Nev explains why happy people sell
One week after becoming Scott’s newest television obsession, Nev Wilshire from BBC Three’s The Call Centre arrived in the studio. Scott admitted he was unusually excited simply because he had watched Nev on television and now had proof that this larger-than-life boss was real. Nev, meanwhile, sounded exactly like the man from the programme: reassuring, authoritative and ready with a management slogan for almost every problem.
The call centre had not been chosen because a producer already knew Nev was a character. He said the programme-makers had been looking for a workplace to film and eventually arrived at his company in Swansea. Once there, they discovered the compulsory singing. Every new starter had to sing because Nev believed happy people sold more effectively. Somebody who refused might find that the job was not for them, although Nev was careful to qualify one especially dramatic example after lawyers had reviewed the series.
He also explained the matchmaking seen in episode one. An employee named Kayleigh had spent days devastated by a breakup, so Nev decided that simply leaving her alone was not helping. His solution was to walk around the office finding single men for her to meet. The philosophy behind it was his catchphrase: some will, some won’t, so what, next. If people were happier and more confident in their personal lives, Nev believed that confidence carried into their work.
The Call Centre becomes an overnight hit
The reaction to the first programme had been immediate. Nev said thousands of people applied for jobs after transmission, including somebody from Germany who wanted both employment and a date with tea lady Hayley. She was already emerging as another star of the series and would appear prominently in the next episode, including adopting a particularly posh telephone voice.
Nev himself was being recognised around Swansea and asked to do motivational speaking. Other members of staff were receiving nightclub appearance requests, while Nev insisted he still had hundreds of employees and a business to run. His large page-a-day diary impressed Scott almost as much as the television fame because it looked exactly like something a proper boss ought to carry.
He was open to another series but knew the first run was only five episodes. Scott thought BBC Three had stumbled onto something much bigger than a dry workplace documentary: Nev’s mixture of management advice, matchmaking and enforced singing had given the programme its own language after a single week.
Nev makes Radio 1 sing Mr Brightside
Scott was not going to let Nev leave without testing his most famous technique on Radio 1. A group of staff were gathered, several looking distinctly unwilling, and Nev immediately switched into boss mode. He ordered people out of their chairs, brought them together and launched them into The Killers’ “Mr Brightside”, just as he did with new starters at the call centre.
The reluctant group included familiar Radio 1 staff and even announcer Alan Dedicoat. Scott watched in disbelief as Nev simply overpowered everybody’s resistance through force of enthusiasm. The result was shared online, giving listeners the chance to see that the television routine worked just as effectively on broadcasters as it did on sales staff.
Nev left Scott with exactly the same impression as the programme: slightly intimidating, extremely positive and absolutely certain that people performed better once he had persuaded them to stop worrying and join in.
Huw Stephens returns to Innuendo Bingo
Huw Stephens had not played Innuendo Bingo for a long time and wondered whether he had somehow ended up on a blacklist. Scott reassured him there was no ban, but immediately removed the hood which might have protected Huw’s newly cut hair. If he was returning, he was going to get properly wet.
The round began with Dot Branning on EastEnders being praised for having more “spunk” and quickly moved to a helicopter rescue, the Gadget Show’s Fanny Wang headphones and Ann Widdecombe describing how she liked pleasing herself. Radio 4 revived the Thomas Schafernaker discussion, Heston’s Fantastical Food supplied amazement at something enormous, and Radio 2 offered an unfortunate description of a gathering in the garden.
There was more from Springwatch, Crimewatch Roadshow, Coronation Street and Chinese Food Made Easy, where massaging a piece of fillet was enough to set the pair off again. An old Desert Island Discs question to former jockey Dick Francis and the now-reliable Dick Strawbridge beef clip finished the punishment. Huw’s return was one of the most enthusiastic games for weeks, exactly the kind of soaking Scott had hoped for when he told him the hood had to come off.
Stavros Flatley clear Scott’s dance floor
Scott had played Southampton University’s graduation ball the previous night, with Chris acting as his enthusiastic hype man. About 40 minutes into the DJ set, a manager asked Scott to make an announcement telling everybody to leave the dance floor. The request seemed absurd: he had specifically been booked to put people onto it.
The students obediently moved to the edges while a team arrived with brooms, mops and towels and cleaned the illuminated floor. Scott initially assumed it was some kind of essential maintenance. It was actually being prepared for Stavros Flatley, who were due to perform later and wanted the surface clean for their energetic routine.
What annoyed Scott was the timing. There was still part of his set remaining and a gap before Stavros Flatley appeared, yet the audience had been told they could not return. He carried on playing dance music to people standing around the edges until the contradiction became too much. Eventually he called everybody back onto the floor himself. The night had otherwise been brilliant, but being required to empty a dance floor during his own DJ set was a new experience.
Did Rihanna really look at you?
Rihanna’s latest tour prompted a familiar concert belief. One of Scott’s friends had attended the Cardiff show and was absolutely convinced Rihanna had maintained eye contact with him during a song. Members of the team immediately produced similar claims involving other artists, including a belief that Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos had been looking directly at somebody for an implausibly long time.
Scott accepted that performers had to focus their eyes somewhere and therefore must sometimes genuinely see individuals. Beyoncé had demonstrably picked people out of audiences, and Joe McElderry had once been handed the microphone during a show because his singing was good enough to catch attention. But the sheer number of fans convinced that a star had spent an entire verse communicating specifically with them made Scott sceptical.
Listeners supplied their own examples. Some insisted they had proof, while others described artists directly speaking to them from the stage, which Scott accepted as a much stronger case. The feature became less about proving any one claim and more about the oddly intimate illusion a huge concert can create when thousands of people simultaneously feel that the performer is looking at them.
Alan Dedicoat joins Real or No Real
Alan Dedicoat arrived for Real or No Real after a night out in Watford, bringing the usual exaggerated “Gran Canaria” persona with him. Queen Victoria had not refused to leave Buckingham Palace for the whole of 1891 because she was tired, and a story claiming China’s version of Snapchat had photographs and videos vetted by monks was also false, despite an initial scoring mix-up.
New York really had briefly been called New Orange in 1673, a particularly satisfying fact after Scott’s weekend in the city. A more uncomfortable claim was also genuine: rescue workers in New Mexico had needed heavy lifting equipment to remove a former holder of the world’s heaviest-man record from his home. That brought Scott and Alan straight back to their long-running mock argument about who was being “fatist”.
After the correction to the Snapchat answer, Scott finished with 40 points and Alan with 10. The programme ended looking ahead to Rock Week continuing with All Time Low, but the day belonged to Nev: within a week of The Call Centre first appearing, “some will, some won’t, so what, next” and compulsory Mr Brightside had already made their way into Radio 1.
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