Friday Extra Show: the fifth programme kept becoming more real
Extra podcast edition
Chris returned with another Friday Extra Show.
The podcast had begun as a slightly mischievous attempt to replace the missing fifth weekday edition after Radio 1’s schedule changed.
Now it had jingles, recurring listeners and its own purpose.
Chris could revisit things which happened on the weekday show, answer extremely nerdy production questions and speak more openly than he sometimes could during a live afternoon programme.
He still described the format as much less professional than the station imaging made it sound.
Becca had been made on Millennium Eve
The podcast replayed the previous day’s Where Do You Think They Were?
Becca’s mother explained that the conception story went back to Millennium New Year’s Eve, 1999.
The timing immediately gave the reconstruction an unusually specific cultural setting.
Chris enjoyed the way the feature took a date which everybody remembered as a huge public celebration and turned it into one family’s extremely private origin story.
The listener still received the enormous birthday shout-out at the end.
The Friday edition allowed the show to revisit the awkwardness without having to put the parent through the whole thing again.
The Radio 1 background beds were apparently bangers
Listener Mark had an extremely specific question.
Where did the music beds used under Scott and Chris actually come from?
He had heard one of them beneath a link and liked it enough to want the track on its own.
Chris began playing through the studio library.
Some were custom pieces used simply to create movement underneath speech.
Without presenters talking over them, several sounded surprisingly like complete dance tracks.
One file was labelled simply “Bass Bed”.
Mark genuinely loved it.
Chris began wondering whether somebody could write lyrics over one of the station beds and turn it into a proper song.
The most technical part of Radio 1 production had accidentally become a Bangers spin-off.
Sasha asked the question Chris was not expecting
The final call changed the tone.
Sasha said the daily podcast regularly made her happy and asked Chris how he and Scott always seemed so positive when difficult things might be happening in their own lives.
Chris admitted the answer was more complicated than listeners might imagine.
There were days when presenters arrived at Radio 1 while dealing with personal problems and genuinely did not feel like being funny on air.
Sometimes Chris had thought he should simply stay at home.
He said the job could also help.
Going into a studio and doing something he loved, particularly knowing it might give somebody else a break from a difficult day, could itself make things easier.
Sasha explained that she had experienced depression and anxiety since her teenage years and used the podcast as a small escape.
Chris thanked her for being honest.
He then became more candid himself, saying he had dealt with his own issues and that people could be surprised by how many others were privately struggling.
He praised the wider conversation around mental health at Radio 1, including Greg James’s work encouraging people to talk.
The Friday podcast had found its value
The Extra Show was designed for silly things the weekday programme did not have time to include.
This episode demonstrated why it could also do something slightly different.
A question about radio jingles could sit next to a conversation about mental health without either feeling out of place.
Chris’s description of the show was simple.
Scott and Chris wanted to feel like a couple of mates listeners could turn on for a bit of relief.
Sasha confirmed that, for her, that was exactly what the programme had become.
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