Simon McCoy introduces Selfie history
The completed Selfie history film opened with BBC News presenter Simon McCoy. He placed the project in a line stretching from Pliny and Pepys to tweets, sharing and hipsters before sending Scott, Chris and Alexis Killacam into the past.
For the moon landing, Alexis criticised black-and-white filters, astronaut boots and the phrase “one giant leap for mankind”, while wondering why anybody would choose the Moon over Cancún. Scott and Chris had found the miming unexpectedly difficult, giving Scott new respect for Britney Spears. Their scenes included a 1960s diner, the 1966 World Cup and the London Dungeon, where they recreated the Great Plague with a large boil attached to Chris’s face.
Scott admitted that he had missed part of the dungeon filming. He put on a mask at the start, after which a much taller body double took over. Anyone watching carefully would have little difficulty spotting the change.
Molly goes from Introducing to Eurovision
Molly Smitten-Downes arrived as the United Kingdom’s Eurovision entrant with “Children of the Universe”. She had uploaded her music to BBC Introducing and received an unexpected email from the team assembling that year’s entry. National support from Introducing had already delighted her; representing the country had not seemed a possible next step.
With Copenhagen about two weeks away, the scale was beginning to feel real. Around 150 million people would watch internationally, including a large audience in Australia. Molly said the response from people elsewhere in Europe had been positive and suggested they felt the BBC was taking the contest seriously. Scott promised to support her in Denmark and tried to explain why a week of Eurovision parties would convert even a sceptic.
A soaking for the country
Scott and Chris stood for the national anthem before Molly’s Innuendo Bingo, while she remained seated as the person representing the nation. She had asked to wear a raincoat, but Scott insisted on the normal rules.
Elaine Paige offered somebody a stiff one, The One Show discussed people coming in the bottom end and Phil Spencer advised trimming the bush to reveal a clear entrance. Molly initially tried to duck, then discovered water had gone down her trousers. Snooker supplied a nicer split, balls entering a hole and the danger of coming in low on the pink. An Australian rules commentator described something coming “right up down someone’s back”, before Kirsty Wark ended the game by asking about a dig.
Molly’s non-waterproof mascara ran dramatically and her wipe-clean trousers proved useful. Scott wished her luck for Copenhagen after a game he described as a soaking for Great Britain.
The boyfriend initiation
Chris’s friend Benji had met his girlfriend’s parents and found her father repeatedly adding potatoes to his plate, then filling his beer whenever the level fell. It looked like a deliberate test to discover when the new boyfriend would object.
Chris remembered his first meeting with his own girlfriend’s father. A plumber was supposedly working on the toilet, so Chris was sent upstairs and told to keep flushing until asked to stop. He continued for roughly 45 minutes before returning to find the father watching football with his feet up. The toilet probably needed only one flush; the real job was testing whether Chris would continue without complaint.
Listeners supplied their own versions. Katie’s family handed her new boyfriend a Bible and made him read aloud for five minutes despite not being religious. The programme concluded that improvised parent initiations, particularly from dads, were very much a real phenomenon.
Greg James sorts the real from the invented
Greg James joined Real or No Real. Clean Bandit really had asked their followers to lend them an Orange Wednesdays coat for a cheap cinema visit, then deleted the tweet after only a handful of reactions. Coldplay had not requested four hot steak slices on the rider for their surprise Live Lounge, despite a lengthy discussion of what Chris Martin might eat after separating from his vegan wife.
Jo Whiley really had become the official face of a campaign promoting beer. That seemed as unnecessary as generic adverts for milk or potatoes, but it was true. The game also gave Scott a chance to remember making Jo fire condoms from a “sex cannon” during a live show in Magaluf, an experience she later described in her autobiography as a career low.
A royal reality show and more dad tests
An American television trailer promised women the chance to date Prince Harry. The production had a convincing lookalike, helicopters, carriages, security and photographers, while contestants appeared to believe they were competing for a royal wedding. Scott and Chris immediately wanted the series, particularly the eventual moment when the deception had to be revealed.
The dad-test discussion continued with more examples. One father challenged a prospective boyfriend’s appetite with food and beer, while Chris’s long session of toilet flushing remained the standard against which every story was measured. The tests made little practical sense, but refusing them during a first meeting was almost impossible.
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