Scott’s country weekend ended with health-conscious ducks
Scott and Chris had spent very different weekends.
Chris had been in Edinburgh for Chinese Dave’s stag do and returned with the sort of damaged voice expected after two nights out. Scott had visited a friend who had moved from the city to the country and now appeared permanently equipped with wellies and country pursuits.
His friend suggested feeding the ducks and produced defrosted peas and sweetcorn rather than bread. Scott had heard that bread was not particularly nutritious for ducks and joked that even wildlife had now gone health-conscious and “no carbs”.
The ducks themselves were unimpressed. Scott scattered the vegetables on the grass and into the pond and said virtually none of them showed any interest.
Chris became obsessed with Edinburgh’s one o’clock gun
During the stag weekend, Chris had received a message from a soldier involved with Edinburgh Castle’s famous one o’clock gun.
Chris and the group had been invited to watch, although a whisky tour and the rest of the stag schedule meant they did not make it. The soldier still recorded a special shout-out for Chinese Dave immediately after the gun was fired.
He then joined the programme and explained the tradition dated back to 1861. The gun, alongside a visual time ball, allowed ships to set their maritime clocks accurately for navigation. It was still fired at one o’clock every day except Sunday, although the modern shot used a blank rather than firing a projectile across Edinburgh.
The regular gunner was Sergeant Savage, with a small number of other soldiers covering when required. Hundreds of visitors could gather to watch on a busy day, making the gunner one of those people who was photographed constantly without necessarily being nationally famous.
Radio 1 went looking for local celebrities
That thought created a new category: people who were enormous celebrities in one town but almost unknown elsewhere.
Listeners immediately supplied examples. “Wavy Dave” was known for standing outside his house waving at passing cars. Plymouth had its Birdman. Halifax had Mushy, described as wearing pink and repeatedly running marathons. Yeovil had Dave the Tan.
There was also a “backwards man of Derby” who reportedly walked around town backwards while writing down number plates, and a man in Gravesend known for walking along singing “Give Me Oil in My Lamp”.
Scott loved the idea that these people could be hugely familiar to thousands of residents while having virtually no conventional television or online fame.
Scott actually turned up for his spin class with Grimmy
Despite all the predictions on Friday, Scott did make the Sunday-morning class with Nick Grimshaw.
He was not merely on time, he arrived before Grimmy and brought him a bottle of water. Scott compared it to being sent on a school trip by somebody’s mum.
He enjoyed the class and immediately posted a picture of the two of them on Instagram. What bothered him was that Grimmy did not appear to post anything about having exercised with Scott.
By Monday, Scott had moved from worrying he would be accused of cancelling to worrying Grimmy was embarrassed that the session had happened at all.
Charlotte had ghosted around ten people
Ghostbusters took a different approach by speaking directly to somebody who regularly did the ghosting.
Charlotte estimated she had disappeared on around ten potential relationships. She said the attraction of ghosting was that giving somebody the completely honest reason she did not like them could feel unnecessarily cruel, particularly when the reason was superficial.
One man had told her he was around five foot six, the same height as Charlotte, but when they met she believed he was closer to five foot three. She felt as though she was out with her younger brother and decided not to continue seeing him.
Another date had looked good in his Tinder profile because his main photo showed him covered in mud after a Tough Mudder event. When Charlotte met him clean, she thought he looked completely different and was no longer attracted to him.
Halfway through the date she pretended to feel ill so she could leave.
“Tough Mudder” finally made sense to Scott
The story exposed a misunderstanding Scott had apparently carried for years.
When Chris explained that the man had been doing Tough Mudder, Scott asked who was allowed to take part. He had genuinely believed the name was a play on “tough mother” and that the event was specifically aimed at mums.
Chris had to explain that “mudder” referred to mud and that anybody could enter.
Charlotte also said she now tried to speak to somebody on the phone before agreeing to a date because their voice could change whether she fancied them. A particularly high or squeaky voice could be enough to put her off.
That reminded the show of a previous technique in which somebody searched for a date’s Ice Bucket Challenge video before meeting them, because it revealed both what their voice sounded like and how they reacted under pressure.
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