Parkinson's goes viral!

But who made it happen?

Last Tuesday I wrote about the intense discussions amongst the Movers and Shakers team about the progress of our Parliamentary petition, which calls for a better deal for people with Parkinson’s. We had over 56,000 signatures and were making steady progress towards our target of 100,000 by September 10th, which should trigger a debate in the House of Commons about our Parky Charter. Mostly we were getting the 620 new signups per day that we needed but we were uneasy about keeping up the momentum through August when many people would be away on holiday. We kept asking ourselves what was the trick that was going to put a rocket under our campaign - how could we go viral?

Then, quite suddenly, it happened.

Every morning at around 8am I look at the running total of signatures on the petitions website and calculate how many we have added over the previous 24 hours. Last Wednesday morning, July 2nd, the day after my article about going viral was published, the figure was 779, a good result but still within the range of 532 to 984 we had seen over the previous fortnight. But on Thursday morning the number was 3184, Friday an extraordinary 8541, Saturday 7671 and Sunday 3870. In the early hours of Sunday the total number of signatures climbed above 80,000, a milestone we had not expected to pass until early August.

But why was it happening - had any one action by us or our supporters lit the fire? We all had our theories. Could it have been the very welcome video endorsement of our campaign by Stephen Fry, hopefully the first of a number of celebrity backers? We had published that on social media on Wednesday so that could have done it.

Then there was the mounting excitement about Saturday’s Ozzy Osbourne gig at Villa Park. Cure Parkinson’s had secured two tickets for the final concert of the heavy metal legend who has been living with Parkinson’s for years, and the charity’s publicity about its prize draw encouraged people to sign the petition.

Nick “the judge” Mostyn wondered whether his Tuesday Bar Council lecture on law reform, which ended with his audience in person and online being encouraged via our QR code to sign the petition, had played a part.

I took a closer look at the data to see whether it showed exactly when take-off had occurred.

With the help of someone far more skilled at spreadsheets than me I knocked up this chart of signature growth from 8am on Wednesday. By 8pm 643 signatures had been added, a pretty good but not exceptional result. But by 11pm that had climbed to nearly 1200 and rather than quietening down overnight the pace seemed to accelerate so that by 8am the next morning more than three thousand new backers had been added in 24 hours.

So, what kind of content could have had so many people signing up to a petition in the wee small hours? Our producer Nick Hilton thought he had the answer - as someone thirty years younger than the average Mover and Shaker he spends some time on TikTok where he spotted this video by a woman called Liz Houghton. It’s called Please Sign The Parky Charter and there is nothing flashy or sophisticated about it, just a passionate and emotional appeal straight from the heart.

This call to action seems to have had an extraordinary impact. As I write, the video has had nearly 24,000 likes and over 4,000 comments, many from people who say they have now signed the petition. A number of them comment on the rising numbers - “just signed. Now at 58,431” writes Amanda. Checking through my records I see that must have been around midnight on Wednesday.

So I think we can safely say that Liz Houghton played a major role in the petition going viral. Of course, she was building on the work of dozens of others, from Linda in Bexhill still keeping her area way out in front in the contest for the highest number of signatures, to David and Lorraine cycling for signatures from Lancaster to John’O’Groats, to Anna, politely asking people in the Wimbledon queue whether they would like to be part of what I am beginning to think of as ‘this great movement of ours.’

We have made a huge step forward this week but let’s not be complacent. I am now confident that we will get to 100,000 but, as and when we do, that is not the end. We will need to keep up the pressure, first to get a debate scheduled, then to make sure the government does deliver a better deal for people living with Parkinson’s. And that means continuing to sign and share the petition.