Niki Albon

Niki Albon was born on February 20, 1992 in Canvey Island, Essex. His father Darren is a mechanic, while his mother Jacqueline is a hairdresser. He has a twin brother named Sammy¬¬ – who is younger to him by 18 minutes – as well as two other siblings. He attended Seevic College from 2008 to 2010, studying English Literature and Language, Geology, History and Classical Civilization. While they did schooling separately, both he and his twin brother went to Roehampton University, in London, where Niki completed his major in History with a minor in Journalism and News Media, and Sammy did a course on Classical Civilization. The two brothers currently live in East London.

Niki Albon was the first of the twins to join YouTube on June 29, 2011, creating the channel “theNIKIPOD”. However, he later created a joint channel with Sammy titled ‘NikiNSammy’ on May 27, 2013 and posted their introductory video on June 13, 2013. While they began posting funny videos of various kinds, they gained popularity by sharing two videos of their drastic weight loss of a combined 16 stone in mid-2014. Thanks to their love for snacks, the two brothers, Niki and Sammy, weighed 18st and 21st 2lb respectively at one point. However, after entering university, they ditched fast food and began cooking healthy food for themselves. Following an 18-month ordeal, Niki was down to 11st 6lb, while Sammy weighed 12st 6lb. Their honest revelation of their lack of self-confidence due to being overweight and successful weight-loss story won over the internet and earned them over 40k fans.

In 2015, they hosted their own show on BBC Radio 1 as part of the 'Internet Takeover’ show. The twin dynamic duo was well received by fans who helped spread their popularity on various social media platforms. Soon after, YouTube promoted their channel on their 'channels to watch' list. They subsequently starred alongside famous YouTubers like Zoella (Zoe Sugg) and Tomska (Thomas Ridgewell) in ‘The Creators’ documentary commissioned by YouTube and directed by Oscar-nominated American director Nanette Burstein. By the end of 2015, they had gathered 100k subscribers and had to quit their part-time jobs to focus fulltime on YouTube. They currently boast of a loyal fan base of 198k.

By the time they reached 135k subscribers, Niki Albon and his bother Sammy participated in an episode of the show 'OAP Internet Virgins' on Sky One in September 2015. The show is a social experiment that attempts to pair people from two generations, i.e. young internet personalities and older people oblivious of the plethora of ways internet can benefit them, to see how the two groups "can help each other connect with a life beyond their own". They spent a couple weeks with George Penfield, an 84-year-old artistically inclined man who had to leave his singing group 'Nostalgic' to be with his ailing wife, with whom he was married for 64 years. He had been learning to cook by finding recipes with the help of Google, but that was pretty much all he could do online, while the twins helped him learn his way around the internet so that he can save time by shopping online and thereby rejoin his band once in a while. In return, they learned from the cheerful old man how to live life to the fullest despite adversities.

Following their encounter with George, the two became curious to know what technology looked like before they were born. They subsequently made a video of them checking out retro 8-bit games on a 30-year-old Acorn Electron computer.