Well, what a weekend that was. I’ve now just about caught up with my lost sleep and am getting back into my normal routine.
When we came up with the idea of beating Chris Moyles’ 52 hour record, we never thought that we would actually do it. It started off as a bit of banter that turned into a challenge that was too tempting to resist.
Neither of us slept very well on Thursday night. Dave had just moved house Wednesday/Thursday and was up at 5.30am walking his dog, and although I was in bed for 10.30pm, I woke at 12.30, 4.30 and 5.30 before giving up trying to get more sleep. I drove through to Market Weighton, arriving at 8.30am and parked my car at my parents’ house before walking to the studio. Dave arrived not long after me and we set about putting things into place – starting up the computers, setting up our laptops, printing out weather reports etc. By this time, Stuart Cocker arrived as well as Darren Duckworth. They were our stalwarts, our stewards who looked after the witnesses that came to verify that we carried out the challenge as per the rules.
We were then joined by Helen, a reporter from ITV’s Calendar, as well as a camerman, who interviewed us before we went on air, and then filmed the first 10-15 mins of the show. Of course, being cheesey, I dedicated the first song to Helen – Neil Sedaka’s Calendar Girl. We were also supplied with delicious sausage and bacon sandwiches by Jo of the Griffin, which went down a treat.
I found Friday to be reasonably easy, as I would normally have driven 100 miles to work and back and have a stressful day at work before The Fox’s Den, but as this day had been a steady 6 mile drive, I was still wide awake at 3am Saturday. By 4.30am the sun started to rise and all was well. Dave was looking worse for wear, though, but bearing in mind he had just moved house, he held up better than expected. Big thanks to Pete and Kim who came in to entertain us with party hats and mind games, as well as the 2011 Guinness Book of Records, though I was upset we weren’t in it!
Saturday saw the studios full of people preparing for the outside broadcast that was to take place on Sunday’s Giant Bradley Day. It also saw us link up with two other radio stations – Penistone near Sheffield and Bishop FM at Bishop Aukland – where we chatted with their presenters on-air about what we were doing and why. Two of our witnesses were previous guests on The Fox’s Den Show – Ridley Barbet and Edwina Hayes. Ridley had prepared our lunch for us at home and finished cooking it in our kitchens before she and Edwina served us. Thanks, ladies, we appreciated that! Dave hit the red bull, but I resisted, preferring coffee.
After skipping through the sports show as quick as we could we then presented Paul’s Saturday Flight Classic Rock Show. The music for this show was chosen by Paul and he provided the CDs and vinyl to play. After 32 hours on air, playing vinyl certainly kept my mind focussed. At 9pm we were joined by Prowl and by Joel of Believe in F.A.T.E, as well as the lovely Gemma, who brought us lots of chocolate. Lots of music and laughter was just what we needed,
For me, Sunday morning between 2am – 7am was my bad time, and if I’d have given up, then this would have been the time I did. However, I didn’t, Dave didn’t and the rain cleared leaving the sun to come out. This made us feel a lot better, and at 10am, we had been on air for two whole days with the longest break being 14 minutes. We only had 5 hours to go and the adrenaline kicked in big style.
10am also saw Kirby Howarth join us in the studio to provide us with live music. Just as he arrived, I found out that one of the acts for the acoustic tent at Giant Bradley Day had to pull out, so I even found time to arrange for Kirby to fill the gap at the last minute. At 11am, folk band FiddLyn Man Doris came along to provide us with live music and home-made muffins. Very tasty they were, too. We did a live link to the outside broadcast at Giant Bradley Day and for me the most surreal moment of the whole event took place at 2pm – Jo from the Griffin brought us Sunday lunch in and we were sat at the desk eating, trying to do an outside broadcast followed by the band playing while Studio 1 was full of people watching us through the window.
By this time we had matched the record and so for the last hour I loaded the computer with the ad breaks and played them all out in one go and let the band play. At 2.50 I started the last song – Queen’s We Are The Champions before linking live back to the showground. At 10 seconds to 3, the band started counting down and at 3pm I played a final jingle stating we had beaten the World Record, which I had to repeat as the showground didn’t hear it. We finally finished at around 3.05pm, as I loaded in the first CD for Stuart, who was taking over for an hour. We quickly emptied the studio of our laptops and luggage and put it into Studio 1 before getting into Paul’s car and going to the showground. We were met by a lot friends and family and after posing for photos we went onto the stage where we chatted about the event before soaking each other with champagne. I headed over to the acoustic tent to see The Troubadours playing and by this time Dave was on his last legs and had to be driven home. I wasn’t far behind, walking back to the studios to collect my belongings then walking back to my parents before getting a lift home – I wasn’t in a fit state to drive. I put my head down at 6pm and woke up at 9am Monday.
Monday evening saw us being interviewed by James Hoggarth of BBC Radio Humberside in their Hull Studios. It was nice to finally meet James, as we’ve been ‘facebook friends’ for about a year or so.
Talking of facebook, without the support and encouragement of facebook friends right around the world, we wouldn’t have been able to see this through. Thank you one and all.
This is something that I am proud to have done, but something I have no intention of ever doing again.
