Scott and Chris were called back to Breakfast
Scott and Chris were back on the Radio 1 Breakfast Show after being drafted in at short notice when Grimmy was unwell. They had only found out the previous evening, with Scott joking that they had become Radio 1’s supply teachers and that senior management seemed particularly pleased by their willingness to move around the schedule whenever required.
The early start also gave them plenty of time to notice increasingly pointless things about each other. Chris’s jumper appeared to smell of ham, which developed into a wider discussion about people and clothes that somehow acquire food-like smells. Scott remembered the damp, wet-dog sort of scent he had once associated with Danny Howard, while listener Lucy rang in to report that her feet smelled like cake batter, a claim her sister was prepared to verify.
Chris tried his vegan-detecting superpower again
Chris continued testing the “superpower” he had recently discovered: claiming he could tell whether somebody was vegan simply by hearing their voice. Listeners were put through increasingly unnecessary questioning while Chris listened for whatever mysterious vocal clue he believed he could detect.
The feature broadened into other abilities people had never considered useful enough to mention. Joshua said that during summer he sneezed exactly three times at around 9pm, while Jake revealed that he could reverse names and words almost immediately. Jake demonstrated on a succession of names, including Scott and Chris, and was fast enough for them to decide they had stumbled across a genuinely impressive, if commercially questionable, human skill.
Dry January officially ended in Sheffield
The show marked the first day of February by checking in with James at a pub in Sheffield, who had spent January avoiding alcohol and, by his own account, largely avoiding temptation by keeping out of the way of it.
Rather than simply announce that Dry January was over, James had a large handbell ready for the occasion. He rang it and declared the pub’s doors open again, giving Scott and Chris the ceremonial end to the month they had wanted. The pair then became distracted by the linguistic possibilities of adding “-uary” to other activities and trying to invent equally unnecessary monthly challenges.
Ali Plumb met Liam Neeson on another form of transport
Radio 1 film critic Ali Plumb joined the programme during a particularly busy awards-season spell. One of the week’s new films was *The Commuter*, starring Liam Neeson as a man drawn into a conspiracy during his regular train journey.
Scott and Chris immediately noticed that Neeson’s action career appeared to be moving methodically through forms of transport. *Non-Stop* had put him on a plane, *The Commuter* put him on a train, and they started imagining how many vehicles remained before the formula ran out. Ali had spoken to Neeson, who said the era of strangers constantly asking him to record “Taken” style answerphone messages had at least eased a little.
Ali also ran through other films worth seeing, including *Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle*, *Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri*, *Darkest Hour* and *Phantom Thread*.
A minister resigned for being late
Scott and Chris also played the extraordinary House of Lords moment in which Lord Bates arrived late for a question, apologised and announced his resignation from the government dispatch box. The severity of the response was particularly striking to two presenters who had spent years working in live radio, where running a little late rarely resulted in somebody immediately giving up their job.
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