‘The best self-made dancer ever’: How Olly Bowman became the luckiest man on TikTok

You’d be hard pressed to find a man more cheerful than Olly Bowman: TikTok’s favourite Aussie with 536k followers and 33million likes. The content creator/PT/pop star has made a name for himself dancing to horsegiirL’s My Barn My Rules and feigning shoulder injury in a dance move so viral it’s now recreated across the globe. Seemingly, a happy-go-lucky mindset has carried him to a life of fun and fame. So, we caught up with Olly to ask how he stays so upbeat, why he just moved to London, and what he thinks of the British dating scene.

“I wouldn’t say I’m one hundred per cent happy,” Olly says of his near-constant state of hype and euphoria in all of his TikTok videos. “I’m not a robot. I think I’m just good at looking on the bright side— both my parents and my sister are very positive. It’s the way I was raised. I’ve got good mates, I’m happy being myself. Even in the rain, I’ll be happy in the morning.”

Considering his new move to London, a disposition that’s not weather dependent is essential. But unlike much of the British public, Olly is tee-total: He’s even gone to Infernos in Clapham sober on several occasions – A task that would make lesser men weep. “I don’t even think about being sober anymore,” he says. “It feels normal. As long as there’s music I can dance to then I’m happy.”

He admits he’d rather move to Hackney than Clapham, though.

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Olly might have blown up for dancing on TikTok, but his account used to be entirely in Norwegian after he started posting from there while studying remotely for a degree at the University of Sydney. He also played professional basketball in a Norwegian league and became a chart-topping Norwegian pop star under the stage name (and his social handle) Mr Melk:

“I moved to Norway mid-degree and became a pop star,” Olly laughs. “It’s gotta be one of the most random things that’s happened to me. Sony Music Norway reached out and said they wanted to make a song…It was the most out of the blue thing ever. And I’m terrible at singing,” he adds.

“I saw the message and I was like ‘are you sure?'” he explains. “They got a professional songwriter and producer to help make the song. I just went into the studio. It was the most uncomfortable experience of my life… My voice was cracking in the chorus – it was quite high up for my range. But, anyway, auto tuned fixed it up.”

The song (Fredag – Digg å være norsk) went gold, reached number nine in the Norwegian charts and currently has almost 5 million streams on Spotify.

It sort of goes without saying Olly’s TikTok comment section is always filled with girls who want to date him. There were even suggestions he should go on Love Island— a career move he says he’d “never say no” to but has “no plans right now” to apply.

He has, however, dated “a little bit” in London, although, he’s staying off apps like Hinge and Tinder. “In Norway, going on dates isn’t really a thing,” he says. “You more go out and meet people. Here, you go on dates, go for drinks. It’s very very Hinge. I’m not on it.”

But if he were (asking for the girlies) what exactly is he looking for? “Someone who doesn’t take themselves very seriously,” he says, speaking the most common Hinge response of all time out loud IRL to a room full of The Tab staff gasps. “So ,I’m just a normal standard British boy?” he responds. 

And after that, really, there’s only one question left to ask. Where did it come from? The dance move which made him huge, that has drunk strangers running up to him to wiggle their shoulders up and down with unadulterated glee? Who taught this man to dance? “You’re looking at him,” Olly says. “The best self-made dancer you’ve ever seen.”

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Featured image credit via Instagram