Strictly had discovered the art of the COVID disclaimer
The new series of *Strictly Come Dancing* had gone to great lengths to explain how filming had been made safe.
Scott and Chris noticed the same message being repeated constantly.
Tess and Claudia were socially distanced.
The celebrities and professionals had been tested.
The dancers had formed controlled bubbles.
Crew were wearing masks.
Hand sanitiser was everywhere.
Scott understood why the programme was being so explicit.
Nobody wanted a television production accused of ignoring the rules.
But after hearing the same reassurance repeatedly, he joked that *Strictly* needed a permanent badge on screen simply saying:
COVID SAFE.
The show then remixed some of the repeated lines into its own ridiculous audio.
There was one final Innuendo Bingo sitting in the archive
The *Strictly* disclaimers reminded Scott of something Radio 1 had never broadcast.
Before the pandemic, the team had recorded another Innuendo Bingo.
Then coronavirus arrived.
A feature in which two people sit opposite each other holding water in their mouths and deliberately spit it across a studio suddenly became almost impossible to put on air without context.
Scott said the unused edition was really good.
They had simply never found the right moment to release it.
Could they now play it if they made absolutely clear that it had been recorded before COVID?
Chris thought they probably could, provided the warning was impossible to miss.
The conversation carried a more significant realisation too.
Even when normal broadcasting returned, Innuendo Bingo might be one of the hardest old features to revive.
Zofia let her nan inspect Tinder
Radio 1 colleague Zofia had become bored enough in lockdown to show her Tinder conversations to her nan.
The results were magnificent.
One man suggested a game of mini golf followed by “a hole in one”.
Nan’s review was immediate:
“He’s crude. And he’s ugly.”
Scott and Chris loved the complete absence of diplomacy.
Zofia explained that her nan had heard enough lines in her life to have no patience for a bad one.
Age had removed whatever filter might once have softened the verdict.
A 3am invitation received the proper grandmother response
Another match invited Zofia to come to his house at around three in the morning.
Her nan was appalled.
Zofia had begun using the reactions online and wondered whether she should actually send the exact responses back to the men involved.
Scott thought this was an excellent dating service.
The matches believed they were talking to Zofia.
What they were really facing was quality control from an older woman with no interest in encouraging nonsense.
The segment was good enough that the show decided the grandmother should return the next day and judge potential matches live.
The Who Game and forgotten Live Lounges returned
The Who Game produced another collection of people and things half-forgotten by popular culture.
Don’t Look It Up then went back into the Live Lounge archive.
The two features worked particularly well together.
One deliberately celebrated things everybody had forgotten.
The other demonstrated that Scott and Chris themselves had forgotten substantial parts of a radio archive they had actually lived through.
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