Television audiences had moved onto Zoom
Scott and Chris opened with one of the stranger television changes of 2020.
Big entertainment shows were still being made, but part of the audience was now sitting at home on Zoom rather than packed into a studio.
Chris actually saw advantages.
Both he and Scott knew that attending a television recording could be much less glamorous than viewers imagine. There could be hours of queueing, tiny seats and long stretches where leaving for the toilet was discouraged because producers wanted the audience in place.
Scott remembered taking his mum to *Strictly Come Dancing*. She loved it, but he found the day extremely long.
A Zoom audience meant somebody could sit in pyjamas, drink wine and go to the toilet whenever they liked.
Listener Mandy had done exactly that for *Mock the Week*. She still saw the warm-up act and Dara Ó Briain came on to greet the remote audience, while a smaller socially distanced crowd remained in the studio.
Scott briefly worried that television might be using ancient “canned” laughter from audiences who were no longer alive, until somebody working in TV got in touch to explain the show was using current audience reactions rather than laughter recorded in 1970.
Scott had been far too pleased with his Strictly inside information
The bigger problem came from Scott’s continuing connection to *Strictly*.
Since appearing on the show himself, he had maintained contact with somebody who would usually tell him the two couples in the dance-off before the Sunday results programme aired.
Scott did not publish the spoiler.
But he did occasionally tell people he trusted.
Chris was one of them.
Over the weekend, Scott passed on two names and Chris settled down to watch the results feeling extremely smug because he believed he already knew what was coming.
Neither of the people Scott had named ended up in the bottom two.
Was Scott’s insider deliberately punishing the gossip?
Scott now had two possibilities.
His source had made an innocent mistake.
Or his source had finally decided to teach him a lesson.
Chris strongly preferred the second explanation.
Scott admitted he loved gossip and enjoyed knowing things slightly before everybody else. Perhaps the insider knew that and had deliberately supplied false information to see how far it travelled.
The situation reminded Chris of a school-age stitch-up.
A friend once gave him the phone number of a girl he fancied. Chris sent an extremely careful message about homework, only to discover the number actually belonged to the girl’s enormous rugby-playing boyfriend.
That betrayal had stayed with him.
Scott wondered whether his Strictly source had now done something similar.
The Who Game brought back more recent relics
Monday meant another round of The Who Game.
Listeners and presenters nominated people, objects and habits from the recent past which triggered an immediate nostalgic “Whooo!”
The best entries were things which had not been gone for decades, but which had quietly vanished from ordinary life.
That was always the feature’s sweet spot: something you once saw every day and had somehow not thought about for years.
Racehorse or Drag Queen remained almost impossible
Don’t Look It Up brought back Racehorse or Drag Queen.
Scott and Chris heard lists of names and had to identify which belonged to a real racehorse and which belonged to a drag performer.
The names were deliberately impossible.
Karen from Finance, Mary Hinge and Meatball sounded capable of belonging to either world.
Scott was convinced Karen from Finance must be the horse.
The actual racehorse was Mary Hinge.
Another round included Test Tickle, My Tent or Yours and Magic Carpet Burns.
This time both correctly identified Test Tickle as the drag queen.
The final list featured I Leaned Over, Snoring and Ruth Canal.
Snoring was the horse.
Scott and Chris had become disturbingly good at a game whose entire appeal was that the names made almost no logical sense at all.
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