[post-event update at the bottom of this post!]

Jonny vs Dance Dance Revolution - raising money for Macmillan Cancer Support

Latest in a long line of questionable ideas, on the 28th of February 2026 I'm playing a lot of Dance Dance Revolution in support of Macmillan Cancer Support.

A couple of years ago my mum passed away following complications from cancer. During a long stay in hospital our family were given endless support, sympathy and kindness from the Macmillan team. It is somewhat cursed that such a service is sustained only by donations rather than being centrally funded, so I'd really like to do something to give back a tiny fraction of what we were given when we really needed it.

What

Dance Dance Revolution is a videogame played by stepping on pads in time with music. If you hit enough of the pads in time with the song, you'll pass! My goal is to clear 100 songs on the 28th of February. To put that in context, the average song I'll be attempting has about 3-400 steps in; the average marathon, walked or ran, takes around 50,000 steps. Throw in a few retries and we're not far off. It's a lot of effort...

It should be noted that I am pretty terrible at this game, and Entirely Too Old For This Kind Of Thing; I don't think I've played 100 songs on this game in my entire life so this could go south pretty quickly!

...what

This is where your support comes in! I'm going to randomly generate a list of songs to play the day before the event; but if we raise enough I'll commit to doing the same number of songs but on a harder difficulty. Let's:

up to £250 - songs chosen from difficulty 8 and 9

£251 to £500 - songs chosen from difficulty 9 and 10

£501 to £750 - songs chosen from difficulty 10 and 11

£751+ uhhh

So the last time I tried anything harder than an 11 I had to revise it in advance, it took about eight tries and I needed several days to recover, so let's not do that. How about if we break £750 I'll chop off two foot worth of my beard too just to really round things off. If you hate my beard that much, donate £40 (and be available in North London on the 28th of February) and I'll let you cut the stupid thing off yourself.

20260216 update - OK so you broke all the fundraising goals in just over a week! THANK YOU. Now I need to think of something new for if we hit £1,000 - watch this space for updates.

WHAT

We'll be playing from about 1200 to 2200 at FreePlayCity, a fantastic rhythm and fighting game arcade in the north of London (near Manor House on the Piccadilly Line, and Haringey Green Lanes on the Suffragette Line). Come along and give us your support in person! If you can't, we're also planning to stream the event on Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/pfcatfpc for anyone who can't make it.

Several of us are undertaking Dance Dance Revolution challenges on the day - please check out our Fundraising Team on JustGiving for info on their fundraising and causes!

what

It's the 4th of March now! Hi everyone! Good lord I'm tired.

I can't quite get over the generosity I and the rest of the team have received with donations. We thought £1,000 was an optimistic target but to be close to breaking £2,500 is incredible. Thank you all so much.

The event was a success! Working with our friends at FreePlayCity was an absolute dream and we can't say enough nice things about how excellent they have been to us. Vetch and Scadge cleared their goals with time to spare, Hal ultimately cleared 20 charts at difficulty 18, Niblet did a preposterous amount of mind-bending Trip Machine madness, and... I was a way off.

Thanks to some technical issues (note to self: ask nicely for a volunteer to handle streaming issues next time), I spent much of the first few hours setting things up and then troubleshooting issues with our main camera, which put me way off pace - and to rub salt in the wound, the streams didn't save so all the video has been lost anyway!

In the end I stayed at the arcade until they were literally turning the lights off at after 2300, and hit a final total of 65 clears out of 76 attempts.

SO

Heading back to FreePlayCity tomorrow to finish up the remaining 35 clears; I appreciate a marathon isn't quite as impressive when you take five days off part-way through, but I committed to this and am determined to see it through.

Thank you all once again for all your support - our daft idea leading to so much support for these amazing causes has been incredible to see and will hopefully help to change some lives for the better.

PS I am still far too old for this

[Update 2] Did it!