Scott had completely lost his voice
Monday’s show began with an unusual problem.
Scott was effectively unable to present.
His voice had gone.
Radio 1 called Jordan North at around nine that morning and asked him to step in.
Jordan compared the arrangement with having a giant red emergency phone in his room.
When it rang, he simply answered yes before anybody had properly explained what he was covering.
Chris was still there.
The programme therefore became a Scott Mills show without Scott Mills.
Scott’s absence was not illness in the sense of being unable to work at all.
He simply could not produce enough voice to do three hours of radio.
Clips from the previous Friday demonstrated how rough he had already sounded.
Jordan took on Bangers
Jordan was a genuine listener to the show and particularly liked Bangers.
Now he got to play it.
He and Chris supplied their choices while a caller selected the winner.
Jordan won.
That created a separate problem for Tuesday.
Chris had apparently left a song behind for Jordan to use.
Jordan refused to play it and chose his own instead.
The temporary presenter had arrived for one day and immediately interfered with the established rules.
The rat still needed a name
Verity’s rat remained without an official identity.
More listeners nominated people who had behaved badly enough to deserve it.
The stories were becoming increasingly strong and increasingly relationship-heavy.
Scott and Chris had used the same animal-naming concept before with a snake and a cockroach.
The rat campaign was now developing into one of June’s longest-running threads.
Ask Me Anything met Fiona McPherson
The day’s mystery guest was Fiona McPherson, who worked on adding new words and meanings to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Chris and Jordan immediately treated her as the bouncer of the English language.
Could she simply decide a word was allowed in?
Did words ever get removed to make room?
What evidence was needed before something became official?
Fiona explained that dictionary work relied on evidence of words actually being used over time.
There was no simple one-in, one-out system.
Old words did not need deleting simply because newer language appeared.
“Chef’s kiss” created a problem
One modern phrase discussed was chef’s kiss, used online to describe something which was perfect or extremely good.
That definition sounded innocent.
Then the programme looked elsewhere online and discovered the same phrase had acquired a much more explicit meaning in parts of internet slang.
Chris decided some Urban Dictionary research was better conducted off air.
The contrast became the joke.
Fiona’s professional dictionary definition could sit beside a completely different internet meaning.
The title “A Big Chef’s Kiss” suddenly sounded much riskier than it had at the start of the afternoon.
Scott’s show survived without Scott
By the end, Jordan had filled in successfully.
Chris had kept the programme moving.
Fiona had explained how new language entered the dictionary.
And Bangers had been tampered with.
The only thing still missing was Scott’s voice.
He hoped it would be back on Tuesday.
It was, although not in its normal form.
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