Oobah Butler signed a contract with Channel 4, promising to make £1 million in 90 days or less — entirely from scratch. Against the odds (and his own better judgement), he did it.
‘It was quite a bad decision, really,’ he tells Metro. ‘It sounded funny and interesting, then Channel 4 turned around and said, “You can do this.” The contract said my entire future depended on it — my career, my reputation. It felt insane.’
Little did he know just how insane it would get.
Butler has built a unique career with guerrilla filmmaking and provocative hoaxes. In 2017, he launched a fake restaurant in his garden, The Shed, which became TripAdvisor’s top-rated London eatery — despite never serving food. He’s crashed Paris Fashion Week posing as a designer and infiltrated Amazon warehouses to expose their brutal working conditions.
But for his new documentary, How I Made A Million in 90 Days, deception alone wouldn’t cut it. Convincing people to part with £1 million is exactly as hard as it sounds.
The project was loosely inspired by a quote from one of the founding fathers of hustle culture, Steven Bartlett: ‘You must p**s people off. When people don’t love or hate you, it’s the least profitable outcome.’
And so came the birth of Drops — a business that would do wild stunts, create hype, and sell products off the back of it. The model mirrored brands like Supreme (which once sold logo bricks for £22) and MSCHF (which made $666 shoes containing Lil Nas X’s blood).
Butler was given two rules: Channel 4 wouldn’t front any costs, and he couldn’t break the law.
Simple, right?
His first venture was Britain’s first ‘ethical sweatshop’ — a group of primary school kids designing a football shirt. Loophole alert: hiring underage labour is legal if the children are ‘performing’ for the camera.
The shirt featured ironic pro-smoking slogans like “Jesus says smoke,” and “Holy Smokes”. Outrage exploded. TikTok caught wind. GQ even ran a feature on the child-labour loophole.
But sales didn’t match the hype. The shirts made just £10,000 profit.
Time was ticking.
In a moment of sheer desperation, Butler bought 200 scratch cards. ‘We’ve all been there,’ he jokes. Then, he picked up a stick from his brother’s garden and somehow sold it to an art dealer for £500.
Still nowhere near £1million.
He turned to New York — home to 385,000 millionaires — hoping for a wealthy investor to back Drops. The closest he got was Iqram Magdon-Ismail, co-founder of Venmo.
Iqram offered to co-found Drops and take it to wild places: Mars real estate, viral stunts, meme culture. But working with Iqram was unpredictable, chaotic — and ultimately unproductive.
‘I love that early Louis Theroux stuff,’ says Butler. ‘Being in the room with these wildly different people. I thought, “God, not only could this film be a real analysis of me doing this thing, but almost like an anthropological film sat at the table with these people.’’’
But even Iqram didn’t bring the cash.
Then came UNFK — a crypto company aiming to go viral by exposing corporate corruption. They wanted to launch a meme coin and thought Butler’s viral stunts could make it explode. He wouldn’t get a £1million investment, but the exposure could make him a millionaire — at least on paper.
Butler faced a moral crisis. His parents had lost thousands in a pyramid scheme years earlier — not unlike the speculative nature of crypto.
‘They were duped by someone charming. My dad stopped when he realised the only way to make money was to f**k over people who trusted him. He wasn’t willing to do that it. Neither was my mum.’
In the documentary, Butler opens up about this with his dad, who still carries the emotional weight of that time. ‘‘I was shocked how candidly hurt he still was about it, because it’s something that’s a little bit of a joke in the family, so they must have been really desperate, knowing them, as I do now, to have done that.’
Crypto has lured millions, and up to 90% lose money. Despite the promise of fast cash, Butler couldn’t bring himself to go that route.
With time running out, Butler came up with his most radical idea yet: selling 10% of all his future earnings for £1 million.
‘That was my most desperate point. I didn’t want to let people down. But then I thought, “Can you imagine working with someone for the rest of your life — someone you’ve never met?”’
Turns out, the most valuable product was him.
Kavita Gupta, founder of crypto venture fund Delta Blockchain, caught wind of the offer and took it. Just like that — with the stroke of a signature on a contract — Butler became a millionaire.
But living the dream didn’t feel how you’d expect.
‘Often in big moments, it doesn’t feel real. Like the Postcode Lottery — people just want the person at the door to leave them alone. I just felt exhausted. I was happy to be by the sea. But deep down, I was thinking: “What have I done?”’
Before the funds even hit his bank account, Butler knew: he didn’t want the money.
Having someone own part of his life — forever — was too high a price.
Butler lives between London and New York and had never come close to having so much money. The experience left a mark.
‘It definitely made me value my ability to not think about money. That said, New York and London are expensive. My savings are finite.
‘I’ve basically spent the last five years really living off of presenting MTV’s Catfish. Making this decision to move to New York wasn’t because I had some amazing job waiting for me out there – it was a risk.
‘I actually worry more about money now than I did three years ago, because I had more saved then. But I don’t regret walking away from the crypto deal. I still feel good about that.’
How I Made A Million airs tonight at 10pm on Channel 4.
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