The A303 stakeout produced photographic evidence
James the private investigator arrived with the follow-up to his 2.20am voice message.
After listeners had sent him information about lorry drivers and particular roads, James had spent part of the night watching a lay-by. He showed Scott and Chris the long-lens photograph he had taken but said it could not be put on social media for legal reasons.
The picture appeared to show a naked person inside a lorry cab and James said there was definitely at least one other person involved. The cab light was on and the front curtains were open, leading him to wonder whether the occupants were not particularly concerned about being seen.
For the show, it was enough to confirm that the apparently ridiculous conversation about “affairy roads” had sent James somewhere genuinely productive.
A secret hotel booking looked like an obvious affair
James’s next case initially looked far more straightforward.
A husband had hired him because he suspected his wife was cheating. He had found an unexpected hotel booking and, when he asked what she was doing that day, she said she was going to see a friend.
James began following her. During the surveillance she visited a high-street lingerie shop and bought new underwear.
The combination seemed highly suspicious: an unexplained hotel, a lie about visiting a friend and new lingerie. James relayed the developments to the husband, who became increasingly convinced he had been right.
A female colleague followed the wife into the shop so the investigators could establish what she was buying without James having to loiter conspicuously in the lingerie section himself.
The affair turned out to be his own birthday surprise
As surveillance continued, the expected other man never appeared.
Instead, James and his colleague began seeing people arrive at the hotel and put up decorations.
The truth finally became obvious: the wife was arranging a surprise birthday party for her husband. The hotel booking was for the celebration and the lingerie was another part of the birthday surprise.
James then had to phone the client and explain that his wife was not having an affair at all.
The husband had already told James how bad the timing felt because all of this was happening around his birthday. That detail suddenly made much more sense, but it also meant the private investigation had ruined the surprise before his wife could reveal it.
James said the client seemed embarrassed. His birthday present had effectively become confirmation that his wife was faithful, accompanied by an invoice from a private investigator.
Whether the husband ever told her she had secretly been followed was another question entirely.
Airline had created a new Radio 1 obsession
The programme also returned to old clips of the television series *Airline* after student Tom had begun posting scenes of furious passengers missing or losing flights.
Tom said the rediscovered clips had brought him thousands of new social-media followers and had become so time-consuming that he was joking about moving from his supermarket job onto red carpets.
Scott and Chris played more arguments, including passengers furious about cancelled flights, coaches to alternative airports and the process required to reclaim money.
They asked Tom to keep trawling through the archive so the feature could continue after Easter.
Danny Howard helped test whether animals could rave
Danny Howard joined ahead of Radio 1’s Easter Rave Lounge, when the Live Lounge was being turned over to dance music.
Scott remembered a previous occasion when cats had been brought into the Live Lounge and given catnip, which prompted a new scientific question of extremely limited scientific value: did animals respond to rave music in the same way people did?
Listener Jacob had raised a squirrel called Enzo after finding him as a baby. When the dance track started, Enzo initially ran away, then began digging furiously. Scott decided the digging could be interpreted as a dance move and declared the squirrel into it.
Another listener stood beside a field containing sheep and lambs. The older sheep initially moved away from the music, while the younger lambs came closer and gathered towards the sound. Scott and Danny compared it with a festival crowd where the younger people rushed towards the DJ.
They then tried Jeremy the cat. His owner could not find the catnip Scott requested, so Jeremy had to experience the track sober. He became interested in the phone, got up and moved around briefly, then settled back down into what the show decided was more of a chill-out-room response.
The experiment did not establish very much about animal behaviour, but it gave the Rave Lounge an unofficial audience of squirrels, lambs and cats before it had even begun.
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