December began with Advent disappointment
Scott and Chris opened December by investigating a strangely specific festive injustice.
A particular Celebrations Advent calendar had apparently given people a Bounty behind both door one and door two.
Listeners immediately complained.
Scott did not understand why anybody wanted two Bounties at the very start of December.
Other people defended them.
The show began treating the calendar like a controlled national experiment.
If everybody received the same sweet behind the same door, Radio 1 could effectively spoil the next day’s chocolate before people opened it.
That idea developed into the show’s own Whoovent Calendar, an Advent calendar containing retro “Who?” clips rather than chocolate.
Leanne needed a fake boyfriend
The show also revived its fake boyfriend service.
Listener Leanne had been single for around seven years and was tired of her brother-in-law Ian asking the same questions every Sunday.
Did she have a boyfriend yet?
Was she speaking to anyone?
Had she matched with anybody on Tinder?
Leanne wanted one Christmas without the interrogation.
Chris offered a solution.
He would become the boyfriend.
Temporarily.
Only over the phone.
Chris became the perfect man
Leanne gave the programme enough details to make the call plausible.
Ian liked cooking and hosted the family for Sunday dinner.
He had once added red wine to a lasagne which Leanne privately thought was terrible.
Chris called Ian and apologised for being unable to attend the family Christmas-tree decorating.
He explained that he and Leanne had started seeing one another after meeting on Tinder.
He praised Ian’s famous red-wine lasagne and said he was looking forward to joining one of the Sunday dinners.
Then Chris went further.
He suggested Leanne might be “the one.”
Ian had not heard anything about this supposed relationship.
That made the call significantly more awkward.
The feature worked for exactly the reason Scott feared.
Chris sounded plausible enough to make an invented boyfriend suddenly feel real.
Ask Me Anything met Matt Rawlings
The mystery guest introduced himself as Matt Rawlings.
His job was unusual even by Ask Me Anything standards.
Matt was a professional dinosaur.
He worked full time at Blackgang Chine on the Isle of Wight wearing large latex dinosaur costumes.
One of his characters was a baby T-Rex called Shadow.
Dinosaur language required technology
The suit included a small microphone or disc near Matt’s mouth and a voice-modulation system.
Matt made suitable sounds.
The equipment transformed them into dinosaur growls.
He could not simply say whatever he liked and expect the machine to hide it.
The performance still required him to produce the right noises and physical movements.
Matt said the best part was seeing children completely believe the dinosaur was real.
Engineering lost him to dinosaurs
Matt’s A-level choices had originally pointed towards engineering.
Then he tried the dinosaur work and decided somebody had to do it.
He chose the unusual career instead.
Scott loved the optimism.
Most people did not leave an engineering path because they had discovered their true calling inside a giant T-Rex.
Matt had.
His partner was a zebra
Scott then asked whether Matt was single.
Matt briefly hesitated before remembering that he was not.
The reason was perfect.
He had met his partner through performance work.
Matt played a dinosaur.
His partner had been dressed as a zebra.
Scott and Chris immediately decided this was one of the greatest workplace romances Ask Me Anything had uncovered.
December had begun with a fake boyfriend.
It ended Monday with a genuine dinosaur-and-zebra relationship.
COMMENTS