A man who did not know Adele becomes a dating deal-breaker
Scott opened with a question of cultural awareness after one of his 23-year-old friends had only just discovered Gotye’s Somebody That I Used to Know. The conversation quickly escalated when Claire rang to explain that she had split up with a boyfriend who genuinely did not know who Adele was, despite them watching her Royal Albert Hall concert together.
Claire’s admission divided the studio. Scott understood the shock, arguing that Adele was so ubiquitous that not recognising her suggested a much wider gap in someone’s knowledge of the world. Chris tried to defend the unnamed boyfriend, only to find himself under suspicion when the others realised he was not especially confident about Kirstie Allsopp either.
The show’s other major experiment involved Unlucky Gary. Scott phoned him and, without explanation, recited the story from Craig David’s 7 Days as though it had happened over the weekend. Gary initially accepted the increasingly implausible tale, including the Monday-to-Sunday romance, before finally working out what Scott was doing after two minutes and 39 seconds.
Beccy’s rap continued to be a point of nerves and pride, with listeners divided between praising the effort and joking that they no longer liked the song she had been asked to perform. The programme also made time for the usual correspondence, including the awkward business of approaching celebrities for photographs and listeners trying to identify songs from very vague descriptions.
The pace was held together by the team’s delight in tiny social tests, whether that meant deciding who was famous enough to be universally known or watching Gary take a song lyric far too seriously. Adele, in particular, became the day’s unlikely measure of compatibility.
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