Yesterday’s joke had become market research
The perfume idea from Tuesday survived overnight.
Scott and Chris now wanted proper audience research.
If the show had a smell, what would it be?
Listeners suggested everything from aftershave and nightclub memories to deliberately strange household smells.
One answer stood out: new tennis balls.
The smell was instantly recognisable, oddly pleasant and almost impossible to describe without simply opening a fresh tube of tennis balls and sniffing it.
Scott loved it.
A possible celebrity fragrance now had its first genuinely distinctive ingredient.
BJ had appeared on television
The show then had one of those moments where somebody from the presenters’ past unexpectedly appeared in public.
Their old friend BJ, connected with holidays in Zante, had turned up on television.
Scott and Chris immediately recognised him.
The phenomenon fascinated them because it happened surprisingly often.
Somebody from school, university or an old holiday could suddenly materialise on *Big Brother*, a quiz show or a documentary and create the surreal experience of seeing a private acquaintance presented to millions of strangers.
BJ was pulled back into the Radio 1 universe simply because somebody spotted him on screen.
Airport hotels felt different
Bangers triggered a conversation about airport hotels.
Scott thought they had their own strange atmosphere.
People arrived at odd hours.
Some guests were beginning holidays.
Others had missed flights, were working away or were sleeping for only a few hours between journeys.
Nobody behaved quite like they did in an ordinary city-centre hotel.
The liminal quality of airport accommodation became far more interesting than the songs which had started the discussion.
Scott discovered “custard cruncher” online
The phrase thrown at Scott after he played Christmas music in September was still haunting him.
“You big soppy custard cruncher” had become one of his favourite listener insults.
Now he appeared to find versions of the phrase online, making him wonder whether he had accidentally entered Urban Dictionary or whether the expression had existed before Radio 1.
Scott remained delighted that the complaint sounded both furious and completely non-threatening.
Bamboleo Wednesday returned
Bamboleo Wednesday supplied the usual archive clips in the instrumental gap.
The perfume project was now several days old.
A ridiculous product name and new tennis balls were no longer enough.
The next step was finding somebody who genuinely knew how fragrances were made.
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