Four cities remained
Chris knew his stag do was happening that weekend.
He did not know where.
The location had been narrowed to four possibilities: Barcelona, Kavos, Dublin or Berlin.
Scott had been involved in the planning but was determined not to give anything away before best man Dugs made the official announcement.
Chris said he could find something to enjoy in any of them.
That did not stop him trying to read clues into every comment.
Dublin was the answer
Dugs joined the show for the reveal.
After the deliberate delay, he finally said it.
They were going to Dublin.
Chris had never been before and immediately started asking what the weekend would involve.
Dugs had already been on a reconnaissance trip, proving that more preparation had gone into the stag than Chris had realised.
One of the bars discussed was Pantibar.
Chris searched it while they were talking and discovered the venue proudly describing itself as a centre of “homoactivity”.
That suited Scott perfectly well.
The trip was supposed to be fun, not a checklist of stereotypical stag venues.
Scott was also given responsibility for fashion and social media.
There would not be a complete social-media blackout, but Chris did not want to spend the weekend worrying about every photograph appearing online immediately.
Scott therefore became an unofficial head of photography as well as clothing.
James had bought an ice-cream-van disguise
The World Cup was about to create a very different weekend for James the private investigator.
He expected football to give cheating partners more excuses for long periods away from home.
That meant more surveillance.
James had become busy enough that he was recruiting and using people around him for additional observations.
For one planned job, he had found an ice-cream van.
The vehicle could sit naturally outside pubs or in public places without attracting the suspicion an ordinary parked car might create.
James would not simply pretend to be an ice-cream seller badly.
A properly trained person would operate the van and actually sell ice creams while the investigation continued.
Scott loved the level of commitment.
The World Cup had not even properly started and James had already found a way to combine surveillance with flakes and ninety-nines.
One investigator had married the client
James also revealed an extraordinary old case involving a colleague.
The investigator had been hired by a woman to look into her husband.
The evidence established that the husband was cheating.
During the case, the investigator and the client became close.
They later married each other.
The colleague no longer worked with James, but the story demonstrated that even the people observing complicated relationships could end up inside one.
Scott and Chris were about to appear on Love Island
Before leaving for Dublin, Scott and Chris also revealed that viewers should watch the transitions in *Love Island* carefully.
The programme had taken photographs of them posed as though they were a couple.
Those images were going to be used among the show’s familiar couple shots around the ad breaks.
Chris was about to get married.
Scott and Chris were not actually a couple.
But for the purposes of *Love Island*, the weekend would contain photographic evidence suggesting otherwise.
Chris was therefore going into his stag weekend with two things newly confirmed: Dublin was the destination, and national television was about to start presenting him and Scott as romantic partners.
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