Oobah Butler

Oobah Butler (born February 13, 1992) is an English author and filmmaker. In 2017, he created The Shed at Dulwich, a fictional restaurant which became the highest-rated venue in London on TripAdvisor despite having never served a dish. In April 2019, Butler's debut book How to Bullsh*t Your Way to Number 1 was published and became a Los Angeles Times bestseller. In 2021, he became co-host of Catfish UK. In 2023, he released the documentary The Great Amazon Heist on Channel 4. In 2026, his new film How To Trick Your Way Onto The Property Ladder came out on Channel 4 .

Early life Born as Paul Arthur Oobah Butler in Birmingham, Over the next two years, he regularly contributed articles to Vice (including a story in which he created a "DIY sex robot" from household items and fruit ) and eventually started making short films that were shared on the site's social media channels.

The Shed at Dulwich

In April 2017, inspired by a belief he had developed while being paid to write false positive reviews for restaurants on TripAdvisor years before, Butler came up with an idea to try and get a restaurant that doesn't exist verified on the travel website. After making a website for his fake restaurant, The Shed at Dulwich, which featured plates of fake food created using household products including shaving foam and dishwasher tablets, and buying a phone, it was officially accepted and listed on the site. From there, Butler spent six months asking friends to post fake reviews hoping to place the restaurant as high on TripAdvisor's list of 18,149 restaurants in London as possible.

On November 1, 2017, The Shed was the highest rated restaurant in London. It was open for one night on the 17th of the same month, serving ten guests thinly-disguised microwaveable meals based on various "moods", at no charge.

Following the release of both his article and documentary, How to Become TripAdvisor's #1 Fake Restaurant, about the process, the story became a viral success. To date, Vice claims it has received 100 million views worldwide.

Butler found himself at the centre of a media storm, appearing on popular television stations around the world. The reactions to the story were diverse, with Singaporean parliament using it as a vehicle to inform new laws on fake news and The Washington Post referencing Butler as "the Donald Trump of TripAdvisor".

From there, he successfully sent different lookalikes of himself in his place to conduct interviews on Breakfast Sunrise in Australia, WION in India, NOVA television in Bulgaria and BBC Radio 2 with Vanessa Feltz (who was standing in for Jeremy Vine on his lunchtime show).

Films and TV Butler documented The Shed at Dulwich in a video on Vice's YouTube channel, How to Become TripAdvisor's #1 Fake Restaurant.

In June 2018, Butler released a seven-minute film entitled How I Faked My Way to The Top of Paris Fashion Week, in which he masqueraded as fictional fashion designer Georgio Peviani. It was well received, being viewed over 30 million times worldwide and being named an official selection of the 2018 LA Fashion Film Festival.

In 2021, Butler hosted the British edition of MTV's Catfish: The TV Show alongside Julie Adenuga. In May 2022, a second series of Catfish UK was announced with YouTube personality Nella Rose joining Butler as a new co-host in place of Julie Adenuga.

In October 2023, it was announced Butler had a new documentary on Channel 4 called The Great Amazon Heist, about the company Amazon. The film includes a stunt where Butler collects discarded bottles of urine from Amazon drivers, and sells the contents as a "bitter lemon" drink, manipulating the listing to become a #1 bestseller. It also features a segment where Butler gets a job and works undercover at the Amazon fulfilment centre in Coventry, England, until he is discovered. The documentary was generally well reviewed, earning five out of five stars in the Daily Telegraph and four out of five stars in The Guardian. He was interviewed by comedian Tim Heidecker on his podcast Office Hours while promoting The Great Amazon Heist.

In October 2025, Butler released another documentary with Channel 4 titled How I Made £1 Million in 90 Days. The film covers on Butler aiming to set up a business and receive funding from various investors, focusing mainly on cryptocurrency CEOs. The documentary received four out of five stars in The Guardian.

Book In December 2018, Butler announced his debut book How to Bullsh*t Your Way to Number 1 in an interview with Forbes.

The book reached first place in an American book chart, #1 Humor in USA Today for the week of April 29, 2019, and was #8 on the Los Angeles Times paperback non-fiction chart in July 2019. which he sent a Norwegian stand-in to accept. Butler also received a 2019 Webby Award, using an AI to write his acceptance speech at the ceremony at Cipriani in New York. In July 2023, he won Best Male Personality '23 at the National Reality Television Awards for his work on Catfish UK.