Last Monday morning, my vicar school alarm went off for the first time in nearly three months and, as I usually do when my phone alarm goes off, I fumbled under my pillow to turn off the alarm and turn on the radio. It wasn’t until I heard the voice emanating from the handset that I remembered what had occurred the previous week.

Back in my student days, I had no TV in my room and spent my days studying to the sound of the Radio 1 playlist. In those ancient days, Moyles & Co. had the late afternoon slot, which began around the time that I’d awake from my usual mid-afternoon nap. [I was an arts student with 6-8 hours of timetabled classes a week, a mid-afternoon nap was easily accomplished. I’d usually fall asleep mid-way through Mark & Lard’s show and awake around 3pm when the next show began.] By the time they moved to the breakfast slot, I was a post-grad student and their 8 and a half year tenure saw me through my MA, unemployment, four jobs, a year of vicar school and hundreds of commutes. My friends and I have quite literally grown up while listening to their show.

I know opinions are divided on Moyles. (My brother-in-law loathed the show with a passion and my sister had to do some serious persuading to get it on the car radio on that final morning.) Perhaps as a pseudo-intellectual I should have been listening to Radio 4? Or, being the music lover that I am, 6 Music? Or, being the lover of cheese that I am, even Radio 2? But I loved the eclectic nature of the Chris Moyles Show – the lack of music; the reality; the comedy; the stupidity; their love of karaoke; the ridiculous parodies of chart hits; the personalities…heck, it was even a conversation on the show that pushed me into my hunt for disused London stations. I loved the cheesy songs that began every morning and I adored the fact that one morning when it had snowed he played classical music and encouraged people to open their curtains, before mentioning that there was snow on the ground – beautiful.

For the final 14 shows, I listened with the intensity of someone determined to capture every last moment with an old friend about to leave the country. Their coinciding with my late summer essay crisis was a bonus – iPlayering missed shows provided a welcome soundtrack to my writing, and showing the very last shows on the red button prompted me out of my bed at 6.30am to watch and get on with writing simultaneously.

But come this Monday morning, things will change completely. Team Grimmy will take to the airwaves and I doubt I’ll cope with the change. My mornings may become a lot quieter as I struggle to find a decent replacement. A two-week holiday immediately prior to the final shows gave us fans an opportunity to search for an alternative, but I found little that worked. The Today Programme is just too angry for my morning routine and I just refuse to succumb to Radio 2 – believing it to be a slippery slope into middle aged-ness.

However, all is not doom and gloom. There are a few lights in the morning darkness…

1) The YouTube archive of happy memories. My personal favourites would include Carrie shouting at her ex from the umpire’s chair on Centre Court and Chris discovering his 2012 birthday surprise. Oh, and McFly’s tribute to many a year of McFly days (Fridays, for the uninitiated, on which their song Star Girl would be played at 8.05am every single week) will be treasured: