Songs to lie down to returns
Scott and Chris were due at Phil Taggart and Alice Levine’s second Radio 1 bedroom party and decided to repeat the idea which had unexpectedly worked at the first: instead of playing obvious party records, they would arrive with a set of intensely suggestive slow jams.
Usher, Robin Thicke and other late-night R&B sat on a playlist which Scott was surprised had been approved for broadcast. Trevor Nelson had recorded a deliberately silky introduction describing “songs to lie down to”, complete with instructions to light a candle, dim the lights and get the bed revolving. An outtake of Trevor making an approving noise became almost as useful as the finished announcement.
The problem was that the rest of the line-up, including AlunaGeorge, Zeng and other proper DJs and artists, made Scott wonder whether their joke set would look badly misjudged. Chris was unconcerned. At the previous bedroom party he had managed to attract a group of women onto the bed while playing slow jams and had subsequently declared it one of the greatest nights of his life.
Listeners supplied suitably dreadful DJ names. Chris could become “Love in the Dark Stark”, while Scott considered variations based on Mills and chills. Trevor’s voice was also tested at high volume in listeners’ cars, where the bass made seats vibrate and gave the afternoon show an unexpectedly practical demonstration of its new sound.
Chris begs his way into Grimmy’s football team
Nick Grimshaw was putting together a Radio 1 side to face Olly Murs’ team, and Chris had become increasingly alarmed that an initial invitation had quietly disappeared. Once Robbie Savage joined the line-up, Chris suspected he had been bumped.
He therefore phoned the breakfast show and openly campaigned for a place. Chris promised passion and commitment, said he would give everything, and eventually declared that he would even kiss the Radio 1 badge if he scored. Scott thought the performance sounded increasingly like begging, but it worked: Chris was confirmed for Monday’s match.
For somebody who normally mocked football language, Scott was fascinated by Chris’s genuine seriousness. He knew Chris would treat the game as if the result mattered enormously, even if the rest of the celebrity team regarded it as a bit of fun.
Scott gets stuck in the lift and Chris takes control
Scott briefly left the studio and failed to return because people were holding the lift doors while finishing a conversation. With a record ending and no presenter at the desk, Chris suddenly found himself responsible for Radio 1.
He calmly explained that Scott appeared to be stuck in the lift, introduced Jake Bugg and promised to find him. By the time Scott returned, the station’s social accounts already had a photograph of Chris at the controls looking as though he had been asked to fly a spaceship.
Scott was both impressed and suspicious. He jokingly asked whether Chris had engineered the lift delay to seize the programme and decided he might have to take Chris with him every time he left the studio. The accidental takeover lasted only a few minutes, but it would look almost like a rehearsal for what happened two days later.
Can a pet win an ex back?
Scott described a friend whose former boyfriend was trying to restart their relationship by saying his dog missed her. The tactic struck Scott as particularly effective emotional blackmail because after two years together she genuinely did miss the pet, even though she remained certain the relationship itself was over.
Listeners quickly produced stranger examples. Zoe knew somebody whose ex sent photographs of the soft toys they had once treated as a shared family, arranging the toys into scenes and writing messages explaining how much they missed her. The show agreed it was simultaneously rather sweet and extremely odd.
Sara Cox plays Real or No Real
Sara Cox joined Real or No Real after an evening drinking with Scott. The feature unusually had its voiceover performed live in the studio because of an administrative problem, which allowed Scott and Sara to ask for facts to be repeated directly.
The BBC really had broadcast the words “there is no news” on 18 April 1930 before filling the remaining bulletin time with music, a fact that felt perfectly timed after Monday’s royal-baby vigil. Scientists also really had developed a urine-powered phone charger. The claims about Tony Blair displaying his Heat Torso of the Week picture and Gemma Cairney being permanently kept on call by Radio 4 were inventions, although a real clip of Gemma smoothly filling airtime made the latter sound plausible. Sara won 30-20.
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