’s stand-up training as he learnt how to channel his physical expressions into his act.

Find out more about our BA Comedy Writing and Performance course.