Friday Extra Show 2: the experiment survived
Extra podcast edition
Chris had only planned to make one Friday Extra Show.
Listeners liked it enough that a second appeared.
He thanked people who had messaged after the first episode and admitted the podcast still did not really have a proper name.
One suggestion was Mills After Stark, a play on *Love Island: Aftersun*.
Chris thought it was probably too close to the television format to use.
The lack of a title remained part of the charm.
Chris was broadcasting from Newsbeat
The recording took place in the Newsbeat studio, which immediately made Chris want to imitate the formal BBC news voice.
He discovered that simply saying “BBC Newsbeat” into the proper studio equipment made him feel as though he should be delivering headlines.
The show was designed to expose the bits of Radio 1 listeners did not normally hear.
Chris started with something extremely mundane.
After the afternoon programme, he regularly avoided the toilets on Radio 1’s eighth floor and went all the way down to a quieter toilet near the BBC entrance.
He described it as a kind of happy place and part of his post-show routine.
Could you say “testicles” on Radio 1?
Chris had recently said the word testicles on air while reading a message about a Staffordshire bull statue whose anatomy was painted red at Christmas.
That triggered a behind-the-scenes conversation about what language was actually acceptable.
The Friday podcast gave him room to investigate it properly.
Jordan North joined him.
They tested words which felt anatomically accurate, rude, borderline or simply wrong for daytime radio.
“Testicles” appeared to be acceptable in the right context.
Other slang terms were much more dangerous.
Jordan and Chris became increasingly excited by the freedom of saying words in a podcast which they would normally avoid in a live daytime programme.
The experiment was partly comic and partly genuine.
Where exactly was the editorial line?
Their plan was essentially to find out by seeing which bits caused problems afterwards.
Jordan reviewed his first show with Chris
Jordan had presented with Chris earlier in the week while Scott was still in New York.
Jordan admitted he had been nervous but enjoyed it.
A football bet had forced him to wear a Watford shirt despite being a Burnley fan.
His friends had told him he was no longer welcome at Turf Moor.
The programme had also involved an awkward call to Jordan’s mum where Chris held up pieces of paper containing lines Jordan had to say.
The resulting conversation made it sound as though Jordan might be involved in a complicated relationship situation.
For Chris, the debrief was exactly what the extra podcast was meant to do: talk about what had happened after the live microphones were switched off.
How do Scott and Chris eat during a three-hour show?
Listener Connor asked a surprisingly practical question.
If the show ran from 1pm to 4pm, when did the presenters actually eat lunch?
Chris said this was a genuine problem.
The period before one o’clock was usually filled with preparation and interviews.
Waiting until after four meant becoming extremely hungry.
So they often ate during songs.
Food was not allowed in the studio itself.
That meant putting a track on, running outside, eating quickly and racing back before the microphone reopened.
Hot pizza was particularly dangerous because somebody could burn their mouth or still be chewing when the song ended.
Chris admitted there had been occasions when Scott came back into the studio with his mouth full and had to make a link anyway.
Guests appeared to receive more flexibility.
Chris remembered seeing major celebrities with drinks in studios and joked that if BBC rules applied to him, they ought to apply to Drake as well.
The answer was not glamorous.
A Radio 1 lunch break could be approximately three minutes long and happen while a record was playing.
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