Who does Posh follow?
The show turned its investigation of celebrity Twitter relationships into a scored game of Who Follows Who?. Professor Green followed Victoria Beckham, but she did not return the favour. Tulisa followed Little Mix, while the group did not follow their former X Factor judge. The pattern became clearer when attention moved to the Spice Girls.
Melanie C, Mel B and Emma Bunton all followed Victoria, but she followed none of them back. Geri Halliwell was also absent from her following list despite following Victoria herself. Posh instead appeared happy to keep up with Oprah Winfrey and Women’s Wear Daily. Chris had expected at least one exception, but the result was four one-way relationships and a particularly awkward end for the reunion fantasy.
Dear Scott and the Pixie Lott misunderstanding
In Dear Scott, a listener responded to the previous day’s debate by openly declaring his love for Mrs Brown’s Boys. He had paid to see the live show at Newcastle Arena, missed his final train in order to meet Brendan O’Carroll and sent photographs of both the encounter and his merchandise. After the anonymous confession on Wednesday, the team joked that his identity might need to be pixelated for his own safety.
Another message asked whether Chris had ever repaired his relationship with Pixie Lott. On his birthday, the show had played him celebrity messages originally recorded for Charli XCX, adding its own abrupt goodbyes to make them sound like personal calls. When Pixie genuinely telephoned, Chris assumed she was another recording and shouted at her to leave him alone.
Pixie had visited Huw Stephens’s show the previous afternoon, giving Chris an opportunity to apologise and pose for photographs with her and his 24 Years at the Tap End book. The reconciliation lasted until colleagues in Radio 1’s open-plan office used MSN to send a message to the studio computer in front of Pixie. They signed it with Chris’s BBC address and told her he loved her.
Knowing that the studio looked directly into the office, Chris dropped to his hands and knees and hid beneath the desks until Pixie left. The moment was filmed on a phone and placed on Radio 1’s Facebook page, transforming what had been a successful apology into another video of Chris trying to avoid the same pop star.
Rhianna Dhillon’s Innuendo Bingo soaking
Rhianna Dhillon joined Chris for Thursday’s Innuendo Bingo, with the close-up cameras capturing an exceptionally wet game. Chris Evans thanked decorators for staying out of his way while he rushed from the bathroom and kitchen, while a documentary about Huntingdon explained why suffocating was bad. Elaine Paige thought somebody looked as though they could use a stiff one, a clip which became the game’s recurring favourite.
A Radio 2 pigeon fancier said he was looking at 20 cocks, Five Live declared British men the most difficult to penetrate and a young woman on work experience described learning how to bone. Further clips considered whether something looked wet on the inside, whether it felt cold while running down a face and how Tiger Woods had survived a sloppy back nine.
Rhianna and Chris maintained eye contact through repeated sprays, and the plastic sheeting quickly disappeared beneath the water. The studio’s silent producer laughed so hard that he put his head in his hands and began crying, an unusually visible reaction which convinced Scott that the collection of clips had worked.
Greg is over the Zambezi
By day four of Hell and High Water, Greg James could summarise his mood in two words: he was over it. He listed the water, rapids, hippos, boats, tents, camping, sand, mosquitoes, blisters, sunburn, smell and lack of a comfortable toilet among the things he had stopped enjoying. The day had become a rowing marathon, with the apparently endless scenery passing as though it were repeating on a loop.
The most serious section contained numerous hippos displaced by rising water. Sven, the group’s Yorkshire guide, was normally reassuring but admitted feeling nervous over the final five kilometres. Some of the animals had become aggressive around tourist boats, and one had previously charged a speedboat to defend its territory. Sven warned the team that, if instructed, they must abandon the boats and swim rapidly to the bank.
Greg compared Sven’s sudden seriousness to seeing a parent panic: once the person expected to remain calm became worried, everybody else understood the danger. The group were exhausted by the heat and constant vigilance, and Greg said even his hair hurt. Messages from home and evidence of what Comic Relief funding had provided, including a well and school, continued to give the challenge its purpose.
The appeal again asked listeners to donate £1. Greg stressed that the team were not undertaking a dramatic challenge merely for spectacle, but to draw attention to people who needed practical support. A cold beer remained his personal wish, while knowing that listeners were behind the group was what he believed would carry everybody through the final stretch.
Real or No Real
The month ended with another round of Real or No Real. Beyoncé really was regularly photographed riding jet skis, although Chris had somehow remembered the girl band Parade while remaining uncertain whether Beyoncé had given birth to Blue Ivy. Parade had not opened a new laser-quest venue in Bridgend, but Nick Grimshaw really had been fascinated by ancient Egypt at school and particularly liked the fact that Egyptians invented fig rolls.
Pitbull continued to emerge as the feature’s model of personal responsibility: as well as washing his hands and ejecting USB drives correctly, he always shielded his PIN. The Script’s debut album was not played repeatedly at South Kensington station to disperse troublesome young people. Without a pen, Chris kept score by scrunching pieces of paper into small balls and arranging them like a homemade abacus, an appropriately unreliable system with which to close January.
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