The people’s couple arrive at Radio 1
Decision day had become absurdly big. Listeners were timing lunch breaks around the conclusion and Lisa and Steve came to Broadcasting House in person after Radio 1 sent them on a final date to London Zoo. Lisa arrived with a toy elephant, while her Twitter following had jumped from dozens to thousands over the course of the week.
Scott delayed the actual answer because, by now, a simple conversation was not enough. The West End Gospel Choir walked into the studio to perform a live version of the Lisa and Steve theme tune. For Scott, standing inches from a gospel choir performing a joke he had created a few days earlier was almost the perfect radio moment.
The show then played a Beauty and the Beast-backed montage of the whole experiment: Chris’s original hypothetical call to Steve, the early dates, football compromises, full-fat Coke, movie night and Deaks’s late revelation about the kissing.
An easel, an envelope and a town crier
Only the producer knew the decision in advance. Lisa and Steve wrote their joint answer down, sealed it in an envelope and sent Chris outside with it to an easel in front of Broadcasting House, deliberately copying the ceremonial drama of the royal-baby announcement.
Scott had also found the town crier serving Poole and Bournemouth, ready to make the result public back home. It was a wildly disproportionate apparatus for the end of a one-week dating experiment, which was exactly why Scott liked it.
Chris opened the envelope outside. The statement said that Lisa and Steve had decided to remain friends.
The town crier duly proclaimed the news, slightly mangling the date in his excitement, while Scott returned to the two people who had actually made the decision.
Better as friends
Lisa and Steve said the experiment had been worthwhile but unnaturally intense. Having to see each other every day on top of work meant they sometimes ran out of things to talk about, and Lisa joked that her shower had become the only 15 minutes she spent alone.
Crucially, neither regarded the week as a failure. They had discovered an answer to a question they might otherwise have carried around indefinitely, and their friendship had survived. Lisa said she would still send Steve pictures of cats.
Their advice to other friends wondering whether there might be romance between them was surprisingly positive: give it a try. Their own answer happened to be friendship, but now they knew.
Scott still wants The Fox at number one
With the big decision finally made, Scott returned to his other obsession of the week. Ylvis’s “The Fox” was past 20 million online views and increasingly sounded to him like an inevitable hit if it became properly available in the UK.
It was an appropriate ending to a week in which two apparently throwaway ideas had taken over the show: a listener wondering whether she should date her mate, and a Norwegian comedy song asking what noise a fox makes.
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