You don’t have an excuse to be bored this Saturday, January 24. That’s because our friends at Oystermouth Radio in Wales will be airing a special 24-hour Eurovision marathon on the weekly radio program W12P. It’s not just euro-pop froth, y’all. As part of the 24-hour marathon, listeners are encouraged to make donations to Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research, a UK charity that fights blood cancer. Jamming to Eurovision and doing good? That’s a win to us.
The marathon is being spearheaded by W12P’s Glen Bartlett, who works as a researcher at the Welsh state broadcaster. “I thought that just promoting the campaign wasn’t enough – I wanted to get involved!” he tells wiwibloggs via Facebook. “I came up with the idea (regretably!) to do a 24 hour radio marathon as I not only thought that it’d be a great thing to achieve, but also it meant that we had PLENTY of time to promote the charity, the campaign – and also who doesn’t love a 24 hour Eurovision-athon?!”
Amen to that. If you’re in the UK you can donate £5 simply by texting EURO95 to 70070. If you live outside the country, you can listen to the marathon online and donate here: justgiving.com/w12p. The action kicks off Saturday at 11:00 GMT.
wiwibloggs: So are you really going to be doing this for 24 hours?
Glen: As part of the challenge, I’ll have to be there for the whole 24-hour period. A part of me thinks I can do it as I’m doing something I love – yet another part of me is just wondering why I volunteered to do it in the first place. It’s going to be a tough challenge but I have some wonderful Eurofans making the trek down to Swansea, Wales to help me out!
What can we expect if we tune in?
One thing I wanted to make clear straight away when I started W12P is that I wanted the show to have a real community feel. Every Thursday night, people can interact with us and eachother through Facebook, Twitter and through e-mail whilst I’m playing their favourite songs, hosting competitions, etc. I’ve been overwhelmed with the amount of messages from listeners that said they had no idea how active Eurofans have been on Twitter during the show, and that makes me so immensely proud. I want the same thing with the 24 hour show. It’s a show for the fans of Eurovisions past and present – and a show I hope people will interact with. I don’t want to be the presenter that impresses people by saying ‘At 2pm we’ve got the guy who came 3rd in MGP 2008’.. You’d be surprised at the amount of people who just wouldn’t want to listen to that.
What do you do outside of Eurovision stuff?
Of course W12P is a just a hobby for me. I work full time as a TV Researcher for 2 programmes on S4C (the Welsh national broadcaster) – “Prynhawn Da” which means “Good Afternoon” (a lifestyle/magazine show) and “Heno” which means “Tonight” (an event-led magazine show). They’ve been great in letting me promote the radio programme on the show and have been really supportive! It’s an intense job but I love it. I get to travel to a lot of interesting places in and out of Wales and get to meet some marvellous people! The dream is to be on the other side of the camera – but there’s time for that still!
Good luck to Glen and W12P. We’ll drink a coffee for all y’all on Saturday night!
Trying on the tshirt for Saturday. Thanks @beatbloodcancer! Not long to go.. #w12plive24 pic.twitter.com/KGTYJiU31D
— Glen (@glenbartlett) January 20, 2015
People who say the Brits hate Eurovision, look at this guy. He’s using the love of Eurovision to raise money for a fantastic cause!
I’d like to donate.