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22 May 2018: Chris invented a Liam Payne tattoo story live from Swansea

HomeShow Diary

22 May 2018: Chris invented a Liam Payne tattoo story live from Swansea

 

Radio 1 arrived in Swansea

Scott and Chris broadcast from the Radio 1 Academy at Swansea Grand Theatre ahead of Biggest Weekend.

The event was now close enough for listener worries to become a feature in their own right.

People wanted to know what shoes to wear, whether they needed wellies, how early to queue, where to meet friends and what would happen if the weather changed.

Scott treated himself as a festival advice service.

Even questions which could probably have been answered by the Radio 1 website were welcomed as “Biggest Weekend Problems”.

Chris sent Maya the wrong bedtime message

Chris also admitted another wrong-message mistake.

He had returned to his room and intended to send his girlfriend a goodnight message telling her he wished he was cuddling her.

He sent it to Maya Jama instead.

The message was intimate enough to be embarrassing but innocent enough to become very funny once Maya replied.

For a man who had announced his wedding only days earlier, Chris had accidentally created exactly the kind of screenshot Scott knew would be impossible to explain without context.

Swansea had to lie for Radio 1

From the Academy window, Scott could see a tattoo parlour.

That became the basis for an experiment.

Chris was sent across and told to ask the staff for help with an entirely fabricated piece of celebrity gossip.

The story was that Liam Payne had already visited the shop and had been discussing a new tattoo ahead of Biggest Weekend.

None of it had happened.

Chris explained that he desperately needed a celebrity scoop for Radio 1 and asked whether they would go along with the lie.

Then he began interviewing them as though the story were real.

The questions became increasingly detailed.

What kind of tattoo had Liam wanted?

Where would it go?

What had he said?

How long had he been in the shop?

The challenge was to see how much detail people could invent under pressure without breaking.

Scott listened as the completely false story acquired the shape of a genuine entertainment-news report.

The point was not to broadcast it as real news. The joke was the willingness of strangers to help Chris manufacture the scoop once he claimed his Radio 1 reputation depended on it.

The Academy became part of the show

The live setting also gave listeners a sense of the activity surrounding Biggest Weekend.

The Grand Theatre was hosting workshops and Radio 1 events, while Scott and Chris were using Swansea itself as material.

By the end of the programme, the festival had stopped feeling like a distant event on the schedule.

The show was physically there, the local businesses were being pulled into features and even Liam Payne had acquired an imaginary appointment in a tattoo shop opposite the studio.

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