Is it Tesco or Tescos?
The show began with a small linguistic argument that quickly became impossible to unhear.
People regularly added or removed letters from names.
Tesco became “Tescos”.
Bands gained a completely unnecessary “the”.
Others lost the final S they were supposed to have.
Scott and Chris started testing examples, deliberately mangling artist and shop names until Chris had one of those moments where a familiar word suddenly looked wrong.
The conversation included people saying things like “the Blossoms”, changing band names and pluralising places which were not actually plural.
Once listeners noticed the habit, examples arrived from everywhere.
James investigated a secret eater
James the private investigator had dealt with cheating in many forms.
This time, the suspected betrayal involved food.
A client believed her partner was secretly breaking the diet or healthy-eating regime he claimed to be following.
He would talk about chicken, salad and exercise.
She thought there were hidden doughnuts and takeaways involved.
Unable to prove it, she hired James.
Scott naturally wondered whether a surveillance operation to catch somebody eating required disguising the investigator as a person handing out free pizza samples.
James said that was not his usual method.
Instead, he followed the man in the same way he would follow any other subject.
The suspicion was correct.
James eventually watched him obtain a takeaway and take it home while his partner was away.
It was one of the strangest assignments he had handled, although not the strangest involving food.
He had previously been asked to follow a cat because its owner suspected the animal was secretly being fed by a second family.
For Scott and Chris, the idea of hiring a private investigator because somebody might be eating off-plan was both ridiculous and completely consistent with the increasingly unusual cases James brought to the programme.
5 Seconds of Summer entered a fake live studio
Then came a far more elaborate deception.
5 Seconds of Summer arrived at Radio 1 believing they were taking part in an ordinary live interview with Scott and Chris.
The studio looked live.
The on-air light was illuminated.
The band had no reason to suspect that the broadcast itself had been staged.
Then Scott and Chris left.
The band were told the presenters had become stuck in a lift between floors.
The producer, who was part of the prank, began asking 5SOS to keep the programme going.
From the band’s perspective, they were suddenly responsible for live Radio 1.
“We have no idea what we’re doing”
5SOS took over the microphones.
They tried to introduce songs.
They looked at the studio controls and admitted they had no idea what many of the buttons did.
One of them joked that radio work paid better than being in the band.
The more competent they became, the more Scott and Chris could watch from another studio and enjoy how seriously they were taking the emergency.
The supposedly trapped presenters even phoned in with updates from the lift.
The story was not always internally consistent, but the band were too busy trying not to wreck a national radio station to interrogate every detail.
Fake callers were also introduced.
The entire environment was designed to reinforce one belief: whatever happened next was going out live.
Scott hated the confrontation before the reveal
Eventually the prank had run long enough.
Scott and Chris had to walk back into the studio and tell the band there had never been a broken lift.
Scott, who hated confrontation, became more nervous about the reveal than 5SOS appeared to be about running Radio 1.
The band learned that the “live” takeover had been fake.
The immediate atmosphere was noticeably cooler.
One member’s response to hearing there was no lift was essentially: brilliant, thanks for all that stress.
Scott admitted afterwards that he felt a little bad.
Not bad enough to regret it.
Too many people had enjoyed the prank, and the band had proved that if Radio 1 ever genuinely needed an emergency takeover, they could at least keep songs playing while trying to work out the desk.
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