Chris became Jeremy Corbyn’s accidental bodyguard
Chris had hosted the British Kebab Awards the previous night.
One of the major guests was Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Chris immediately recognised a social-media opportunity.
When Corbyn delivered his speech, Chris positioned himself close enough behind him to appear in almost every press photograph.
Scott thought he looked less like an awards host and more like a bodyguard.
The earpiece did not help.
Chris admitted the placement was deliberate.
He wanted to appear in the newspaper pictures.
It worked.
Corbyn, who did not eat meat or drink alcohol, still gave an enthusiastic speech about kebab shops and at one point asked the room to raise their hands if they loved falafel.
Chris considered the night an enormous success.
Great Escapes returned
The programme had started collecting stories from people who needed to leave somewhere quickly after a romantic encounter.
Chris had his own famous example.
On an early visit to the family home of the woman who later became his wife, he heard her father outside the bedroom and briefly considered climbing out of the window.
The window was locked.
That experience looked straightforward compared with the new caller.
“Celine” lived under cabin-crew rules
The show disguised the caller’s identity and used the name Celine.
She had worked as cabin crew while living in airline-provided accommodation in Dubai.
Visitors were controlled.
There was a strict curfew, around 10pm, after which men were not supposed to remain inside.
Celine had somebody stay later.
The following morning she needed to get him out without attracting attention.
A neighbour supplied the solution.
He left dressed as cabin crew
Celine borrowed a male cabin-crew uniform from somebody nearby.
Her visitor changed into it.
Instead of looking like a man who had secretly spent the night in the building, he now looked like airline staff leaving for work.
They used a quieter route and crew parking area to get him out.
It worked well enough for the method to be used again.
The arrangement continued for months.
The funniest ending was that the supposedly casual visitor eventually became Celine’s husband.
They later had three children.
The uniform escape had effectively become part of the family origin story.
John Newman received Scott’s vocal coaching
John Newman joined the show with his new track “Feelings.”
Scott returned to his completely self-appointed role as vocal coach.
He shouted literal directions and emotional prompts while John sang, trying to force more meaning from lines already being delivered by one of Radio 1’s strongest vocalists.
Chris pointed out how patronising the idea sounded when described plainly.
John still committed to it.
Scott considered the result another success.
Listeners had started recreating the vocal-coach format themselves at karaoke.
A joke about Scott knowing better than professional singers was becoming one of the show’s most reusable features.
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