COMPUTER games wizard Gary Merritt has gone from barely being able to pay for lunch to having a worldwide online audience paying him thousands of pounds a month.

The 21-year-old former Malmesbury School pupil has attracted more than half-a-million subscribers to his Gizzy Gazza channel on YouTube and is also receiving about three to four million views a month.

Mr Merritt, who is about to graduate from Southampton University with a 2:1 degree in TV and video production, also has nearly 150,000 Twitter and 75,000 Instagram followers.

He said he was now earning thousands of pounds a month from YouTube as a result of the advertising revenue that he helps generate through the popularity of his channel.

Mr Merritt, who grew up in Malmesbury and also studied at Chippenham College, plays games such as Minecraft and uploads his own takes on them – quirky commentaries – onto YouTube.

He said: “A lot of people do it. Some have over a million of subscribers just by recording their own take on Minecraft. I have just hit 500,000 – which is awesome.”

He described the game as a “never ending adventure in which you can do anything”.

He said: “What was a hobby of just playing games and recording them began to develop into something more when I started building an audience.

“I went from 100 subscribers to more than half a million in about two to three years.”

He explained: “It is free to subscribe to a channel. YouTubers get paid through advertisements on YouTube. We get a percentage for every 1,000 views.”

Mr Merritt is still a little flummoxed at his success, saying: “People just seem to like me. My fan base is roughly kids to teenagers.”

He said his success on YouTube had presented a lot of opportunities “including business meetings in America and potentially living in America”.

Now living in Malmesbury again after leaving university Mr Merritt said he had gone from “hardly being able to afford lunch to travelling to the States.”

See www.youtube.com/gizzy14gazza and www.twitter.com/gizzy14gazza