SHARJAH: Meet Woody and Kleiny – Britain’s Got Talent’s Simon Cowell called them the “Ant & Dec of football juggling” during their audition at the talent show in the early 2000’s.
To a group of young fans here, the British duo’s presence on Day 2 of the 44th edition of the Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) 2025 is a treat as they get to meet their favourite YouTubers who came all the way from Britain not just to talk about content creating but also do live football tricks for them.
At the persuasion of his partner in crime, Woody got the crowd “oohing” and “aahing” after juggling a football with his feet while lying flat on the floor of the event venue.
“When we were football freestylers, we travelled the world. We worked with some of the biggest footballers in the world,” Kleiny told the mostly Gen Alpha crowd about their early career before deep diving into content creating.
“When we got to the (Got Talent) semifinals, it really elevated our careers as football freestylers.”
Without their online persona, they’re simply known as Paul Wood and Paul Klein. Woody claimed that what makes them endearing to their fanbase (or “community” as they’d like to call them) is their bond.
“We’re like brothers, best friends and so on. I think that what people actually know us best for, is we’re those two guys off of social media who create viral videos.”
Kleiny added that they had amassed some 50 million followers across the social media platforms with views averaging one billion yearly.
Held at the Influence Hub of the Expo Centre Sharjah, Woody and Kleiny explained that their success didn’t happen overnight. They poured countless hours into planning and filming their content – even braving the cold, rainy British weather.
The same cold reception from their family and friends towards achieving their dream, however, did not put a damper on their vision – to be the biggest double-act in the world.
An injury left Kleiny bed-bound and unable to walk. It was this unfortunate event that led to a moment of clarity for them to start their own YouTube channel.
“Obviously, I was absolutely devastated, but I was also devastated for this man (Woody). I felt so guilty because I felt like I was holding him back, and we couldn’t carry on pursuing our journey of being this double-act football freestyler.
“So, at that time, we were like, what can we do? Like, we want to carry on being a double-act. Where can we go with this? And, like I said, in 2013, when we launched our YouTube channel, we saw a gap in the market in social media for a double-act.
“No more football tricks. I couldn’t do it. And now we’re this entertainment duo that did pranks, challenges, experiments, you name it.
“At the start, everyone thought we were crazy. And they laughed at us. Family, friends, they were like, what are these guys doing making these silly videos on the internet? Again, this was a long time ago.”
They added that the reason they’re part of the speakers’ list at SIBF is due to the book they wrote, “The Social Struggle”, which touches on the back story that they presented earlier.
“‘The Social Struggle’ touches on pretty much the back story that I gave you earlier that goes into so much more detail.
“We had such an amazing experience writing that book. It was actually very therapeutic… an amazing experience.”
“Social media was not like it is now where it’s taken a lot more seriously. But we had a vision, and we had a goal, that we wanted to be the biggest double-act on the planet.
“It would have been easy for us at that point to listen to our family, listen to our friends, listen to the people telling us, like, ‘what are you doing? Stop’.
“Just go and carry on with your day jobs. But we didn’t. So we worked for five years on our social media journey, while also having full-time jobs.
“Didn’t make a penny. We were filming videos for like a hundred views in the pouring rain in the UK. As everyone knows, the weather is absolutely terrible in the UK.
“There were times where we were looking at each other as well, like, should we carry on with this? But, you know, we can’t listen to these people, we’re just going to go.
Five years into our journey, we got our first million-view video. As you can imagine, we were absolutely buzzing.
“We were over the moon. And... Funny thing about it, it wasn’t actually even on our own channel.
“It was on somebody else’s channel. But we took it, alright? We knew we had to roll with that.
“It got to the point where we managed to go into social media full-time. And, again, people thought we were crazy for doing that. This was probably, you know, six years ago.
“But we did it. Fast-forward to today – we’re standing on stage with now over 50 million followers across all platforms.
“Averaging around 10 billion views a year. The reason I say that is because we had a dream. We didn’t listen to others, and we just went for it.”
The duo also talked about developing an online course which is expected to roll out in January.
“When our course comes out and if you were to use the link to our course, we will teach you all the elements that go into creating content in order to give you the best chance of producing viral content.
“The one thing that you can’t teach anyone is having a winning mentality and it’s very cliché but it’s the truth and it’s the things like hard work, dedication, going through the struggle, having the focus… you need to give it everything if you want to be the best.”
