27 May 2020
27 May 2020
The second 27 May podcast was a different show
The May archive contains two separate editions carrying the same date.
This one is not a duplicate of the Tom Grennan programme.
Its central guest was Alison Hammond, and it also pushed Chris’s barbecue obsession forward while introducing one of the stranger workplace-romance stories heard on the show.
Chris introduced his new American internet friends
After talking about wanting to become a pitmaster, Chris had gone deeper into barbecue YouTube.
He played Scott clips of gravel-voiced American experts preparing large cuts of meat with mustard, dry rubs and the instruction to rub everything in properly.
Chris loved the entire world around it: smokers, cowboy imagery, rodeos and the idea that barbecue could be a full identity.
He was already imagining the trip to America where he could experience it for himself.
Scott was beginning to imagine the television programme in which Chris simply watched men cook meat for hours.
Grace’s office romance required paperwork
Listener Grace met her future partner at work.
They were in the same small office and began quietly flirting through messages, even though they were physically sitting on opposite sides of the room.
Phones would be hidden in drawers and checked whenever the opportunity appeared.
After a work night out, the relationship moved beyond messages.
For around two months they kept it private.
Then their employer found out.
The ‘love contract’ ran to several pages
Rather than simply asking the couple to behave professionally, the company produced a formal relationship agreement which Grace remembered as around five or six pages long.
Scott called it a love contract.
The document set boundaries around how they were expected to behave at work and where they could work in relation to one another.
The whole thing sounded absurdly formal for two colleagues who had started by secretly texting across an office.
Yet the relationship lasted.
Years later they had built a life together, including a home and a cat, making the paperwork look less like the beginning of an HR disaster and more like an extremely bureaucratic origin story.
Alison Hammond compared lockdown with Big Brother
Alison Hammond joined for the celebrity mix.
By that point the country had been living with lockdown restrictions for weeks, prompting Scott to compare the experience with being shut inside the Big Brother house.
Alison had only actually spent around two weeks in the programme, despite the fact it had launched a career which was still going almost two decades later.
That contrast amused her.
A short stay in one house had become a lifetime in television.
Interviewing a tree was normal Alison Hammond territory
Scott revisited one of the wonderfully strange *This Morning* items associated with Alison: an interview involving a woman who said she could communicate with trees.
Alison had effectively ended up interviewing the tree too.
She explained that television could move quickly from seeing a bizarre story in a newspaper to deciding it absolutely belonged on the programme.
For Alison, the trick was committing to it rather than acting embarrassed by the premise.
She blagged her way into the Kardashian pen
Alison also told a story about finding herself at an event where the Kardashians were protected inside a separate area.
She wanted access.
Security wanted a reason.
Alison announced that she and Kris Jenner were good friends, despite never having met her.
Then she waved towards Kris.
Kris waved back.
That was apparently enough evidence for the guard, who let Alison through.
It was a perfect Alison Hammond story: confidence first, explanation later.
Don’t Look It Up returned to old X Factor auditions
The quiz tested memories of early X Factor appearances.
Rylan was one answer.
Another clip came from Liam Payne’s 2008 audition, two years before he returned and became part of One Direction.
The round worked because the voices and faces were familiar but the original audition versions could feel like completely different people.
For Scott and Chris, recognising the future star before the timer ran out was the entire challenge.
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