A WIRRAL based Youtuber has spoken out about the success of his comedy football animation channel 442oons.

With nearly 3m subscribers and achieving more than 1bn views on his channel, former deputy head teacher Dean Stobbart began his animation parody channel in 2013 after seeing a gap in the market.

It was after the World Cup in 2014 when one particular video propelled 442oons into stardom.

Dean told the Globe: "I was working as a deputy head at a school in Greasby when I came up with the idea of 442oons.

"I had spent five years in London working as an actor and decided to move up here with my wife.

"As a hobby I used to look at a few videos and had come up with different endings. Having done some animations for lessons I realised that there was nothing really there animation wise for football.

"At first there were a lot of late nights just laughing and entertaining myself with different video ideas.

"It was when we did a video after the World Cup in 2014 that it went viral and I woke up to phone calls from journalists from around the world.

"Now I have a team of five people who help me create and publish content. My hobby has now become a full-time job.

"It's great as we all work from home and use Whatsapp to send eachother ideas etc,.

"I still write a lot of the scripts and do voiceovers but it's great to pull everyone together and get creative.

"What's great is that football is such a great vehicle as it is always going to be topical and newsworthy. I think that is what keeps us relevant."

So what's next for 442oons?

"We're just keeping it going and keeping it fresh," Dean says.

"We're also looking at other things such as our celebrity equivalent channel Celebri2oons that has potential but it's finding the time.

"There is so many people engaged in the football side of things, we don't want to drop that. We want everything to grow organically.

"I would just like to say thank you to anyone who watches this crazy nonsense and continues to support us!"

To watch and subscribe to 442oons visit https://www.youtube.com/user/442oons