The wedding speech still did not exist
Chris was only days from getting married and had not finished his speech.
Scott decided inspiration might come from history’s great speeches.
Listeners suggested everything from *Braveheart* to famous political addresses.
Scott liked the idea of passion, big pauses and dramatic delivery.
The most ridiculous suggestion was that Chris should look at his new wife and simply shout “Freedom!”
They also discussed using music underneath the speech for extra emotion.
That gave Scott another idea.
Radio 1 listeners had heard so much of Chris’s life over the years that many felt they knew him.
Why not let them write best-man or best-woman speeches too?
The best ones would be read on the final show before the wedding.
“Paddington, Plumstead and Watford Junction”
Then came the call Chris had been dreading.
Scott had found a salon which offered intimate waxing and made Chris ring it live.
Because they were on daytime radio, the pair built a code around London stations.
Different parts of the body became stations.
Paddington and Plumstead represented two separate areas.
The region between them became Watford Junction.
Other treatment options were compared with names including Dagenham Dock and Acton Central.
Chris then had to ask a completely professional employee how long it would take to have “Paddington, Plumstead and Watford Junction” done.
The salon worker patiently followed the bizarre terminology.
At one point the employee even accepted Watford Junction as the name of the area between the other two stations.
Scott was delighted.
Chris had managed to book a serious grooming conversation while sounding as though he was planning a complicated rail journey.
Something secret was happening at four
Throughout the afternoon, Scott and Chris knew that Greg James and Nick Grimshaw had planned something for 4pm.
Nobody would tell them what.
Internal schedules referred only to “top-secret end of term fun”.
Listeners guessed a new presenter announcement, a skydive and various end-of-term games.
Greg sent Scott a voice note telling him to think about the ultimate last-week-of-school activity, when nobody wanted to do proper work any more.
Scott still could not work it out.
Radio 1 launched a national Hide and Seek
At four, the secret was revealed.
Greg and Nick were hiding somewhere in the UK.
The rest of Radio 1, plus the entire listening audience, had to find them.
They would remain on air until somebody did.
They could be almost anywhere.
The last known fact was that Greg had been at Radio 1 in London earlier that morning.
Scott immediately started asking whether they were at Watford Junction, partly because the name had already taken on a completely different meaning earlier in the programme.
Greg and Nick refused to accept random guesses.
The point was to gather clues, study what they could see and hear, and use millions of listeners as investigators.
The station had turned into one enormous game.
Scott and Chris had spent the afternoon worrying about a wedding speech and body hair.
They ended it helping hunt two missing Radio 1 presenters somewhere in Britain.
COMMENTS