The live lockdown show returned
After the previous week’s archive editions, Scott and Chris were back with the home-and-studio version of the programme.
The central question was unexpectedly optimistic:
Were some people becoming cuter in lockdown?
There had been plenty of discussion about home haircuts, unshaven faces and people abandoning normal routines.
Now listeners were arguing that the opposite was happening to them.
Francesca had become a quarantine My Little Pony
Francesca had dyed her hair pink and made herself tie-dye clothes and socks.
She described the result as essentially becoming My Little Pony around Birmingham.
Another listener, Beth, said working from home was helping with fitness and weight loss because there were no office cakes, lunches and birthday food constantly appearing around her.
Others said their skin had improved because they were wearing less make-up and their hair had grown long enough to look like extensions.
Scott and Chris were less convinced about themselves.
Scott imagined emerging with the sort of early One Direction or Justin Bieber fringe produced by months without a haircut, while Chris pointed out that Scott was also dealing with a missing tooth.
Scott’s boyfriend was growing a moustache and considering silver hair.
Lockdown beauty was clearly going in several directions at once.
Niall Horan had an immaculate bathroom
The day’s celebrity home DJ was Niall Horan.
He appeared from his bathroom, which immediately drew comments about how impossibly clean the room looked.
Niall said the combination of isolation and extra time at home meant both he and the house had never been cleaner.
He was cooking more too.
Then came the real co-star of the set.
Robert the robot Hoover became part of the show
Niall had bought a robot vacuum cleaner which returned to its own charging base.
He had named it Robert and talked about it with the affection normally reserved for a pet.
The show therefore became, for a while, Niall and Rob.
Robert moved around the immaculate bathroom while one of the most famous members of One Direction provided the music.
Niall opened with Florence + the Machine’s You’ve Got the Love.
Niall and Lewis Capaldi were still writing
The tour Niall had planned with Lewis Capaldi had been cancelled, but the pair were still finding ways to write together remotely.
Niall said they had been working virtually and expected to do more.
What they had not properly decided was whether any of the material would actually be released.
He laughed at the strange notes created in remote sessions — the sort which make perfect sense at night and become mysterious the following morning.
His set also dipped into music he had previously used in his Radio 1 Live Lounge, making the whole thing feel less like a celebrity playlist and more like Niall taking control of the bathroom radio.
Chris reopened the Stark Guide to the Isle of Man
Elsewhere, an old Stark Guide to the Isle of Man returned.
The guides took a real destination and combined genuine information with the show’s increasingly unreliable tourism advice.
Chris covered the island’s position in the Irish Sea, its Crown Dependency status and Tynwald, the parliament with Viking roots.
Famous names associated with the island included cyclist Mark Cavendish, actor Amy Jackson and the Bee Gees.
The guide also managed to revive an ongoing argument about where Marks & Spencer began, proving that even a tourism segment could become a dispute over retail history.
Don’t Look It Up went through tattoos, Live Lounges and Twitter
The day’s quiz moved through celebrity tattoos, forgotten Live Lounge performances and Twitter trivia.
Among the tattoo questions were Tulisa’s “Female Boss”, Ariana Grande’s famously mistranslated Japanese hand tattoo and Harry Styles’ birds on his chest.
The Twitter round reached Barack Obama’s enormous following and the name of the platform’s bird logo.
As ever, the rule was contained in the title:
Don’t look it up.
Bangers ended with My Chemical Romance
The daily Bangers choice put Scott and Chris against one another and let a listener decide which song should close the show.
Rachel chose Chris’s My Chemical Romance – Welcome to the Black Parade over Scott’s Wayne Wonder – No Letting Go.
For a show that had begun with pink hair and robot Hoovers, it ended on a suitably enormous singalong.
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