Peace on earth, and goodwill to all men — particularly Danny Malin. For years, Danny was the man braving the cold, unfolding a camping table outside takeaways up and down the country, cheerfully tucking into kebabs, fry-ups and curries for millions of viewers. This Christmas Day, though, things looked a little different.
Instead of a windswept pavement, Matt sat down with Danny indoors at 10 Tib Lane, plates piled high and drinks poured, for a festive mEats with oysters, pigs in blankets, rich mains and a rice pudding Danny insisted deserved a bowl “three times the size”. But this was really a conversation about what happens when internet fame arrives faster than anyone’s ready for.
Danny spoke openly about the rise of Rate My Takeaway — how a few funny videos during Covid, including his now-infamous rant about panic-buying toilet roll, snowballed into millions of views, TV appearances, brand deals and even an American tour. Almost overnight, he became one of the most recognisable faces in British food content.
With that success came pressure. Danny described how he was seen as the channel, even when he didn’t have full control over the business or the online spaces surrounding it. As the comments sections turned sour and personal, the weight of being the public lightning rod for everything good and bad began to take its toll. Watching back old videos now, he admits, people only saw the smile — not what was happening once the camera was off.
In one of the most honest moments of the conversation, Danny talked about suffering two strokes and the mental health struggles that followed. Stress, exhaustion and burnout collided at the worst possible time, leaving him trying to keep up appearances while privately unravelling. He spoke candidly about therapy, about learning to recognise his limits, and about making the difficult decision to step away from something that, while hugely successful, was no longer sustainable for his health or his family.
Naturally, there was plenty of classic Danny along the way. His idea of Christmas dinner is gloriously excessive: turkey, beef, pork, lamb, duck, gammon, mountains of veg, sausage-meat stuffing, Yorkshire puddings and “hundreds” of pigs in blankets. Dessert, too, should be plural — trifle, Christmas pudding, cheesecake, apple pie and custard at the very least. Anything less, he reckons, simply isn’t trying hard enough.
There were stories about accidentally becoming a chart-topping Christmas musician, sitting just below Mariah Carey, dressing up as a character called Florence to sell meat on social media, and being recognised in Los Angeles by a fan who’d downloaded his videos on a flight from China. Through it all ran a genuine gratitude for the people who watched him — not “followers”, as he puts it, but real people who gave him half an hour of their evening.
