Britain was hot and the show had a solution
The final archive episode of the week returned to a hot spell and the familiar national reaction to warm weather.
There were jokes about crowded beaches, ice-cream vans and the newspaper tradition of photographing people enjoying the sea as though summer had never happened before.
Scott had a more practical concern.
How could everybody cool down?
He had previously suggested holding ice cubes under the armpits.
Now he had improved the idea.
Or so he thought.
One ice cube had worked at home
Scott had experimented with putting an ice cube inside his swimming shorts.
At home, with a single cube, the result had been surprisingly effective.
The cold spread quickly and made him feel cooler overall.
That was enough evidence for him to recommend the technique on national radio.
Chris should try it too.
The mistake was scaling up.
Both men changed into swimming shorts
To perform the test properly, Scott and Chris changed into swimwear in the studio.
They then faced the awkward practical problem of pouring ice into one another’s general vicinity without looking too closely at what they were doing.
A cupful of cubes was prepared.
This was already far more ice than Scott had used in the successful experiment at home.
Neither man allowed that fact to stop them.
The reaction was immediate
Once the ice went into the shorts, calm radio presentation disappeared.
Both began shouting as the cubes moved into places which had not volunteered for the trial.
They tried to carry on speaking and even read normal Radio 1 information while dealing with the sudden cold.
The idea was that the body would cool pleasantly.
The reality was closer to wondering whether parts of the body had gone numb.
Frostbite was not the summer vibe
Scott and Chris quickly moved from laughing about the sensation to asking how long ice could safely remain directly against skin.
There was talk of frostbite.
The whole exercise now looked less like a lifestyle hack and more like a warning against turning a small experiment into a studio stunt.
Scott finally admitted the important difference.
One cube had been manageable.
A whole cup was not.
Recommendation withdrawn
The feature ended with Scott effectively retracting his own advice.
Anybody listening for genuine heatwave guidance had learned something, although perhaps not what had been intended.
Do not assume that because one ice cube feels refreshing, thirty will feel thirty times better.
And if a Radio 1 presenter starts changing into swimming shorts to demonstrate a cooling technique, the science has probably already gone too far.
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