The Shocking Fortune Behind ‘Charlie Bit My Finger’ Revealed—You Won’t Believe What Happened Before the Auction

What is it about a little brother biting a finger that stuck in your brain harder than most of your childhood memories? “Charlie! Charlie bit me!”—those notorious words instantly transport us all to a more innocent corner of the internet, back when “going viral” wasn’t the entire point of posting. I remember watching that tiny, hysterical bite right alongside millions of strangers, none of us realizing we were unwittingly witnessing the coronation of British YouTube royalty . I mean, who could’ve guessed a toddler chomp would become an era-defining viral hit—before TikTok, before influencer hustle, back when all you wanted from the internet was a laugh and maybe enough ad money to get a new family pet? It’s wild . Do you ever stop and wonder which everyday moment could explode into global fame next—or is that magic reserved for the unexpected geniuses biting unsuspecting fingers? Buckle up, because this article dives into the far-reaching aftermath of a sibling nibble seen round the world. LEARN MORE

“Charlie! Charlie bit me!” I bet you can picture that already just from reading those words.

Perhaps one of the OG viral videos of YouTube, the infamous ‘Charlie Bit My Finger’ has truly stood the test of time. I mean, it pretty much came about in the pre-TikTok era, well, pre a lot of social media era, when people weren’t explicitly going out of their way to achieve internet fame and make money from it.

And if you’re a real young’un out there wondering what the f**k I’m on about, it’s basically just a video of a little baby biting his brother’s finger. I know, I know, sounds bizarre but it’s an absolute classic. British royalty.

Posted back in 2007, Howard Davies-Carr shared the clip for their grandad in America to see but a whole lot of the world ended up watching.

Never forget. (YouTube/Davies-Carr family)

Within months of being posted, the video hit a fair few million views and once it reached 50 million, Mashable says the family started earning cash from ads and TV spots.

And to amp up those earnings the beloved clip of the little brothers was sold for roughly £500,000. All grown up, the boys said when it sold as a non-fungible token (or NFT) in 2021 that they’d use the money to go to university.

As well as being the sole NFT holder for the infamous video, the family also offered the winning bidder the opportunity to make their own parody of it with the original stars, Harry and Charlie Davies-Carr.

“We plan to meet with the winner to re-enact the video in person,” the family said in a statement. “An important element to this auction, for Harry in particular, is that we will also be donating to carbon offset costs of mining bitcoins.”

And there was a bit of a bidding war near the end of the NFT’s one-day auction, with the price getting hiked up.

Harry told Radio 1’s Newsbeat at the time that he wanted to study ‘some kind of engineering’ at either University College London or Imperial College London.

And while Charlie wasn’t so sure what he wanted to study yet, he added that the money would also cover his two younger brothers’, Jasper and Rupert’s, uni fees if they wanted to go.

“I can’t even remember doing it so making money off it, and having experiences off it, is really cool,” the former finger-biting baby said.

“We’ve been to America twice from it, I went round Sky’s studios, and we’ve met a lot of cool people. It’s just an extra part of our life that’s quite interesting.”

Howard told the BBC in 2021 that the video has made the family roughly £1,000,000 over the years.

“The biggest change to our life is that instead of having two children, or three children, we have four children – and we saw the money as a way that actually we can afford that comfortably,” he adds.