Holiday T-Shirt Day went international
Scott and Chris were still trying to make Thursday’s Holiday T-Shirt Day feel like a genuine event rather than something invented on one Radio 1 afternoon.
The next step was overseas publicity.
They reached Island FM in Zante and spoke to presenter Penny.
Zante was exactly the right place to promote old group-holiday shirts.
Thousands of British tourists had acquired embarrassing garments there over the years.
Penny helped spread the message to people currently in the resort.
Scott and Chris also teased the way she pronounced Zante, turning a straightforward radio interview into another argument about holiday geography.
Businesses wanted to join too
A caller connected with Fresh Kicks Sneaker Laundry was preparing for a new-store opening.
He wanted to wear an old holiday shirt for the occasion.
His brother thought that looked unprofessional.
Scott and Chris offered the now-standard service of persuading reluctant bosses and colleagues.
The day was supposed to work in offices, shops, farms and anywhere else people could reasonably get away with abandoning the uniform for an old stag top.
Funny Business found a towing company
Tuesday also meant Funny Business.
The show called a towing business with an excellent name.
The automatic transcript does not preserve the exact company wording reliably enough to print it with confidence.
Scott and Chris still followed the normal rules.
Make an ordinary enquiry.
Try not to laugh.
The person at the business did considerably better at the second requirement than the presenters.
Anybody could apparently replace Justin Bieber
Chris’s Bad Guy experiment had evolved again.
After recording his own verse in minutes, he challenged listeners to send lyrics.
The production team would add Auto-Tune and see whether the result sounded remotely plausible.
Listener Sam volunteered.
His subject was food.
Specifically:
Pad Thai.
Peeled prawns and peanuts entered Billie Eilish
Sam’s lyrics began like a recipe.
Noodles.
Garlic.
Chicken breast.
Peeled prawns.
Peanuts.
He rhymed breast with best and worked through wok cooking, chopsticks and napkins before reaching the chorus.
The central line effectively announced that he was a fat guy who loved Pad Thai.
Scott and Chris played the finished Auto-Tuned version.
Sam’s voice remained more robotic than Chris’s studio recording.
That somehow made it better.
The title of the original source, Peeled Prawns & Peanuts, finally made sense.
The experiment proved only what Radio 1 wanted it to prove
Scott did not seriously believe Sam had now created a commercially viable Billie Eilish collaboration.
That was never the point.
The show wanted to demonstrate how much production could transform an ordinary voice and a few quickly written lines.
Chris continued using this as evidence Justin Bieber had barely needed to work.
Scott continued pointing out that the comparison was completely unfair.
Neither changed position.
Ibiza was already beginning
The first listener messages also arrived from people travelling towards Radio 1 in Ibiza.
The annual weekend was about to begin.
Thursday would combine Holiday T-Shirt Day with the build-up to the station’s Ibiza broadcasts.
Scott and Chris’s invented holiday had accidentally landed in the perfect week.
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