A celebrity-art opportunity
Chris had discovered an eBay seller offering amateur drawings of celebrities without clothes, including Simon Cowell, Joey from EastEnders and Pat Butcher. The pictures were censored with stars on the listing and were not especially accomplished, but people were paying about £5 for them. Chris saw a business with almost no costs and only one obvious subject available to him.
Without asking permission, he spent his spare time drawing two nude portraits of Scott entirely from his imagination. Scott was disturbed less by the artistic quality than by the knowledge that his friend and colleague had been at home imagining him without clothes. Chris argued that the pictures were flattering, tasteful and potentially profitable. Scott stressed that he had never posed on a couch wearing the Heart of the Ocean while asking to be drawn like one of Jack’s French girls.
Chris had already taken the portraits onto the streets near the BBC and shown them to strangers. He advertised “celebrity nudes”, asked passers-by what they thought and attempted to establish a price. Responses ranged from 50p to an exaggerated £5 million. Listeners inspecting the drawings online noticed Scott’s enormous left arm and the particularly careful attention Chris had paid to his nipples.
The reaction encouraged Chris to imagine expanding the range to Danny Howard. Scott remained unconvinced that any money justified the strange hours spent creating the pictures, while Chris insisted nobody could control his brain or his art.
Everything becomes live television
Scott had discovered Channel 4’s Bedtime Live, a programme in which experts tried to help families put children to sleep on schedule. He questioned whether any child could relax while a television crew filled the house and found the programme’s attempts at drama irresistible. Mission-impossible music accompanied one boy’s repeated escapes from bed, while a presenter treated the sight of a sleeping child as an extraordinary breakthrough.
The trailer returned after an advertising break with the question of whether the audience really was looking at a sleeping child. Scott placed it alongside Lambing Live, Stargazing Live and Planet Earth Live as proof that almost any subject became television once “live” was added to the title.
That led to the possibility of Nude Drawing Live, with Chris painting a model throughout the Radio 1 show. Chris believed the combination would attract a large online audience, although Scott immediately ruled out appearing as the model himself.
Real or No Real with Annie Mac
Annie Mac joined the game while pregnant, leaving Scott so worried about saying the wrong thing that every attempt to avoid the subject became more awkward. Annie reassured him that she remained a person with opinions and did not need every conversation to concern the baby.
Claudia Winkleman had not attempted to use a police officer’s helmet as a toilet while pregnant, but the discussion uncovered the real story that she had completed a sponsored 23-hour labour for Comic Relief in 2003. British Army tanks really had carried equipment for making tea since the Second World War, partly so crews could heat food and water without leaving the vehicle.
The Tree of Ténéré really had stood almost alone in the Sahara before a driver knocked it down in 1973. Annie and Scott struggled to understand how anybody could collide with the only tree for hundreds of miles. Rowan Atkinson had not cut the lord mayor’s tie while opening Worcester Town Hall, despite the scene sounding exactly like something Mr Bean might do.
Annie’s cynicism earned her 20 points to Scott’s ten. The larger lesson was that Chris’s artwork had moved from a private business idea towards a possible live broadcast in less than one show.
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