Controversial YouTuber and self-styled citizen journalist Charlie Veitch, who regularly documents life in “dystopian” Manchester on the video sharing platform, has been charged with a public order offence and banned from entering Manchester City Centre.
A statement from Greater Manchester police said: “Following an investigation by our Manchester City Centre Neighbourhood Policing Team, Charles Veitch (05/08/1980) of Park Crescent, Derbyshire, has been charged with a Section 4A public order offence. He is set to appear at Manchester Magistrates’ Court on 30 June 2026. Mr Veitch has bail conditions that include not entering Manchester city centre inside the ring road.”
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Veitch first rose to prominence as a high-profile 9/11 conspiracy theorist in the mid-noughties, and later appeared in the 2011 BBC documentary 9/11: Conspiracy Road Trip. He publicly renounced his views after speaking with architects, engineers, and victims’ relatives for the BBC investigation, leading to backlash from other figures in the online conspiracy sphere such as Infowars host Alex Jones, who cited Veitch’s change of heart as evidence that he had been compromised by a “very evil New World Order”.
More recently, Veitch has used his YouTube channel, which has 833k subscribers, to document “Broken Britain” with a particular emphasis on Manchester, where he regularly singles out vulnerable people, including the homeless and drug addicts, for his content. He also frequently documents pro-Gaza protests, and in a 2024 clip attracted criticism for confronting a female member of staff in Manchester People’s History Museum over their decision to wear a Keffiyah – an interaction which many online viewers considered to be “clickbait” and “harrassment”.
Outside Manchester, he has also divided audiences by claiming on his shows that parts of Huddersfield have a “third World vibe,” describing Nelson, Lancashire as “rough” and home to “some of the most abandoned nice buildings I have seen on my tour of dystopian Britain” and Barnsley as “pure Soviet.”
Veitch was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to a Brazilian mother and a Scottish merchant seaman father. He attended Edinburgh Academy and graduated from the University of Edinburgh with honours in philosophy.
