A sleeping passenger gave Scott a terrible idea
With Scott and Chris off for the week, the podcast returned to an older show in which an awkward train journey had inspired one of Scott’s social experiments.
Scott had been on a busy train to Essex when the man beside him fell asleep on his shoulder. As Scott’s stop approached, he started wondering what he would have done if the man had not woken up: climb over him, physically move him or simply miss the stop?
That reminded the pair of a listener who had once been trapped in an aeroplane seat by a sleeping passenger and had eventually climbed over him to get to the toilet.
Scott decided they needed to test how people react when somebody asleep is physically blocking their escape.
Chris was volunteered immediately.
The experiment moved to the BBC canteen
They could not reproduce a train carriage, but the BBC canteen had booths where somebody sitting on the outside could effectively trap the person beside them.
Chris was sent downstairs and told to choose a stranger, sit next to them and pretend to fall asleep.
Then Scott added an entirely unnecessary extra element.
Chris had to buy a plate of baked beans.
Scott wanted him not merely to fall asleep beside somebody, but to slowly drop his face into the beans.
Chris repeatedly questioned what the beans added to the scientific value of the experiment. Scott’s answer was essentially that it would make it funnier.
The beans had to cool before Chris could face-plant
There was an unexpectedly practical problem: the beans were extremely hot.
Chris had an assistant furiously blowing on them while Scott waited upstairs, determined not to send him face-first into boiling food.
Once the beans were cool enough, Chris found a suitable booth and sat on the outside beside a woman, leaving her unable to get out without passing him.
He gradually acted sleepier and then lowered his face into the plate.
Because he was now supposedly asleep, Scott asked questions through his earpiece and told Chris to answer by pressing keys on his phone.
The situation immediately became deeply uncomfortable.
“Dude, you’ve got your face in some beans”
The woman beside Chris was less fooled than concerned.
Someone pointed out the obvious problem: he had his face in a plate of beans.
Chris tried to improve his acting by mumbling as though he were dreaming and at one point apparently called out for “Mummy”. Rather than reassuring anybody that he was merely asleep, this made the entire scene look even stranger.
Another man became involved and Chris was eventually encouraged to remove his face from the food.
He retreated to the toilets with beans still stuck to him and waited there, hoping the people involved would finish lunch and leave before he had to walk back past them.
Even Chris could not explain why beans were necessary
Back upstairs, Scott was delighted.
Chris remained unconvinced that the experiment had needed food at all.
The original question — how does someone react when a sleeping stranger blocks them in? — had been answered, but in the most Scott Mills way possible: by adding a plate of beans, public embarrassment and a completely avoidable layer of jeopardy.
The archive edition ended with Chris still picking beans off himself and the promise that the filmed version would make the whole thing even worse to watch.
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