Love Island had become unexpectedly intense about the number 11
Scott and Chris had been watching *Love Island: Unseen Bits* and became fascinated by a conversation where contestants enthusiastically discussed their favourite number.
11 received a level of excitement normally reserved for romance.
Two ones together.
An “angel number”.
Birthdays.
Seeing 11:11 on a clock.
Scott and Chris replayed the exchange because the enthusiasm sounded almost impossible outside the villa.
The scene reminded them of deliberately earnest comedy such as *Summer Heights High*.
A completely ordinary topic had become emotionally enormous.
Surely everybody knew Greta?
The programme then returned to Stupid Street, where members of the public were shown a picture of an extremely famous person and asked to identify them.
This time it was Greta Thunberg.
Scott thought the challenge was almost unfair.
She had become one of the world’s most recognisable climate activists.
Her speeches had been replayed globally.
She had appeared opposite major political figures and been named Time’s Person of the Year.
The answers still went wrong.
Hillary Clinton and Love Island were offered
One person had no idea.
Another suggested Hillary Clinton.
Someone wondered whether Greta might be connected with children’s television.
Another guess placed her on Love Island.
Scott and Chris could not believe it.
The feature repeatedly demonstrated that “everybody knows this person” was never actually true.
Fame depended completely on which parts of culture somebody paid attention to.
Accidental touching became the bigger horror
The show then moved into moments where somebody mistook a stranger for someone they knew and became physically familiar too quickly.
Listener Amy remembered being eight years old, seeing a man she believed was her dad and jumping onto his back.
It was not her dad.
She was now 26 and still remembered the embarrassment.
Other listeners described touching legs in hot tubs, hands brushing on escalators or speaking intimately to somebody wearing the same kind of coat as the person they expected to see.
The escape was always terrible
What Scott enjoyed most was the second after the mistake became clear.
There was rarely a dignified recovery.
People simply muttered apologies, turned around and tried to leave as quickly as possible.
One story involved somebody speaking to the wrong person in a park and then realising children nearby could easily interpret the entire encounter as a stranger behaving strangely.
The programme had found another universal social fear.
Recognition failed first.
Politeness made everything worse afterwards.
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