Family viewing: How the Leighs turned lockdown laughs into TikTok treasure

Five years ago, during the first Covid-19 lockdown, a family filmed a video of themselves dancing in their garden and posted it on TikTok.

That reel, of the Leigh family from Cambridgeshire, went viral and got one million views overnight.

Since then, their lives have changed a lot.

They now run The Famileigh business as a brand, employing sons Harrison, 25, and Travis, 23, full-time and dad Paul part-time.

With 2.3 million followers on Tiktok and one million on Instagram, they have just launched their own podcast, Like Father Like Sons.

Harrison says his love of social media started when he was about 11 and his YouTube channel had about 8,000 subscribers.

He would post videos about gaming, featuring his dad.

"That is my passion still to this day," he says.

"I learnt everything - how to create content, how to edit - it was all self-taught. I always wanted to become a YouTuber. I love making videos."

He would spend up to 15 hours a day editing, but when he turned 16, his parents asked him to concentrate on his education.

It paid off. He went on to get his GCSEs, A-levels and a degree in marketing from Nottingham Trent University.

The video that turned the family into a social media phenomenon was posted in March 2020 and "got a crazy amount of views", he says.

"So we did another one. That hit another million - it was just mental - and then Travis thought he would get involved."

The videos continued, becoming more frequent, and then Harrison said, "We need to just go for this".

They still follow the basic premise of "dad and sons having a laugh", as their Instagram bio puts it, with the same mix of jokes, skits and dance routines.

Each can take hours to plan, produce and edit, with the workload including writing scripts, choosing costumes, planning camera angles and editing text.

"The videos are very well polished; they're meticulously thought through. There's a lot that goes into it," says Harrison.

"It's meant to be natural, to look fun, but there's a lot of time that goes into it."

Travis says that while studying at Leeds Beckett University, he came home every weekend to make the videos "because I knew that I wanted to do this full-time".

Younger sister, Darcy, 20, currently studying English Literature at university, also appears in the videos.

The business also employs the siblings' mum, who is referenced in the videos but does not appear and prefers to remain anonymous.

The financial security brought by the project enabled Paul to leave his job two years ago, and he now divides his time between The Famileigh and the transport business he started.

"I absolutely love it. I'm very honoured and lucky to be able to spend time with my family," he says.

"I know it's a business, but we do have a lot of fun. We're not fake.

"We have a very mutual understanding and respect for one another. We don't argue; we disagree. We will talk something through.

"We won't ever raise our voices and we never swear at each other. We're very close."

Travis, who has a degree in business, agrees. "We all understand each other's characters. We all know exactly how we operate."

Paul admits he did not expect they would be so successful, but Harrison had hoped they would.

"It's where I wanted to go, but I didn't expect it to be this crazy, with our own offices and studio," he says.

It has not all been enjoyable, however. The family have found themselves the target of online hate and even death threats.

At one point, Paul even questioned whether he should carry on.

"Why should someone stop me from having fun?" he asks.

"It's made me a stronger person. It's made me tougher."

Travis copes by treating social media and his day-to-day life "as two separate things", he says.

"I don't take it seriously. If I was doing something that I didn't enjoy and I was getting hate, then I'd probably be like, 'Oh yeah, maybe not', the fact is I like doing what I want to do, and if that affects someone so much, that's a 'them' thing, not a 'me' thing."

Harrison says: "It really is just light-hearted fun content, but we get more love than hate.

"We're just a normal family that has fallen into making a living, not on purpose, from social media.

"I'm creating content that I feel passionately about."

He stresses their success did not come overnight. "You've got to spend at least 10 years before you can really make it, so lock in and enjoy the process," he says.

Paul says the family are just the same off-camera, and hopes their new podcast will show their "personality and banter".

They hope the podcast could lead to him joining them full-time, and maybe even to their own TV show - but only if they continue to "put the graft in", Harrison says.

Travis says: "Working together gave us our purpose. We're striving to be the best versions of ourselves.

"I have absolutely no idea what I'd be doing if I wasn't doing this".

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