The fitness coach whose streamed workouts attracted record viewers became a beacon of wellbeing and positivity during Britain’s first lockdown
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Back in mid-March, on the day the government announced that schools would be closed until further notice, Joe Wicks lay in bed unable to sleep. Just after midnight, three words popped into his head: “PE. With. Joe.” The 35-year-old fitness instructor from Surrey texted them to Nikki, his older brother and creative director at their company, The Body Coach. The next day, they pitched the idea on social media and emailed their database of 25,000 schools. The first live, daily 20-minute exercise session would be at 9am on Monday 23 March on YouTube, coincidentally the first morning after Boris Johnson’s directive that we all must stay at home.
Wicks, who has Saint Sebastian curls and a penchant for sockless trainers, says he never gets nervous before recording a workout, but on that day he did find his heart beating unusually fast. He relaxed soon enough in front of a camera set up in his almost pathologically tidy living room in Richmond, London: Nikki told him, through an earpiece, that more than 700,000 households were joining him, doing burpees, duck walks and various other hellish exercises with cutesy names. The next day, the live audience peaked at 954,000, making it the most popular streamed workout ever. Wicks decided that any proceeds from the sessions would go to NHS charities; ultimately he raised £580,000.