Jason Byrne’s unofficial tour awards
Jason Byrne returned near the end of a three-month tour with only Cheltenham and the Hammersmith Apollo still to come. The experience had produced so many memorable audiences, heckles and meals that he planned to hold his own tour awards. A Manchester crowd supplied one contender after younger audience members failed to recognise a discussion about Predator. Somebody at the back repeatedly shouted Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Get to the chopper” line, despite admitting that he did not know what it meant.
Leeds had produced a rival heckle when a man interrupted Jason’s discussion of Derren Brown to insist that Dynamo was better. The phrase spread through the audience and later across Jason’s Facebook page. The staff at Leeds City Varieties were also in contention for asking him to turn down the interval music because the women selling ice creams could not hear the orders.
Food required its own categories. Jason remembered an excellent Plymouth breakfast with thick rashers and good sausages, while an unnamed hotel supplied the worst sausage. He preferred what he called a simple “trampy sausage”, ordinary hash browns and beans from a tin rather than a supposedly improved version filled with leeks, onions or other ingredients.
The strangest audience contribution came from Simon in Stoke. He raised his hand during the show simply to announce that he could kick himself in the head, then came on stage and demonstrated it while standing. Jason warned him not to knock himself unconscious, but the sideways kick worked and Simon calmly sat down again. What had begun as an unexplained claim became a regular request when people later recognised him.
Rihanna’s increasingly uncomfortable 777 Tour
Scott and Jason discussed Rihanna’s attempt to stage seven concerts in seven countries across seven days. Around 100 journalists were travelling on the specially chartered Boeing 777, but they were in economy and had barely seen Rihanna. Occasional announcements over the intercom did little to improve the atmosphere as the exhausted group travelled between North America and Europe.
The journalists had started creating their own entertainment. One streaked through the aircraft, while others were photographed sleeping on the floor. Their promised access to Rihanna had largely amounted to pictures of the fruit, sweets, doughnuts and éclairs carried through her section of the plane. Jason compared the flight to Con Air and imagined an equivalent tour of Britain in which he eventually locked himself inside a train’s quiet carriage or buffet car.
Sarah-Jane Crawford plays Innuendo Bingo
Radio 1 joined 1Xtra as Sarah-Jane Crawford faced Chris in her third game of Innuendo Bingo. Her mother had already texted the programme asking them not to get her too wet. Sarah-Jane had worn waterproof mascara but was more concerned about protecting a freshly straightened blow-dry, having deliberately worn her hair curly for an earlier appearance.
She initially tried to turn away whenever she laughed, forcing Scott to remind her that the cameras needed to see her and that she was supposed to aim at Chris. MasterChef asked whether somebody was hard, a woodland programme discussed making the most of every inch of wood and a music lesson featured a pianist. Further clips covered a big entrance, the number of Cox’s apples eaten in Britain and a character from Emmerdale announcing that she had been shafted.
Sarah-Jane’s careful approach disappeared once the strongest clips arrived. Bill Turnbull referred to Rihanna’s puffing coat, a man remembered returning with a dirty, smelly sack and Countryfile reported that a bull had caused headaches. The final appearance of Deirdre from Coronation Street left Sarah-Jane wet enough for the team to consider bringing out Radio 1’s unflattering emergency chinos.
Duck or grouse?
The discussion of confusing toilet signs continued after a listener sent a photograph from an Edinburgh pub. One doorway said “duck” and another said “grouse”, leaving Scott and Chris to decide which represented the men’s toilet. Scott instinctively chose grouse, while Chris would have selected duck, but neither could explain the reasoning.
The mystery was eventually resolved: the words were not toilet labels at all. They warned people approaching a low ceiling either to duck or risk having a grouse after hitting their head. The answer explained why no sensible gender distinction could be found, but only after the team had spent much of the show trying to invent one.
Real or No Real
Charlie Sloth joined the game while hoping to build his total towards a Barbados holiday. The Italian name for the @ symbol really did refer to a small snail, but Danny Dyer did not have a phobia of Walnut Whips. A record of 182,689 text messages sent by one person in a month was real, as was the finding that 21% of people considered it acceptable to end a relationship through Facebook.
The final claim suggested that Mel and Sue had hibernated in cardboard boxes like tortoises between 1999 and 2008. Even after the team established that they were talking about the Great British Bake Off presenters, both players correctly rejected it. Charlie finished on 40 points, ten ahead of Scott.
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