The Rear of the Year campaign begins
Scott had already contacted the organisers of Rear of the Year after promising to nominate Beccy. Their guarded reply said her nomination had been “noted”, which was not quite the endorsement Beccy had hoped for but still represented progress. The organisers explained that television or radio attention often produced a surge in votes for a particular candidate, leaving Beccy to find a way of making her rear publicly noticeable.
Scott suggested appearing on ITV’s new diving programme Splash!, whose contestants were already generating enormous attention online. Beccy could not immediately see what she would have to do to compete with Jessica Ennis and other potential candidates, but the campaign was now active: her first official nomination existed, and the programme intended to turn a casual New Year prediction into something people could vote for.
Rob da Bank plays Innuendo Bingo
Rob da Bank arrived only shortly before Innuendo Bingo began and admitted that he had seen little more than a brief clip of Emeli Sandé spitting water. Chris was particularly excited to meet somebody who ran two festivals and began imagining a festival of his own, while Rob gently corrected his assumption that booking Stevie Wonder was simply a matter of making a telephone call.
The new Broadcasting House studio had been protected with plastic sheeting, and Rob approached the game with a mixture of excitement and concern for his musical reputation. Holby City began by asking somebody to keep pushing blood and fluid, followed by a cook inviting another person to put a finger in. Chris reacted immediately, but Rob’s first response was so restrained that the game threatened to become ten minutes of Chris spitting water at an unmoved guest.
Alexandra Burke finally broke the resistance with a discussion about Gayle getting racy storylines. Rob sent a mouthful of water straight onto Chris’s head and began to understand the appeal. Further clips included somebody popping something out and looking it up again, instructions to put one hand in and another hand in, Raymond Blanc’s love of good stuffing and a gadget being rammed up the bottom end before being held in place with a wooden plug.
Rob remained selective even after joining in. Nigel Slater’s sticky sauce and shredded meat received only six out of ten, but Fearne Cotton nearly tempted him to enter himself when describing a competition prize. He left soaked, having moved from polite bewilderment to a competitive final round without ever pretending that every clip was funny.
S-Dosser returns with Hanging in the Morning
Chris unveiled new music from his friend S-Dosser, whose earlier song “Bish Bash Bosch” had unexpectedly inspired YouTube uploads, Facebook groups, stag-style shirts and even an NME mention. His follow-up was called “Hanging in the Morning”, a cautionary dance track about the consequences of drinking too much. It included references to Danny Dyer, waking on a sofa, receiving texts about the previous night and being “hanging in the morning”.
Scott was surprised by how much he liked the new direction. The standout section repeatedly asked what to do with the junk in the trunk, while listeners compared S-Dosser with Pitbull and asked for an album. A Live Lounge appearance remained some distance away, but Scott was willing to tell him that the track was genuinely good rather than merely funny.
One detail presented a possible problem. A female vocal sounded remarkably like Fergie’s contribution to “My Humps”, leading the team to wonder whether S-Dosser had somehow secured a major guest appearance or simply sampled the record. Chris could not explain it, but the similarity made copyright lawyers another potential requirement if the song’s unexpected popularity continued.
The woman sniffing the lift
Scott had noticed a woman pressing her nose close to the join between the lift doors and gently sniffing throughout the journey to Radio 1. Nobody could decide whether she was studying the smell of the building, desperate for fresh air or simply stuck. Listeners using the new studios were advised to look out for her, adding another inexplicable character to the programme’s growing picture of life inside Broadcasting House.
Real or No Real with Charlie Sloth
Charlie Sloth joined Real or No Real and arrived looking so tanned that Scott initially suspected a sunbed. Charlie credited tinted moisturiser and denied that his colour had anything to do with presenting on 1Xtra. He also revealed his crush on Pink and claimed, with diminishing credibility, to possess Jay-Z’s phone number because he was a hip-hop DJ.
People with moustaches were not 64% more likely to be called Jeff, although the team tested the idea against Jeff Stelling, Jeff Brazier and Jazzy Jeff. The medical name for an ice-cream headache really was sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia, while Bomfunk MC’s did not hold a record for fast cross-stitching with tiny thumbs. The average person could grow about 590 miles of hair over a lifetime, a figure which prompted Charlie to give an unexpectedly comprehensive inventory of his own body hair.
Jay-Z did not own the world’s largest collection of penny-farthings. Charlie finished with 60 points against Scott’s 24 and celebrated so loudly that he startled everybody in the studio. His prize remained well short of the holiday once discussed, but Scott confirmed that he had at least earned enough points for a tumbler.
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