Lucy Spraggan brings beer to Innuendo Bingo
Lucy Spraggan arrived in the studio still delighted by the extraordinary few months since The X Factor. She told Scott that touring had taken her to places she had never imagined playing and announced more dates for October and November. Her fans already had their own names for themselves and for her, while Lucy admitted that she played Innuendo Bingo along with the radio in the tour van, spitting the water at her tour manager while he drove.
For her studio appearance, ordinary water seemed too predictable. Scott and Chris produced cans of non-alcoholic beer instead. Lucy agreed immediately, despite the unfortunate taste, and the game became considerably stickier than usual. She attacked the clips with such enthusiasm that Chris was being hit from close range almost from the start.
The material included the Home Secretary wanting something, Phil Spencer getting his hands on two semis, Matt Fincham discussing somebody being taken up the Shard and a footballer being described as hung like a basketball player. Saturday Farm supplied Dick Strawbridge needing to whip his beef out, Eamonn Holmes offered an unfortunate comment, Test Match Special discussed the feel of different balls and a cook discovered flies emerging from a cabbage.
By the end, Lucy’s make-up had been largely washed away and both players were soaked in alcohol-free beer. She had worried beforehand about hearing her song “Lighthouse” on Radio 1 for the first time, but appeared much less intimidated by the prospect of spraying Chris across the studio.
Watford lose and Scott discovers his resting face
Chris thanked Scott for accompanying him to the pub after the previous day’s programme so he did not have to watch Watford’s play-off final alone. The hoped-for Premier League promotion had not happened, but Chris insisted the defeat would not ruin his mood. Watford would simply have to try again in the Championship the following season.
Scott, meanwhile, had developed a concern about what his face did when he was not actively using it. Listeners agreed that he had a “moody resting face”, the kind of neutral expression which made strangers think somebody was angry or miserable when they were perfectly content.
The response revealed several varieties of the same problem. One listener’s natural face looked sad, another had trained himself to smile so consistently that it now happened automatically, while somebody else realised she had been pouting for an hour while concentrating on IT work. Scott decided he would rather look moody and turn out to be nice than have the opposite problem.
Dan and Phil make Chris meow at Conor Maynard
Dan and Phil began bringing their Big Weekend videos into the studio. Their premise was to test Chris’s interviewing skills after the Mila Kunis phenomenon by deliberately placing him in awkward situations with artists. The first challenge involved Conor Maynard: Chris had to fit three meows into the interview without Conor noticing what he was doing.
Chris was given almost no preparation time. He started boldly, slipping a meow into a sentence and then pushing his luck by virtually attaching one to Conor’s name. Somehow the interview continued normally as they talked about the Derry crowd, other artists and Conor’s performance.
The third attempt finally exposed him. While asking how Danny Howard should introduce Conor onstage, Chris suggested that he could simply walk out and say “meow”. Conor immediately questioned it, which meant the challenge had technically been lost. He later referenced the joke onstage anyway, giving Chris a consolation victory and setting the tone for the increasingly uncomfortable videos still to come.
Fish Pie Sue becomes a dictionary term
Fish Pie Sue had escaped the original telephone mystery and become a phrase in its own right. Scott discovered that an online slang dictionary now defined a “Fish Pie Sue” as a contact saved in somebody’s phone whose identity or memorable description had since been forgotten.
The show replayed the resolution of “Rohan Scorpion Jack”, where the mysterious contact turned out to be a guitarist Chris and Scott’s caller had met on a night out. Listeners were invited to search their own phones for similar entries and warned that sending one in meant eventually having to make the awkward call live.
It was a rare feature which had acquired a usable name almost accidentally. Fish Pie Sue herself remained unexplained, but her failed identification had become the template for solving everybody else’s forgotten contacts.
Big Weekend facts on Real or No Real
The day’s Real or No Real mixed bizarre history with fresh Big Weekend gossip. Scott learned that fake raspberry jam in the early twentieth century really could contain tiny pieces of wood standing in for seeds. Formula One had not decided to replace its podium music with Pitbull’s “Don’t Stop the Party”.
A claim about Nick Grimshaw appearing at Big Weekend breakfast in Crocs was rejected, prompting memories of the hotel, a wedding party and Scott’s late night in the bar with Charlie Sloth. The Hollywood sign really had temporarily become “HOLYWOOD” for a papal visit, a fact odd enough to survive even after everybody had talked themselves out of believing it.
The conversation mattered almost as much as the score. The whole game had become another excuse to unpack the stories everybody had brought back from Derry, exactly as the backstage videos were beginning to do elsewhere in the show.
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