Christmas Confessions were still escalating
The final week of the year began with another reminder that the anonymous voice changer had made listeners unusually brave.
Scott replayed some of the strongest Christmas Confessions already heard.
One woman had admitted to a very vivid dream about her boss.
Craig had said he thought he had chosen the wrong identical twin as a girlfriend.
Lauren had admitted sleeping with her cheating ex-boyfriend’s twin brother.
Then came a new dilemma involving a 30-year-old man who had dated a 41-year-old woman for several weeks before the relationship fizzled out.
Months later he began seeing a 25-year-old woman.
Things were going extremely well.
Then, while leaving her house one morning, he noticed a photograph.
The older woman he had previously dated was her mother.
Neither mother nor daughter appeared to know.
Scott immediately imagined the most awkward possible Christmas introduction.
Listeners were asked what the caller should do before the situation became even more complicated.
Stormzy reviewed his Live Lounge
The main music guest was Stormzy.
The automatic transcript mangles his name repeatedly, but the source title and conversation are unequivocal.
Stormzy had just performed in the Live Lounge and Scott wanted him to hear it back immediately.
His Christmas cover was “Silent Night”.
Stormzy admitted Live Lounge performances made him unusually nervous because there was no edit button once the performance began.
Listening back, he was much more critical than Scott.
At one point he noticed a missed or delayed entry around the choir and band and described it as being exposed.
Scott thought the overall performance was beautiful.
Stormzy eventually agreed it had gone rather well.
Walking in the Air happened separately
The title of the podcast could make it sound as though Stormzy performed “Walking in the Air” as his Live Lounge cover.
He did not.
The following day’s programme explicitly corrected that misunderstanding.
The Live Lounge cover was *Silent Night*.
Scott nevertheless persuaded Stormzy to sing a little of “Walking in the Air” during their conversation.
The result delighted him enough to start wondering whether somebody could remix or release it.
Scott had acquired the festive Stormzy performance he wanted.
It simply happened outside the actual Live Lounge song.
Ask Me Anything entered the world’s biggest mince-pie operation
The festive Ask Me Anything guest introduced himself as Steve Mordham, a factory manager at Carlton near Barnsley.
Steve said the site was believed to be the largest mince-pie producer in the world.
The scale was absurd.
Around 207 million mince pies a year.
Roughly 720 pies every minute across three production lines.
Scott and Chris immediately tried to visualise what hundreds of pies per minute actually looked like.
The factory used thousands of tonnes of dried fruit across a season, with the source giving a figure of roughly 6,500 tonnes of sultanas, raisins and currants.
Mince-pie season began in summer
The factory did not simply start when Britain became festive in December.
Production began much earlier.
Some early output went to Australia, where Britain’s summer coincided with the Australian winter.
For the UK market, factories could already be making pies around late summer because supermarkets began stocking them surprisingly early.
Steve personally did not adopt the same timetable.
Despite being surrounded by millions of them, he preferred to wait until around November or December before eating one.
Scott approved.
August mince pies still felt wrong.
Stupid Street became festive
The programme also sent its festive question onto Stupid Street.
Members of the public were asked which living person they would most like to invite to Christmas dinner.
The answers ranged from plausible celebrity guests to choices which created much more complicated imagined dinner tables.
Scott liked the simplicity.
One question could reveal whether somebody wanted entertainment, conversation, glamour or simply a famous person they had always fancied.
The final Monday of 2019 had begun with secret family dating history.
It ended with Stormzy singing Christmas music and a factory producing mince pies faster than Scott could count them.
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