Partner pet names were bad enough
Wednesday had produced GooGoo, Spudge, Pickle and a long list of names listeners currently used affectionately.
Thursday raised the stakes.
What did people used to call an ex?
The affectionate nickname could feel completely different after a breakup.
Something once whispered sincerely could become almost unbearable to remember.
Scott and Chris collected examples including Tiny Beans and Yorkshire Puds, alongside food-based names and deliberately childish language people now wished had never existed.
The feature worked because listeners had to admit they had once participated willingly.
Nobody had forced them to say these things.
The archive of old relationships lived in phones
Some callers still found the old pet name stored in a contact list or buried in messages.
Scott recognised the strange digital afterlife of relationships.
The person could be gone.
The nickname remained searchable forever.
Chris thought deleting the contact entirely might be the only dignified solution.
Listeners who had married the person they once gave a ridiculous name to defended themselves.
It sounded stupid outside the relationship.
Inside it, the name had made perfect sense.
Hand sanitiser was suddenly hard to find
The programme also heard from people buying the wrong products while trying to find hand sanitiser.
One caller had accidentally bought Femfresh, looked at the bottle and decided it appeared close enough.
Scott and Chris explained what the product was actually designed for.
The caller said he had used it on his hands anyway.
It cleaned them.
It smelled pleasant.
Given shops were already running low on sanitiser, he was almost prepared to defend the substitution.
The conversation is one of the first clear signs in the March archive that coronavirus was beginning to alter ordinary shopping behaviour.
The Who Game looked backwards
Thursday’s Who Game returned with old products, television and half-forgotten references.
The timing created an odd contrast.
The programme was joking about things which had disappeared from everyday life while listeners were simultaneously noticing a brand-new change around them.
Hand sanitiser had become difficult to buy.
That detail would look much more significant only a few weeks later.
Radio 1 ended the first week in transition
At the beginning of March, the biggest crisis on the programme had been Bangers moving by an hour.
By Thursday, hand sanitiser shortages were already part of the comedy.
The Scott Mills Daily was still operating normally from Radio 1.
The month would not stay normal for long.
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