Christmas had changed the pub
Scott and Chris noticed the annual transformation of ordinary pubs once December arrived.
Tables were suddenly reserved.
Chairs acquired Santa-hat covers.
Door staff appeared.
Velvet ropes and queues materialised.
People who barely visited pubs during the rest of the year arrived for Christmas parties and assumed everything was always this organised.
Scott and Chris had recently been forced away from a reserved table by a woman called Donna, whose booking had become a tiny example of December pub politics.
Whoovent reached day nine
The Whoovent Calendar continued supplying one retro clip a day.
The programme treated opening each door like a genuine Advent event even though the prize was usually a piece of old Radio 1 or British pop culture rather than chocolate.
December had given the show a second Who Game running in parallel with the ordinary one.
Example had blocked a lot of people
The main returning story involved Example.
Listeners had told Scott and Chris they had been blocked by him on Twitter, particularly several years earlier when he used the block button much more freely.
Example joined from Australia and admitted the older version of himself had been more inclined to argue online.
Marriage, children and a busier life had changed his priorities.
He said he had not been blocking people in the same way for years.
Radio 1 decided to reunite him with some of the old casualties.
Holly asked about chicken soup too many times
Listener Holly had been blocked after repeatedly asking whether Example liked chicken soup.
Example did not believe one innocent question could have caused the block.
Holly then admitted she may have asked several times during a period when she was sending celebrities questions about food.
Example suggested it may have looked like spam.
Scott wanted a reconciliation.
Holly was surprisingly relaxed.
She initially said she was not especially bothered about being unblocked anymore.
That was more insulting than the original chicken-soup question.
Eventually the pair agreed she could be unblocked.
Faye was not even on Twitter anymore
Another former block victim, Faye, had a similar problem.
By the time Radio 1 arranged the grand reconciliation, she was no longer really using Twitter.
The feature had been built around people begging Example for a second chance.
The first caller was not particularly bothered.
The second had effectively left the platform.
Scott called it one of the best examples of a radio plan failing in exactly the right way.
Was acting intimacy actually cheating?
The other large debate came from film and television.
If an actor kissed somebody else as part of a scene, was that cheating?
Scott leaned towards the idea that the physical act still happened even if cameras and a director were present.
Chris understood why partners could find it difficult but argued that acting was work.
Listeners with actors for partners admitted the question became much harder in real life than in theory.
One person said a relationship had ended because they could not cope with the intimate scenes a partner might have to perform.
Tongues were the dividing line
The conversation became increasingly specific.
Could a screen kiss remain professional if tongues were involved?
What if an actor became physically aroused?
Could the partner at home genuinely separate the job from the intimacy?
Scott and Chris realised the subject needed people who had actually performed these scenes.
They promised to return to it on Tuesday.
December had started as Advent-calendar nonsense.
By Monday afternoon, Radio 1 was debating the contractual boundaries of kissing.
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