Chris finally explained why he might suddenly disappear
Scott and Chris began their second week covering Radio 1 Breakfast with a genuinely big announcement.
Chris said that he and his wife were expecting a baby.
Not in several months.
Potentially at any moment.
He had been at Wexham Park Hospital the previous night and explained that if he suddenly vanished during the programme, there was a very good reason.
Chris was emotional but careful not to pretend he had done the difficult part. His wife, he repeatedly said, was the one doing everything.
Listeners immediately started sending congratulations, including people who claimed they had already suspected something from comments Chris had made during previous shows.
Scott joked that the Breakfast programme now had its own royal-birth-style waiting game.
A trip to the sea felt like an international holiday
Scott had spent some time in Porthcawl in South Wales and said simply going somewhere that was neither his home nor Radio 1 felt extraordinary.
After months of restrictions, seeing the sea felt more like a two-week holiday to Thailand than a domestic trip.
It summed up how expectations had changed: a short journey and a different view now counted as major excitement.
Britain had flying ants and apparently drunk seagulls
The day’s other national event was Flying Ant Day.
Scott and Chris tried to understand whether ordinary ants suddenly sprouted wings or whether the flying ants were a different part of the colony.
More importantly, they had learned that seagulls eating large numbers of flying ants could become affected by the formic acid.
The result, according to the explanation they had found, was birds behaving as though they were drunk and losing some of their normal inhibitions.
So Flying Ant Day also became Drunk Seagull Day.
Scott enjoyed the fact that in a year when almost every planned event had been cancelled, the ants had at least turned up on schedule.
Reopening meant beauty salons, tattoos and impossible multitasking
More lockdown restrictions were easing.
In Wales, hairdressers and outdoor hospitality were returning. In England, beauty salons were reopening for services such as waxing, massages, tanning and tattoos.
Scott immediately wondered whether he could save time by having a sunbed, leg wax and tattoo simultaneously.
Chris was not convinced any sensible business would agree.
Viral moments had created accidental tourist attractions
The previous week’s discussion about the restaurant that refused Jess Glynne entry led to a wider question: which completely ordinary places had become attractions because something viral happened there?
One listener had lived near the Hull road where the Ronnie Pickering cycling confrontation took place.
Scott felt the location deserved proper heritage treatment, although there was apparently no sign marking the exact spot.
Another listener lived near the Northern Irish field where Rihanna filmed *We Found Love* before farmer Alan Graham objected to how much clothing was being removed.
Others mentioned ordinary restaurants that had become locally famous simply because huge celebrities such as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had once eaten there.
The appeal was not the place itself. It was being able to point at an otherwise unremarkable road, field or restaurant and say: that’s where the thing happened.
Scott wanted people to explain 2020 to their younger selves
Near the end of the programme, Scott reflected on how impossible the previous few months would have sounded a year earlier.
He and Chris had not seen each other in person for around five months despite speaking every day.
Scott had barely seen his mum because she had been shielding.
Masks, Zoom quizzes, daily press conferences, empty offices and interviewing celebrities from bedrooms had all become normal.
So Scott set a new task.
Listeners should write a letter to themselves at the age of ten.
It did not have to be only about coronavirus. They could explain where life had taken them, what had changed, what they had achieved and what their younger self did not need to worry about.
The idea would become one of the emotional threads running through the rest of the week.
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