Chris was missing and Scott knew almost nothing
Scott started the final Breakfast show of the fortnight alone.
The previous evening, Chris had sent him a short message saying he would not be on the programme.
Scott replied asking whether the baby had arrived.
There was no proper answer.
All he knew was that everything was okay.
Listeners immediately demanded information, but Scott genuinely had none.
Simon McCoy joined the least informative rolling-news operation ever
Scott compared the situation with BBC coverage of royal births.
He remembered news presenter Simon McCoy standing outside hospital during the wait for Prince George and openly acknowledging that there was very little actual news to report.
So Scott recruited McCoy for Baby Stark coverage.
At intervals, Simon appeared with increasingly authoritative BBC-style updates.
The substance of every bulletin was essentially the same:
Nothing.
Scott loved the contrast between the grand rolling-news tone and the total absence of information.
The Better Days Quiz replayed the Jennifer Aniston prank
While waiting, the show went back to 25 November 2014.
That was the day Scott secretly arranged for Jennifer Aniston to make Chris believe he had ruined an interview.
Before Chris met her, Scott explained the plan to Jennifer.
She agreed to behave as though his questions were inappropriate and irritating.
When Chris asked how a famous person lets someone know they like them, Jennifer immediately acted offended.
Chris panicked.
He tried to explain the question, only making the atmosphere more uncomfortable.
Scott replayed the clip and admitted that Jennifer was actually one of the loveliest celebrities he had met and that, listening again, he almost felt guilty about how genuinely frightened Chris sounded.
Izzy’s letter to her 10-year-old self was extraordinarily open
The day’s listener letter came from 18-year-old Izzy.
She told her younger self that life would become much harder than expected.
She would discover Irish dancing and compete nationally, then develop health problems that forced her to stop for a time and watch friends continue with their sports.
She would experience several bereavements.
A friend would take his own life.
And her own mental health would deteriorate to the point where there were times she did not want to keep living.
But the letter was also about survival.
Izzy told her younger self that she would choose to live.
She would earn an unconditional scholarship place at Queen’s University Belfast to study Human Biology and would become proud of what she had achieved.
She also included an important message about bodily autonomy after an experience in which somebody hurt her: her body belonged to her, she did not owe it to anybody and she would gradually feel that it belonged to her again.
Scott was overwhelmed by the honesty of the letter.
Izzy said reading it aloud felt cathartic.
The show directed listeners affected by what she had said towards Radio 1’s advice resources.
Then Chris finally called
Later in the programme, Simon McCoy introduced another “update”.
This time Chris’s voice appeared.
His wife had given birth to a baby boy.
Chris sounded exhausted, overwhelmed and extremely happy.
He repeatedly praised his wife, saying she had been phenomenal, and thanked the midwives at Wexham Park Hospital — particularly Claire — for the way they had cared for the family.
He said he could never repay what they had done.
Becoming a dad had changed the world overnight
Chris struggled to put the feeling into words.
At a time when the outside world seemed full of anger and anxiety, the birth had cut through all of it.
He described feeling like one of the luckiest people alive and acknowledged parents who had struggled to have children or had experienced different outcomes.
Scott told Chris how much he deserved the happiness and became emotional himself.
The pair reflected on how much of their adult lives they had shared with each other — much of it on the radio.
There was no name to announce yet.
Chris knew that asking Twitter for suggestions would probably be a mistake.
For once, though, the show’s rolling Baby Stark news operation finally had a headline.
A baby boy had arrived.
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