Nobody is likely to confuse YouTuber Danny Malin for a gym bunny. Even though he has slimmed down considerably since tipping the scales at 22st, years of tucking into burgers, kebabs and pizzas have taken their toll on his physique.
Yet the genial ‘vlogger’, who shot to online fame with his series of reviews of fast-food joints across Britain, called Rate My Takeaway, has been the subject of a seemingly endless stream of compliments about his appearance in recent weeks. All the positive comments remark on how he appears to have a newfound contentment – which is surprising, given Malin’s sudden announcement three months ago that he was quitting YouTube for good.
One user notes that he is ‘looking brighter, lighter and happier’. Another fan, based in Denver, Colorado, says it ‘lifts my spirits to see Danny so happy’.
It comes after a tumultuous few years for Malin, following the sudden death of his long-term partner in 2021. Now aged 46, he has found new love, got married and has become a father again – although he has suffered serious ill-health along the way.
Despite his happy home life, things haven’t been quite so rosy for Malin elsewhere. It has emerged that major friction behind the scenes over the running of the YouTube channel that made his name was the catalyst for him announcing his surprise departure in September.
Speaking in a video titled Why I’m Quitting Rate My Takeaway, Malin told viewers that the relationship with his two business partners – cameraman Tom Petch and editor Josh Geddes – had ‘become untenable’, adding: ‘It’s got to the time where I just need to move on.’
Danny Malin is known for his YouTube reviews, called Rate My Takeaway, of fast-food restaurants across Britain
Malin with his fiancée, Carrie Taylor, who died in 2021 at the age of just 40 following a heart attack
He said ‘the monetary side of things’ had always been split evenly between the three of them, but he had struggled to achieve an equal footing within the business. Malin insisted: ‘I used to enjoy going out and creating the content.
‘I used to enjoy talking to people about it… I used to enjoy all of it. The fact of the matter now is it’s got to the point where it’s no longer enjoyable for me.’
In a follow-up video posted three days later, Malin claimed that he had previously come under intense pressure to agree to a management deal with his partners after a production company expressed interest in putting Rate My Takeaway on television. He said: ‘What Tom said to me was nobody is filming anymore – nobody is doing anything else on Rate My Takeaway until I sign this management contract.’
This all happened, he said, ‘about nine weeks after my ex-partner had passed away’ and at a time when he was ‘highly sedated on antidepressants’. Malin continued: ‘So I just went with it, I signed the contract.
‘The thing is, I never got anything from them regarding Rate My Takeaway once I’d done that. I never got access to things. They managed everything.
‘I got told what to do. I got told where to go. If I ever recommended a place, they basically just turned their nose up at it. Even down to what I was going to have off the menu, they would tell me what to get.’
He added: ‘They are in control and they always have been in control, and they have just basically had me doing the filming and then they’ve just controlled everything.
‘Everything that we did was orchestrated by them – I was led. I was the face of it, I’m the character. But where we went, what we did, how we did it, where we stayed… all [controlled] by them.’
Before starting his career as a food vlogger, Malin – who grew up in Barnsley, South Yorkshire – was a butcher in Leeds’ Kirkgate Market. He was classified as a key worker at the start of the Covid crisis in 2020 and, as part of his daily routine, delivered meat to retailers in the early stages of the pandemic.
It was around this time that he made a video poking fun at people bulk-buying toilet rolls in supermarkets. When it proved hugely popular online, Malin started making short promotional films for the butcher’s shop he worked for.
Shortly afterwards, he was approached to go into business with his future partners, who had already attracted 200,000 followers for their Facebook page specialising in takeaway write-ups. Malin’s first review – which showed him sampling a 5,000-calorie ‘munchie box’ (a large pizza box piled high with fast foods) – appeared on YouTube in November 2020. ‘It just went viral’, he later said, and it was ‘full steam ahead’ from there on – with his first three videos notching up 9 million views between them.
Viewers quickly took to Malin’s engaging personality as well as his quirky habit of setting up a camping chair and fold-out table outside each takeaway before he tucked into their food.
But tragedy struck in February 2021 when his fiancée Carrie Taylor – with whom he had two children, as well as her son from an earlier relationship – died from a heart attack at the age of 40. He later told how he struggled to resume his new career, but admitted it ‘changed life for me and the kids – and gave us something positive to focus on’.
‘It just went viral’, Malin said of his first video, and it was ‘full steam ahead’ from there on – with his first three videos notching up 9 million views between them
He has found love again with Sophie Mei Lan – a Sheffield-born journalist and personal trainer
The videos had become so successful by 2022 that Malin went on a summer tour of the United States, trying out takeaways in New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Meanwhile, the Rate My Takeaway Kitchen – a food court showcasing independent food producers and outlets – opened in Huddersfield. Figures from last year show the YouTube channel had more than 750,000 subscribers and had clocked up in excess of 125 million views.
But disaster befell Malin again in February 2024 when he suffered two strokes in the space of a fortnight. He later said the health scare had an ‘adverse effect’ on his mental health, which had already been an issue over the ‘last four or five years for all different reasons’.
While the proposed TV deal for Rate My Takeaway had long since fallen through, the business relationship stumbled on. But Malin insists there were repeated arguments, including one confrontation the day before he suffered a stroke. He said he had to bring his father John into subsequent negotiations because he was ‘so scared’ he was going to have another stroke.
Malin also told how it took two months – and pleading on his part – for his partners to take down ‘disgusting’ comments about his then 15-year-old daughter Summer on the Rate My Takeaway account after she appeared in videos shot in Majorca.
According to Malin’s account, relations soured further after he submitted his resignation. The funds in the joint bank account were promptly split three ways, but a company van – of which he claims to be part-owner – is now said to be at the centre of a wrangle.
His former partners – who have been contacted by the Daily Mail – issued a lengthy statement on Rate My Takeaway’s YouTube homepage describing the situation as ‘so difficult’ and insisting: ‘It doesn’t just feel like the end of a working partnership, it feels like the end of a friendship we valued deeply.’
The statement added: ‘We’re just sad it’s ended this way.
‘We’ve poured years into Rate My Takeaway and it hurts to feel like people might see us in the wrong light. Whatever anyone chooses to believe, the truth is that we’ve always done our best for the channel, for Danny and for the amazing community that grew around it.’
But the backlash from former viewers was immediate. One blasted: ‘The way you have treated Danny is horrendous, this channel is nothing without him.’
Another remarked: ‘Unsubscribed. Danny deserves better than you guys, I’ll be following him.’
For his part, Malin has found love again with Sophie Mei Lan – a Sheffield-born journalist and personal trainer who, in 2007, made it to the semi-finals of Britain’s Got Talent with a belly-dancing act. The 37-year-old, who has two daughters from a previous marriage, and Malin wed in June 2023 – and they now have a daughter, two-year-old Athena, together.
The couple have almost 95,000 subscribers on their own YouTube channel, Mr and Mrs Yorkshire, where they post videos about their ‘weird and wonderful world where everyone is welcome’. Meanwhile, Malin has recently teamed up with fellow food vlogger Gary Hanna for joint outings such as a trip to Kent to review ‘the UK’s most expensive fish and chips’ at £65 a go.
Quite where Danny Malin goes from here – or what the future holds for Rate My Takeaway, now largely existing as a Facebook entity once again, in his absence – remains to be seen. But his fans approve of the new direction, with one saying of his videos with Sophie: ‘It’s miles better doing things together without any greedy third parties involved.’
Another seems to capture the general mood by writing: ‘We’re all behind you, Rate My Takeaway is a thing of the past and I’m so certain you’re going on to better pastures.’