Introducing Viktor Dmitrievitch Huliganov


This was made on May 27th 2006, when I had been on YouTube already over three months. The day before had been my birthday, and my parents had been here in Warsaw. For my birthday gift they gave me my first ever webcam, and the next day I got on it and started to do characters. Viktor Huliganov was born. This is the first ever Viktor video – he was going to be an amusing shady Russian businessman at first, but developed into more of a crazy professor, once the Russian lessons started. Although, of course, the one does not necessarily exclude the other. This marks the end of my “early attempts” section, and is therefore the last film in this section. With this film I transferred into the next phase of what I’ve been doing on the internet ever since.

Viktor has come to life in more ways than one. He blogs, he makes Russian lessons, he writes books, he talks on the radio. People write to me as Viktor, talk to me as Viktor, some people still think after watching many Viktor films that there really is this Russian dude – more sophisticated viewers are aware that it is a persona but want the persona to live anyway, and so they continue to address and to follow Viktor Huliganov. I had no idea of the success that this would have when I started doing it.

Some people have accused me of doing a Borat, but there are big differences in style on the one hand, but on the other hand, I have been impersonating the Russian accent ever since Sacha Baron Cohen was running around in short trousers. There are many sources for the Huliganov persona, not all of them Russians, actually. If Borat is on that list anywhere it is not high on the list and not with any intention or awareness on my part.

Button Man


This film shows that I was trying to experiment but I still only had the Fuji which was trained on the monitor. This is the last film I took and uploaded that had to rely solely on that one technology, but already you can see the desire to experiment a bit more with the films. The next film I did after this one was a radical departure…

Polish Carol #2


Another carol from the same carol concert as earlier. This is Richard Berkeley’s choir here in Warsaw singing “Przybiezeli do Betlejem”, a famous Polish “kolęda” or carol. Again just a single verse here owing to the tiny memory card I had when starting off. Since that time everyone’s memory card is now much bigger, and I sometimes wonder which is driving which – is YouTube driving the technology available on the highstreet, is it the highstreet which is driving YT, or is it both ways?

Convict and Pim

This was another early attempt at aquarium filming. This convict cichlid was bought initially in an attempt to breed with a sajica, but they all turned out to be males. I no longer believe any fish shop with promises a female cichlid, They all sell you males as females, they are like Svejk with the dogs.

After the sajica was no more, the convict lived with this Pimelodus fasciatus, which was a good match for it, being a lot bigger. That pim died only late this year after living in my tanks for about 4 years. I first bought it from a tank of much bigger cichlids in a shop where it had been roughed up a bit. At the start it had a broken barbel, but that fixed itself in time.