One o’clock started the clock
At 1pm, Scott and Chris began the 2019 LOLathon.
The aim was simple enough to explain and difficult enough to attempt.
Stay on Radio 1 for 24 hours.
Keep making people laugh.
Raise money for Comic Relief.
The presenters knew many guests and challenges had been arranged.
They did not know all of them.
Radio 1 wanted their exhaustion and surprise to be genuine.
The giant Book of LOL came home
The red Book of LOL which had travelled through ridiculous place names around Britain and Ireland was now back in the studio.
The jokes collected on the road could finally be used.
The programme encouraged listeners to keep sending new ones by email and social media.
The quality did not matter.
Dad jokes, children’s jokes and deliberately awful one-liners were all welcome.
The only real requirement was enough material to last an entire day and night.
Edward supplied the perfect final road-trip joke
One of the most memorable contributors was Edward, six, from Belfast.
His knock-knock joke had been collected near the end of the road trip.
The punchline revolved around “my key” sounding like “Mikey” and not fitting in the door.
Scott and Chris liked it enough to ask listeners, workplaces and Radio 1 colleagues to make their own versions.
A joke from a six-year-old became one of the opening motifs of a national fundraising broadcast.
Dr Alex brought actual medical authority
Former *Love Island* contestant Dr Alex George joined.
For once, the person supplying doctor jokes was genuinely a doctor.
The studio moved rapidly between medical one-liners and discussion of how Scott and Chris were going to physically survive the challenge.
Neither presenter needed a doctor yet.
They expected that confidence to deteriorate overnight.
Scott and Chris had very different food plans
Scott had prepared like an endurance athlete.
He had portions of sea bass, steak and broccoli, almonds and porridge.
Chris had a different strategy.
He wanted pizza.
Possibly at four in the morning.
Scott warned that the heavy food would make him sleepy.
Chris argued that 24 hours of jokes without pizza would be significantly worse.
The debate was one of the first reminders that the LOLathon was not simply another long show.
Every ordinary decision, food, toilets, changing clothes, became part of planning how to stay awake.
The first hours were still easy
At the beginning, both presenters were energetic.
Guests arrived.
Jokes moved quickly.
Listeners donated.
The mood remained celebratory.
Scott repeatedly said the difficult part would come later, when normal radio hours ended and everybody else went home.
He was right.
The separate podcast editions released afterwards would preserve the increasingly strange stages of the night.
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