A modern Christmas without a LadBaby charity single, some might say, is like sausage meat without the pastry, but it’s something we now have to adjust to. Between 2018 and 2022, Mark and Roxanne Hoyle, the husband-and-wife team behind the social media brand LadBaby, had the Christmas No 1 – for such things still matter – sewn up. With their fifth, they broke the record set by the Beatles. One year, they collaborated with Elton John and Ed Sheeran. Then last year, they decided they’d had enough. What had started as a joke, and a way to raise money for the food bank charity the Trussell Trust (now known as Trussell), had become more successful than they’d ever thought possible.
It also came with a backlash, after allegations spread online that the Hoyles were pocketing the money. They received a deluge of online abuse, threats in public and blackmail attempts. They were labelled grifters and, worse, Tories (in a 2019 Guardian interview, they had declined to say how they voted). Mark started experiencing panic attacks, something he still lives with. Now they’ve written a memoir, Our LadBaby Journey, detailing much of this, and it seems a bit of a cautionary tale – what happens when two ordinary people become online celebrities, and some silly Christmas songs about sausage rolls end with threats and the police involved.
