Frostbit Boy Ruairí McSorley: Where Is He Now?
- May 23, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 23
Some people become famous for what they achieve. Ruairí McSorley became famous for four words he said on his way to school in the snow. More than a decade on, the man the internet knows as Frostbit Boy has survived a night lost at sea, dated a woman five decades his senior, written a book, and set his sights on running the country. Here's how he got there.
How 'Frostbit' Went Viral
On January 13, 2015, a teenage McSorley, from the townland of Park near the Sperrins in Co Derry, was making his way to school through heavy snow when he spotted a UTV news van filming a segment on the wintry weather. He and a friend jumped out to see if they could get in shot. Reporter Gareth Wilkinson, putting together a package on the conditions, asked the schoolboy for his thoughts on the cold.
What came back was a single, thickly accented line that would follow him for the rest of his life: "Oh God, you wouldn't be long getting frostbit." The clip aired on UTV, and within days it had racked up millions of views. The hashtag #frostbit was trending on Twitter, an extended, uncut version of the interview surfaced online, and Wilkinson himself ended up posting updates as the view count climbed, at one point writing that the boy he'd interviewed in the Sperrins was "an overnight internet sensation."
McSorley leaned into the fame rather than shy away from it. He did a follow up interview with Irish radio station TodayFM, appeared on UTV a second time, and started posting impressions of Irish celebrities, from Daniel O'Donnell to Mrs Brown, to his own YouTube channel. Years later he even recorded a charity single with NiStars, a talent development group run by broadcaster Ande Gray, with proceeds going to Brainwaves, a charity set up in memory of a 14 year old named Anna Guest.
Lost at Sea, Surrounded by Dolphins
McSorley's second brush with virality came in August 2021, and it was considerably more alarming than the first. He'd been staying at a caravan park near Inch beach in Co Kerry when he decided, on the spur of the moment, to swim out toward Fenit Island. A dog walker later found his clothes and shoes abandoned on the sand, and he was reported missing to the Irish Coast Guard.
Fenit RNLI and the Rescue 115 helicopter were sent out to search, and volunteer lifeboat crew eventually spotted a head bobbing in the water roughly 4km offshore at around 8.30pm, some twelve hours after he'd gone in. McSorley was pulled aboard the lifeboat dangerously hypothermic, but characteristically unbothered. "The only thing that is stressing me out is everybody else is panicking about it," he said afterward.
He later described his thinking at the time to the Irish Independent: "I saw Fenit lighthouse out in the water, and I said, right I'm going towards it. I wouldn't have got in to start with if I didn't know I was going to be grand." The only genuinely frightening moment, he said, came when he spotted fins circling him in the water and couldn't immediately tell whether they belonged to dolphins or something considerably less friendly. "I just thought to myself, maybe it wouldn't have been the worst idea to have googled this before I jumped in, but they were just dolphins," he said. "They were just swimming around me. If anything, they may have helped me." After his release from University Hospital Kerry, he said he felt "100 per cent," adding that the only lasting effect was his kidneys needing time to readjust.
Love, Loss, and Life as a 'Seniorsexual'
McSorley's love life has proven just as newsworthy as his brush with the Atlantic. On comedian Shane Todd's Tea With Me podcast, he revealed he'd nearly made it down the aisle on more than one occasion, with a partner considerably older than himself. Asked how old she was, McSorley didn't hesitate: "I'm not a homosexual, I'm not a transexual. I was a seniorsexual for a while." The woman in question, he explained, was 75.
When Todd pushed for what had stopped the wedding going ahead, McSorley delivered the line with the same deadpan he'd used a decade earlier on that snowy road: "Oh, she died then in the finish up. I'd everybody at home told about the wedding and everything."
From Viral Clip to Political Ambition
More recently, McSorley has set his sights considerably higher than reality TV appearances and radio interviews. He's announced plans to run for Taoiseach, and has floated Conor McGregor, who has himself flirted with a run for the Irish presidency, as his ideal running mate. "I had initially thought he would be best placed to lead the Irish Defence Forces, but the idea of Taoiseach Ruairi and Uachtarán McGregor, I think, makes more sense," he told Belfast Live.
His platform, inspired partly by the far right riots that swept Dublin in late 2023, includes a temporary visa system for immigrants who speak fluent English, have no criminal record and a job lined up before arrival, alongside proposals for mandatory Irish lessons and a period of national service. He's laid the whole vision out in a self-published book, The Reign of King Ruairi, which reimagines the Irish constitution with directly elected roles for both Taoiseach and president.
He insists none of it is a stunt. "His ideas for Ireland seem to be very similar to mine, and I would love to sit down with him and discuss our visions of the future," he said of McGregor. "I think we would work brilliantly together."
Now McSorley has reimagined the Irish constitution in his new book The Reign of King Ruairi.
Where Things Stand Now
As McSorley approaches his 30s, he splits his time between his political ambitions, documenting the journey on his own YouTube channel and Instagram, and whatever fresh chapter comes next, be that dolphins, pensioners, or the Irish constitution. Whether or not anyone ends up voting for King Ruairi, one thing about him has stayed consistent since that snowy morning in 2015: whatever he does, it's never boring.
