Aaron was the closest the show was getting to Oxford
Dev and Chris had met Aaron as he prepared to start at the University of Oxford.
Neither presenter regarded admission to Oxford as a realistic prospect for himself.
Dev briefly wondered whether celebrity might one day earn them honorary doctorates, before Chris pointed out that Oxford probably aimed a little higher.
Aaron therefore became useful.
He was their person on the inside.
Their Oxford Mole.
Listeners had a collection of assumptions about what one of the world’s most famous universities was actually like, and Aaron’s job was to investigate them after moving in.
Was Oxford basically Hogwarts?
The first stereotype was the obvious one.
Was Oxford University essentially Hogwarts?
Ancient buildings, gowns, old traditions and a reputation most people know only from the outside had created a very specific image.
Dev and Chris wanted Aaron to stop relying on the image and actually snoop around.
He was outside the Westgate shopping centre with his family and two cars full of belongings, ready to move in.
Radio 1 gave him his first assignments.
Mission one: do Oxford students know Primark?
A listener wanted to know whether Oxford students were familiar with Primark — or had ever even been inside one.
Aaron immediately understood how awkward the investigation might be.
He would effectively have to introduce himself to strangers at one of Britain’s most intimidating universities and ask whether they knew an extremely mainstream high-street clothes shop.
That, Dev decided, was exactly why they needed a mole.
Mission two: investigate the salmon trousers
Another listener had noticed a particular piece of clothing associated in his mind with Oxford:
salmon-coloured trousers.
Dev immediately understood the stereotype.
Red or salmon trousers suggested old money.
The mission was to establish whether Oxford actually handed freshers a pair on arrival or whether the image existed entirely in people’s heads.
Aaron promised to keep watch.
Mission three: find the toilet butlers
The final question was even less plausible.
A listener claimed to have heard that Oxford toilets contained “butlers” who assisted students when they had finished.
Dev and Chris had no idea what this was supposed to mean.
The pandemic also raised obvious questions about how a socially distanced toilet butler would work.
Aaron nevertheless agreed to investigate.
The assignment was becoming less like student radio and more like an extremely low-budget espionage operation.
The terrible-holiday stories were still getting worse
Dev and Chris returned to the week’s argument that almost any holiday disaster now looked attractive compared with no holiday.
Sophie’s school-coach toilet accident from the previous day was replayed with a warning for anyone eating.
New stories followed.
Megan remembered being nine at a French water park, hitting her face so badly on a slide that she knocked out a front tooth.
There was blood in the pool and enough disruption for part of the attraction to be shut.
Asked whether she would relive even that in return for a proper holiday now, Megan still said yes.
Another listener began recounting a chaotic trip to Kavos.
The feature had become a competition to prove how low the threshold for “I’d happily go back” had fallen.
Dev discovered that Bamboleo Wednesday has rules
Wednesday meant one of the show’s most established rituals:
Bamboleo.
Dev, however, was covering Scott and did not possess years of experience delivering the increasingly elaborate Bamboleo shout-outs.
He mangled the feature badly enough that the podcast introduction warned listeners in advance.
Chris had evidence of how seriously the show had once taken the ritual.
He played audio of Scott performing a special *Bamboleo* at the Royal Albert Hall with Mark Goodier.
Dev’s attempt suddenly had a very high bar to clear.
Chris’s pub story had almost no ending
During Bangers, Chris started remembering a night out near a Kent village called Thong.
The story appeared to be building towards something significant.
It was not.
He eventually realised he had simply told Dev that, some time ago, he had enjoyed a good night in a pub.
The podcast introduction itself had warned that Chris would tell a lock-in story which “doesn’t really go anywhere and sort of peters out”.
That assessment proved accurate.
The pub was eventually identified as The George, allowing Chris at least to give it a shout-out.
Don’t Look It Up asked about very big things
The quiz opened with Big Things.
Dev and Chris had to name the world’s largest ocean, estimate how many passengers the largest cruise ship could carry and identify where the world’s biggest shopping centre was.
Dev’s estimate of 30,000 cruise-ship passengers was wildly high.
Chris’s 5,000 was much closer to the answer of around 6,000.
Dev then talked himself out of Dubai as the shopping-centre answer and chose Singapore.
Dubai had been right.
A twisted-audio round followed, using reversed or distorted versions of *WAP*, Royal Blood and Calvin Harris and Rihanna’s *This Is What You Came For*.
By the end of September, Dev had fully inherited the peculiar universe of Scott’s show for the week: Oxford spies, holiday injuries, Bamboleo and a football-style scoreline in a quiz about cruise ships.
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