Motorboating was once an Olympic sport
Listener Neil recalled helping his chimney-sweep father at Martin Clunes’s home when he was younger. He had not been sent up the chimney like a child in Mary Poppins, but he did help push Clunes’s broken-down Volkswagen camper van along the road afterwards. The house was an old country vicarage and included photographs from Neil Morrissey’s wedding, although Neil saw no nude portraits of its owner despite Scott and Chris inventing a list of celebrities they suspected might display one.
Scott revealed that a Scandinavian café near Radio 1 rewarded customers who completed a loyalty card with both a free coffee and a large hug. He had already received his embrace and was keen for Chris to experience the unexpectedly intimate service. A lift in an office building then revived another of Scott’s fears by announcing, before it had even moved, that he should remain calm because help was coming, only to travel normally to the sixth floor without any help arriving.
The team corrected the previous day’s suggestion that Benga had recorded a Jewish children’s album, having discovered that it belonged to an entirely different performer with the same name. That inspired a game featuring other unexpected namesakes found on download services. Chris failed to recognise records attributed to unrelated artists also called Drake, Adele, Labrinth and Plan B, demonstrating how easily listeners could pay for something very different from the act they intended to hear.
Scott and Beccy continued following Team GB, promising nudie pens to medal winners and becoming particularly absorbed in women’s judo. Beccy decided she had the strength and build to train for the 2016 Games, using Chris as her first reluctant practice opponent. Scott also argued that the prospect of receiving one of the programme’s pens might explain Britain’s rise to fourth in the medal table.
In Oh, What’s Occurring?, the team had to decide which unlikely activities had genuinely appeared at an Olympic Games. Motorboating drew large crowds in London in 1908, club swinging formed part of the 1904 gymnastics programme, and tug of war remained an event until 1920. Art competitions also meant medals had been awarded for oil and watercolours and town planning, while cow tipping, the hairiest back and man versus horse were inventions.
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