Eurovision day was Scott’s Christmas
The UK’s Eurovision Song Contest entry had been announced.
Scott described the event with his usual enthusiasm.
For him, Eurovision was close to gay Christmas.
Chris liked the contest too, particularly once the drinks and voting began, but Scott cared in a much more organised way.
He had already delivered a rallying cry on Breakfast.
Britain, he argued, needed to stop approaching the competition with automatic negativity.
The song deserved a chance.
James Newman had My Last Breath
The UK representative was James Newman with “My Last Breath.”
Scott’s first instinct was to imagine the staging.
The lyrics referenced deep-sea imagery.
Could James perform in a snorkel?
Could somebody dressed as a lobster appear as his love interest?
Chris offered to become the lobster if necessary.
Scott promised to feed the idea towards anybody involved in the performance.
The song itself was only half the competition.
Eurovision staging could change everything.
Britain could not vote for itself
Scott then identified the obvious flaw in a domestic campaign.
Convincing British listeners to love James Newman was useful for morale.
It did not generate Eurovision votes.
The UK could not vote for itself.
Radio 1 needed Europe.
The new mission became:
London Calling.
Listeners already travelling abroad would act as unofficial campaigners.
Cruise passengers became the campaign team
One listener regularly worked or travelled on cruise ships and would soon visit several European countries.
Scott immediately turned him into a one-man Eurovision lobbying operation.
Germany.
Poland.
The Netherlands.
Other destinations.
Wherever he went, he could tell people to vote for James Newman.
Another listener was travelling towards an airport and could spread the message in Austria and Germany.
Scott had no idea whether a stranger shouting Eurovision instructions on a European train would change a single vote.
That did not reduce the enthusiasm.
The first campaign had almost no response
Radio 1 tried a live version.
A listener called out the message around other passengers.
Nobody visibly agreed.
Several people simply looked at her.
Scott accepted that the opening stage of London Calling had not been a landslide.
There was time.
The contest was still months away.
Pop songs became multilingual again
The programme also continued listening to familiar songs in other languages.
A Dutch version of “Barbie Girl” produced one of the strangest results.
The Ken voice in particular sounded completely different from the version Scott and Chris knew.
The show had now spent several days discovering how much a familiar record could change while the melody remained untouched.
Beccy requested the radio past
Listener Beccy then encouraged Scott and Chris to dig back into their own early broadcasting careers.
Scott had already suffered through 1998 clips the previous day.
Now the archive brought back Scott doing showbiz news and Chris attempting the voice of a dance-music DJ.
Both presenters cringed.
Neither could use the excuse that everybody else sounded exactly the same.
They had genuinely developed very different radio voices over time.
The Who Game returned
Thursday finished with another Who Game.
References included the old Mars advertising idea that chocolate was “not for girls”, dance mats, inflatable chairs, a singing hedgehog road-safety advert, lava lamps and childhood fears about quicksand.
Scott and Chris loved how quickly something once unavoidable could become absurdly dated.
February closed in exactly that territory.
A new Eurovision campaign looking towards the future.
And two presenters listening to versions of themselves they would very happily leave in the past.
COMMENTS