Wimbledon season meant only one archive game would do
With Scott and Chris still off and the usual summer tennis absent in 2020, the podcast went back to one of the show’s simplest games: *Grunt or Goat*.
The premise was exactly what the title suggested.
A noise would be played and the contestants had to decide whether it was the grunt of a professional tennis player or the sound of an animal.
The game had originally fitted perfectly into Wimbledon season, when the distinctive noises made by players were almost as recognisable as the tennis itself.
Sophie had just graduated and was ready to escape
Listener Sophie in London joined Scott and Chris.
She had recently graduated and was sitting on her bed wondering what came next.
Scott and Chris encouraged the classic post-university option: go travelling while she had the chance, with Thailand and Australia among the suggestions.
Then, rather than offer any more useful life advice, they made her identify animal noises.
A fox could sound alarmingly like a tennis player
The round moved between recognisable tennis grunts and noises that seemed designed to catch people out.
Maria Sharapova appeared among the players.
So did Serena Williams, whose on-court sound was far easier to place for anyone familiar with women’s tennis.
Other clips came from animals including a deer, pig, gibbon and goat.
One of the pleasures of the feature was hearing a completely ordinary animal noise in isolation and realising it could sound surprisingly plausible as somebody hitting a forehand at Wimbledon.
Another tennis voice came from Michelle Larcher de Brito, while Victoria Azarenka also featured.
Scott started inventing impossible rallies
Once the game had supplied enough isolated noises, Scott became more interested in combining them.
Could the team create a rally between a pig and a gibbon?
What would a goat sound like returning serve against another animal?
The production became progressively less concerned with the actual quiz and more interested in creating a fake tennis match using the noises they had collected.
At one point Alan Dedicoat’s voice was thrown in as another deliberately ridiculous possible “grunt” before the real tennis sounds resumed.
Chris narrowly won
Sophie finished with 50 Scott Mills points.
Chris scored 60.
The scoring was hardly the important part.
*Grunt or Goat* worked because it reduced both professional sport and the animal kingdom to a single extremely stupid question: did that noise come from a tennis player or not?
In a June without the normal Wimbledon atmosphere, it was an apt archive choice to end the month.
COMMENTS