Life after Lisa and Steve
Monday felt strangely empty without the daily relationship update. Lisa had emailed over the weekend to say that everything remained fine between her and Steve and that she had enjoyed the experiment, but both had returned to being friends and the theme tune had been retired.
Scott and Chris had spent the weekend working Freshers events in Scotland. Scott, despite never having been a fresher himself, was once again convinced he was coming down with Freshers flu. Chris meanwhile had to prove his identity to a wedding party at a hotel after a guest refused to believe he was actually Scott’s on-air sidekick.
Vanessa Feltz wants Scott on a wrecking ball
Greg James’s parody of Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” video had become impossible for the Radio 1 building to ignore. Vanessa Feltz watched it with Grimmy and was sufficiently fascinated that Scott’s producer sent him the extraordinary Monday-morning message that Vanessa wanted to see Scott on a wrecking ball too.
Scott wanted no part of it. He already found Greg’s version deeply uncomfortable, largely because Greg was a colleague he had to see every day, and the idea of creating a parody of the parody did not improve matters. Chris, naturally, thought Scott should do exactly that.
Naked and Afraid leads to a nudist-beach pact
Scott had discovered the American Discovery programme Naked and Afraid, in which a man and woman who had not met before were left without clothes to survive in the wilderness for 21 days. He was fascinated less by the survival mechanics than by the extraordinary first meeting: two strangers arriving, getting naked and then trying to maintain completely normal eye contact.
Chris wondered whether the UK needed its own version and Scott started joking about signing him up. The conversation then moved to naturist beaches. Both were curious enough to consider visiting one together, but only under strict rules.
The key rule was simple: do not look down. They began imagining synchronised sitting, strategically modified sunglasses and every other technique required to experience a naturist beach while avoiding the most obvious part of the experience.
The mystery of Matt escalates badly
Chris finally revealed a lunch problem that had been growing for months. He regularly bought an excellent meaty lasagne from a nearby café. On one early visit, the man behind the counter asked, “How’s Matt?” Chris had no idea which Matt he meant but reflexively replied that Matt was fine.
The question returned on every visit. Instead of admitting the truth, Chris kept supplying vague positive updates about his imaginary shared acquaintance. Then the café owner began knocking money off his lunch, apparently because of the connection to Matt. By that point, confessing felt impossible.
Now the favour had been called in. The man indicated his underwear and asked Chris to get him half a dozen brightly coloured pairs. Chris agreed before he had worked out what was happening.
Scott could see only two options: abandon a café with exceptionally good lasagne or actually buy the pants. He chose the second. Chris would go back the next day carrying six brightly coloured pairs and a hidden microphone so Radio 1 could finally find out whether “Matt”, the discounts and the underwear were connected.
Dan and Phil return for Real or No Real
Dan and Phil returned after a couple of weeks away, having taken their show to an international radio festival in Zurich. Real or No Real became a music-heavy round for Radio 1’s Even More Music month.
They established that there had not been an instrumental UK number one since Mr Oizo’s “Flat Beat” in 1999, and that an Arctic Monkeys guitarist really had returned from touring to finish an important tiling job. A Coldplay question revealed that the “Yellow” video had been filmed on a beach used by naturists, neatly bringing the game back to Scott and Chris’s increasingly serious beach pact.
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