The 81-year-old TikToker getting global hits

An 81-year-old who started posting online videos in a bid to promote his self-published novel has amassed millions of views imparting eight decades of life advice.

Ian Smith from Snettisham in Norfolk posts a video twice a day to his 1.5 million followers on BookTok, which is a sub community of TikTok dedicated to book lovers.

His wife encouraged him to start posting and Smith said he was like a "red rag to a bull" after she said he would never gain 100 followers.

"I thought, I'll show you," he joked.

"I said 'Look if I can get 100, I can get 1,000. If I can 1,000, I can get 100,000' — never really thinking that, and I just began to get people who began to follow me."

Before turning his hand to the social media world, Smith worked as a dentist for more than 50 years and retired in 2022.

He started writing a novel and despite sending it off to hundreds of agents, received only three responses.

Instead of being discouraged, he self-published his book and promoted it on BookTok.

For the past 18 months he has been posting regularly on the platform with messages of motivation and positivity.

It was "staggering" to have not received negative responses or comments, he said.

Speaking to BBC Look East, he said: "It's very humbling.

"You think, here's this 81-year-old sitting talking to a tiny little telephone and response has come from all over the world.

"I do a live thing on a Thursday at eight o'clock and you have people popping up from Brazil — all over the world and it's staggering really."

His most viewed video has been seen more than 59 million times and people in their 20s make up the biggest age bracket among his fans.

"Eighty-one years old and you don't actually think you'll be doing this kind of thing at all.

"As I've grown, my audience has grown."

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