Friday Extra Show: a fifth podcast by force
Extra podcast edition
Radio 1’s new schedule meant Scott and Chris no longer presented on Friday afternoons.
Matt Edmondson and Mollie King had the slot instead.
That created what Chris regarded as an injustice.
The daily podcast had previously appeared five times a week.
Now listeners were getting only four.
Chris therefore launched a Friday Extra Show almost entirely by himself.
He openly admitted part of the motivation was to “cynically boost” the podcast numbers.
Without Scott in the room, Chris also promised he could be much more honest about the programme, Radio 1 and the things listeners wanted to know.
He compared it with television spin-offs such as *The Xtra Factor*, *Strictly: It Takes Two* and *Love Island: Aftersun*.
The show did not yet have a proper name.
For the moment, the lack of polish was part of the point.
Scott checked in from New York
The first person Chris called was Scott.
Scott was walking around Brooklyn during a weekend trip for Unlucky Gary’s birthday.
He was outside a coffee shop called The Bean and had already encountered a woman who told him she was also British because Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip had given birth to her.
Scott had also been thinking about turbulence during the flight, made worse by the fact he was travelling with somebody literally known as Unlucky Gary.
Chris joked that if anything had happened to the plane, Scott would still have wanted to be the headline.
Scott revealed that James McAvoy appeared to have been on the same flight, creating immediate doubt about that.
Greg was ready to stop talking about Breakfast
Chris then called Greg James before his first proper Radio 1 Breakfast Show.
Greg said the preparation had been brilliant but he was exhausted by talking about the programme in interviews.
He wanted to stop explaining what he was going to do and simply start doing it.
The team had been rehearsing the show at breakfast time without listeners so Greg could learn how his brain worked at 6.30am.
He had already discovered a slump around 7.45 and knew he needed movement, coffee or food to get through it.
Chris, who had just spent four mornings covering the slot, wished him luck.
Had Chris and Scott ever genuinely fallen out?
Listeners were allowed to ask direct questions.
Kate wanted to know whether Chris had ever presented a show while angry with Scott.
Chris said they did not really have proper rows.
Scott was extremely non-confrontational.
If Scott was annoyed, Chris joked, he was more likely to tell somebody else who would then pass the annoyance on.
Chris described him as “the king of passive-aggressive”.
Chris had occasionally been annoyed with Scott too, but could not remember a serious falling-out between them.
The closest example he could recall involved Chris falling out with one of Scott’s former boyfriends.
As actual friends, he said they were genuinely very close.
“What happened to Beccy?”
Listener Haley asked what former co-host Beccy was doing.
Chris realised he had not spoken to her for ages.
So he simply rang her.
Beccy answered.
She said she had moved to another part of the BBC and had since had a baby, then around nine months old.
Chris and Beccy remembered an old running joke where they had pretended they might one day have a child together called Maximus Aronius.
Now Beccy had an actual baby.
Haley also asked whether Beccy had ever discovered her “forte”, a long-running old feature.
She had.
It was clay-pigeon shooting.
Beccy said she had been so unexpectedly good that the instructor suggested Olympic potential, which had almost ruined the comedy of the feature.
Fleet Services had lost the plaque
Another listener reported a serious piece of show archaeology.
The plaque on the bridge at Fleet Services appeared to be missing.
Years earlier, the programme had arranged for the bridge between the two sides of the motorway services to be named after Scott.
After a fire and repairs, the listener could no longer find it.
Chris promised to investigate.
The Friday Extra Show had been created partly because there was no Friday programme.
Within one episode it had become a place to check old show lore, speak to former team members and answer questions which would probably never fit into an ordinary afternoon show.
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