Not anymore. Now in his late 20s, the tradie turned social media pranking sen-sation owns a Gold Coast mansion and has amassed a following closing in on eight million Facebook fans and 1.6 million Instagram followers.

It’s all off the back of video stunts and pranks that make him instantly unpopular with targets - but very popular with fans.

He has thrown his younger brother Jayden’s wallet out the window of their car waiting at traffic lights - forcing Jayden who was driving to jump out and retrieve it; he’s walked up to a bloke twice his size in a bar, grabbed his beer and started necking it; and taken random items out of the trolleys of people at the supermarket, inciting furious reactions.

Some pranks make a point. During the pandemic when the Queensland Government pressed ahead with an election he put himself in the middle of a backyard clothesline – to maintain “social distancing” – and went to a polling booth. He was told to “leave now” and was pushed over by a voting day volunteer.

Other stunts have no point at all - like when he wrapped a brother’s entire house in decorative paper at Christmas time. Or when he filled another brother’s whole shower cubicle to the brim with breakfast cereal.

Some are risky. There was the time base jumpers used his Southport high-rise apartment balcony. Base jumping involves leaping off a tall structure and opening a parachute with no room for error. They survived. He made TV news.

He once sat in a kayak tied to the back of a car and let it pull him at a reckless speed around tarsealed road corners at 40km/h. He lost skin.

The online star who has long since quit his tiling job to focus fulltime on his passion for creating video content won’t discuss what he earns, even on his own older brother Jashan’s podcast Just Jashan With Ya! In an interview on the podcast earlier this year he baulked at the question but said: “I have made this a fulltime living for the last three years now.”

Asked on the podcast how his following started and what had been key to his huge popularity, he said along with a “bit of luck” it’s because “I was a f--kwit, 100 per cent”.

“It was that we could relate to people, y’know, and just having fun with life – rather than taking everything so seriously. Especially in Australia, mucking around with mates is so big and it happens on the daily. We just decided to do it in video form and it took off. I think it worked because we weren’t trying. It was just something we did naturally.”

He’s doing well enough that earlier this year he launched his first bar called Memory Lane in Broadbeach. It didn’t last but in typical Shammi style, the venue created eyebrow-raising headlines while open. In a rare media interview at the time, he sat down with the Bulletin to discuss how he became an online sensation and some of his wilder pranks.

BLOWING UP ON SOCIAL MEDIA

In his early 20s, his hobby for making prank videos and uploading them started going viral. He was invited by Facebook to be part of a trial group getting paid for uploads, he says.

“I didn’t really think about it, just signed a contract. My first monthly payment came in and I made more than I was making at my job. The second month I went a bit harder and doubled those figures.”

He quit his tiling job but didn’t tell his mum for months - and continued a charade of dressing in his tradie clothes and pretending to leave for work for the day. He would actually spend his days dreaming up videos.

“It was all a bit of a risk because this was a trial on Facebook. But I just had a gut feeling. I took the risk, trusted the gut and never looked back.”

STOPPING THE RACE THAT STOPS THE NATION

He admits to nerves when in 2018 he carried out one of his most infamous pranks, “stopping the race that stops the nation”.

He walked into a crowded Gold Coast pub and turned off the big screen projector as horses vying for the Melbourne Cup rounded the corner for the home straight. In the clip, he casually walks to the front of Parkwood Tavern, which is full of patrons glued to the TV. He finishes a beer and hits a button on a universal remote, turning off the big screen. He throws his hands in the air in celebration to “claim the victory”. Howls of anger ensue.

“That one I was nervous,” he says. “Because it was actually a fairly busy pub, packed with tradies and all the girls were dressed up.

“I could have just switched the race off from where I was standing at the back but for content purposes I grabbed a chair, stood up in front of the whole venue so they knew it was me and turned it off.

“This was 100 metres before the race finished. No one knew what had happened for two seconds. But once they realised, everyone was just blowing up.” As he tries to leave, footage shows a patron grab him and drag him back.

“But once they got the remote, they were all looking at the screen and had their eyes on the screen trying to get it back on. I was like ‘This is my chance’ and just legged it out and met the boys at the car.”

Left inside was younger brother Jayden. The once promising soccer player now features heavily in Shammi’s prank videos and was at the tavern to capture the footage. Jayden recalls: “It was worse for me because I was filming it.

“I got out of there straightaway. I was getting eyed off real hard,” Jayden notes with a grin.

Shammi adds: “Look, I care a lot about animal cruelty but that particular video wasn’t based along that line. I was just doing it for a public reaction video.”

INFAMOUS BASE JUMP OFF MERITON

“The guys knew what they were doing,” he said of the stunt, also in 2018.

His mates who did it had seen his balcony atop the Meriton tower in Southport and instigated the idea, asking ‘Oh can we jump off your balcony?’. Shammi recalls: “I was sceptical because I was like ‘It’s all on me and this is do or die’ – but these guys are really experienced at what they do and I was like ‘f--k it, let’s do it’.

“We were actually being thoughtful of everyone and did this at 1am but someone must have been awake in the building. Reception called the next morning: I just acted clueless, like, ‘I was in bed with my girlfriend’.

“They said ‘You can either come back with names or we are going to call the police’. Base jumping is illegal - but you have to be caught. If you get caught you have a court date.”

He gave them some names of random interstate people he found online. And left.

“It was pretty controversial - it made the news.”

Of the kayak tow behind a car, which shows him crashing off painfully and skidding along the tarseal, he notes: “You become who you surround yourself with - and I had surrounded myself with Nitro Circus boys (motorbike stunt riders) and so I thought I was part of the circus.

“It turned out I wasn’t,” he says, laughing.

FANS AND FAMILY

Asked what sort of reactions he gets in public, he said: “Most people that come up to me are more fans and really appreciate I have the time of day for anyone.

“If a fan comes up to me I will spend 10 minutes chatting to them. And it doesn’t matter if there are 100 coming up, I’ll make time for every single one.”

With three other brothers - often pranking each other and exacting revenge - he reflects when asked if they’ve genuinely offended each other: “Many times.”

One Christmas Day he smashed a cake into the face of an older brother having an afternoon doze: “Christmas Day was ruined. We had a full punch-on fight.”

It has taken time, he notes, for his mother to accept it and get her head around exactly what he does for a living.

“For a while there we would get in arguments. She would get home from church and be like ‘Sham, you can’t be doing this, what are you doing with your life?’. But little did she know I was doing very well and succeeding.

“I got in at the right time because I was ahead of the game.”

His mother started to in part understand what he did when, as Shammi explains, her partner - in hospital and sick with cancer - was laughing one day watching videos on his phone.

“She asked what he was watching.”

It was Shammi’s prank videos.

“Mum saw a completely different side to it. Someone in a very sick state, we were bringing them smiles.

“Now she has seen me doing quite well so she is proud but I still don’t think she really understands it all.

“When we talk about the videos at family dinners she does have a giggle but rolls her eyes and just goes ‘Oh Sham’.”

ryan.keen@news.com.au