A young Harrogate man who made international news when he turned 21 has written an autobiography to mark his 30th birthday.

Cory McLeod has led an extraordinary life since he was born, from trekking through South America as an infant with his parents to partying with boxer David Haye in his 20s.

It was a project begun by his dad on the day of his birth that first brought Cory to international attention.

Ian McLeod decided to take a photograph of his son’s face every day for the first year, or perhaps up to the age of two or three. At the time in 1991, he planned to turn into a flick-book – but the project soon grew.

Mr McLeod would send the camera with Cory’s teachers on school trips to ensure he didn’t miss a day, and even travelled for an hour late at night to take a shot when Cory was staying at a friend’s house, before driving home again.

Former Oatlands and St Aidan’s student Cory said:

“It was a family art project for a couple of years, but it became his passion or addiction and he just kept going.

“In his mind, 18 or 21 seemed a good time to stop, but when we got that far, we thought, ‘let’s keep going’.”

In 2012, Cory turned the photos into a video which he uploaded to YouTube, showing his development each day for more than two decades.

It proved a hit: it has since been viewed more than six million times. As a result, Cory and Ian hit the headlines and appeared on TV and radio shows around the world.

In the decade since, his life has been even more eventful.

Moving to Dubai to work in events has brought him into contact with numerous celebrities, from Rihanna to Prince Harry – who, on one memorable night, asked Cory to stop offering him drinks and leave him alone.

A keen traveller, Cory has had many adventures, not all of them trouble-free. He has been held at gunpoint and met bandits during his travels, but always managed to take his daily photograph to keep the project going.

Last month, he published a new video, including images up to his 30th birthday.

His new autobiography, which he began writing during the covid lockdown when he was stuck in his apartment in Dubai, is called 30 Years: A Life Lived Every Day. It covers all his experiences up to the age of 30, in late 2021.

It took him more than two years to complete it, often writing for six or seven hours after work.

The daily photographs, documenting wherever he was in the world, proved a useful prompt in his writing.

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The photos are a kind of social history, from masked selfies during the covid pandemic to the shot of him holding a Blockbuster video from the late 1990s. His favourites are those that show his travels around the world, and special moments in his family life.

Yet taking them has not always been easy, he said.

“I went through a phase where I was constantly remembering at 10 or 11 at night. I’m trying to get out of the habit of doing that.

“Over the course of the whole thing, we’ve only forgotten a handful of times.”

Cory’s autobiography will be published in August and is available to pre-order now.

It is his second book, after he turned his blog about his journey to Everest base camp into a book. He said he now has the writing bug and hopes to use his degree in TV and film production to turn to script writing next.

That drive to create comes from his parents, who were also adventurous: they took him backpacking in South America when he was just one. Dad Ian has since begun a new photo-a-day project, taking him from 60 to the end of his life.

As for the photographs – now selfies taken by Cory wherever he is in the world – he has no intention of stopping. He has his sights set on a lifetime of daily photos.

“I think it would be amazing – the first time you could see a full life, from birth to death.”