As the CEO of the Mark Angel Comedy series on YouTube, you could say Mark Angel’s job is a ‘pleasureful’ one. he is a veteran in the entertainment industry who started out more than 10 years ago in Nigeria’s skit-making industry.
His skits became an instant hit. In 2017, Mark Angel Comedy received a plaque from YouTube for having reached one million subscriptions. It was the first Nigerian-based YouTube channel to reach that threshold.
Interestingly, Mark Angel is technically the biggest YouTuber in Africa with over 5.7 million subscribers and more than 1 billion views on his 200+ videos. Mark Angel’s YouTube channel was the first African comedy channel to reach one million subscribers. In this interview, Uncle Mark shares more insight about his brand and family.
Who is Mark Angel and what was the inspiration behind the name?
Mark Angel is a businessman, and entrepreneur who found passion in, acting, and entertainment businesses and most importantly helped to discover and push young talents.
The name Mark Angel, well mark is my first name, I am from Imo state and my native name is Chidebere and not so many people know me as Chidebere because during my early years, I changed my name from Chidi to Mark which was my English name and it would be easier to pronounce
Later On, I decided to change my surname as well (laughs) so I went to my principal and told him my surname now is Angel and he replied from where? I told him my father’s name is Angel, my father is dark and because of that, he was called Angel.
After secondary school, I decided to change my document and everything to Angel and that’s how I got the name Mark Angel because I wanted to go into Entertainment and as a kid, I had this idea that Mark Angel would be easy to pronounce by people.
Sometimes I regret that I changed my name because most times I travel out of Nigeria people tend to think I am from South Africa because the name doesn’t sound Nigerian and, in those instances, I regret that I changed my name.
Which clip do you feel took you to stardom, that particular clip that made you famous?
I feel it’s the one with Emmanuella, I wasn’t in the clip though I made it and that’s the clip that took our brand into the international scenes and the name of that clip is ‘This is not my real face‘The video went viral and in fact that was the beginning of the brands large scale distribution. That’s the clip this is not my real face oo
People know Mark Angel and also know Emmanuella so can you share more light as to who Emmanuella is to Mark Angel?
Well right now I can tell you Emmanuella is my daughter (laughs) not my biological daughter though but she is like a daughter, we are friends and business partners, and she is like everything to me.
In our early days, I was struggling to get known and put out my messages but then I noticed and vacuum in the family content and there were no children influencers, so at that period I saw that children were mimicking Uncle Chinedu that’s Aki and paw paw and were influenced by them so I then decided why don’t we have children influencing children and that was when my journey began in search of kids to start acting and Emmanuella was the front runner.
Do you have other kids you are training?
Yes i have other kids I am training but they can’t go the Emmanuella route, it will be impossible for them to follow her route because it might not work for them so we are putting kids in school for acting, cinematography and other things, do you know how long we went without making money because there was no monetization as at then, we were doing it for passion, I spent a lot of money to put this things out there, I mean I had a side hustle, at some point I was a security man in port Harcourt, as a security guard I would work night and during day you won’t know I am a security guard and I would be doing comedy but then my aim was to make it in the industry, most people who didn’t believe in it are seeing that it’s an industry that’s feeding a lot of people young Nigerians, when we realized that Facebook was monetized in other countries we began the struggle on how to get facebook monetization into Nigeria and until today we are still in that struggle to get Facebook monetized in Nigeria.
In a recent interview, you mentioned that you got married and got divorced in secret. And you went on to say if you were your daughter, you wouldn’t date yourself. Can you tell us about that?
Why I made the statement is balls down to age being a factor, I think at this period in my life I’m committed to my work and can travel anytime and this isn’t helping any relationship I find myself in. I’m married to my work and dating my work right now. So, any man who takes his work more seriously than a relationship, you shouldn’t date that man. I don’t have time and that’s one of the things that killed my first marriage.
I was married to one of the best women on earth, I feel like I will never have the opportunity to meet someone like that again in my lifetime. I regret not being with her now and the decisions I made, no one prays for divorce and separation. Although we didn’t have a quarrel or fight but rather we sat down like adults and had an understanding about going our separate ways. Till today I can say we are good buddies and I can proudly call her my best friend.
Have you visited Akwa Ibom and have you flown Ibom Air?
Yes, I have been to Akwa Ibom and I have flown Ibom Air. Ibom Air has the best inflight services I have seen and the best on-time service.
Any time I want to rest and not travel out of the country, I go to Akwa Ibom. I’m a good member of Ibom Resort. When I was learning golf, I learned it at Ibom Icon Resort.
I have good friends in Akwa Ibom.
If you never got into the work of comedy kits, what else would you have gone into?
I have a passion for tech too so that I would have gone into the tech world, it was through tech I went into filming and into comedy.