The personal trainer had heard everything
Chris’s attempt to avoid the gym became more awkward overnight.
His personal trainer listened to the podcast.
He heard Chris explaining on national radio that he had skipped enough sessions to feel too embarrassed to return.
Then he messaged Chris asking when he was coming back.
The message contained enough emojis for Chris to be unsure whether the trainer was joking.
Scott thought the solution was now obvious.
Go back.
Chris thought the radio had removed his final hiding place.
Some people genuinely could not return
Listeners then supplied much worse stories.
One man had accidentally knocked the head off a Ronald McDonald display and regarded himself as effectively barred from the branch.
Another caller criticised a haircut while standing in a shop queue and then turned around to discover the hairdresser who had cut it was directly behind him.
He could never comfortably return.
Scott asked whether anybody had ever genuinely told a hairdresser “no” when shown the back of a finished haircut in the mirror.
Almost everybody simply said it looked fine and dealt with the regret later.
The feature became less about formal bans and more about places people had socially banned themselves from.
Rob discovered Oxford had no monopoly on common sense
Fresher of the Week Rob checked in from Oxford.
His first discovery was reassuring.
The students around him were exceptionally clever.
They were still capable of doing very stupid things.
Rob admitted he had been cooking bacon late at night and simply forgot to turn the hob off, somehow assuming it would turn itself off.
A housemate caught the mistake.
Scott and Chris pointed out that this was not evidence Oxford students lacked common sense.
It was evidence Rob personally needed to pay more attention to the kitchen.
His housemates could be heard laughing in the background.
Rob’s feeling of being an outsider was beginning to ease.
Everyone around him was human after all.
Maisie Peters hit listeners in the feelings
Maisie Peters was Tune of the Week.
Her music prompted listeners to send stories about relationships and moments they associated with the lyrics.
Scott liked songs which became attached to a specific person or period immediately.
Once that connection formed, hearing the track again could restore an entire situation.
Chris nearly bought something at a football auction
Chris also admitted another failure to behave normally around famous football people.
At a football awards event, an auction began.
The room contained genuinely wealthy footballers and guests.
Chris wanted to look as though he belonged among the high rollers.
His strategy was to raise his hand early, expecting richer people to outbid him almost immediately.
That was risky.
If nobody else bid, Chris could accidentally buy something he had never intended to afford.
Scott thought pretending to be richer than you were at a charity auction was exactly the sort of behaviour which could get somebody barred from future invitations.
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