“Alas” became the word of the day
Scott had noticed Boris Johnson saying alas repeatedly in coronavirus briefings.
It was a word Scott hardly ever heard anybody else use in normal conversation.
So he decided to change that.
For the rest of the programme, callers and listeners were encouraged to work “alas” into everyday speech as often as possible.
Messages arrived specifically engineered around it.
One listener asked whether his text would be read out.
Alas, it was.
Scott and Chris briefly treated the whole thing as a national vocabulary campaign.
Christmas carols needed a COVID rewrite
The approaching festive season was obviously going to look very different.
That led to COVID carols.
Scott and Chris began rewriting familiar songs around distancing and restrictions.
*We Wish You a Merry Christmas* became We Wish You a Social Distance.
Another lyric advised people to stay away from strangers and avoid kissing friends.
Some attempts were dreadful.
Scott freely admitted this.
The challenge was less about producing a genuinely good song and more about finding out how many pandemic phrases could be forced into melodies everybody already knew.
The non-romantic breakup stories got even more uncomfortable
The previous day’s feature continued with people who had needed to end professional relationships.
A nail technician had a client who criticised everything so relentlessly that appointments became miserable.
Rather than directly saying she no longer wanted the client, the technician invented a wider story about cutting back her work.
The former client later claimed she had been the one to end things.
Because they lived in Cornwall, the risk of running into each other remained uncomfortably high.
A personal trainer had to reject a client
Former trainer Liam had received an inappropriate message from a female client asking what he might do if she were not his client.
There were two obvious problems.
Liam was seeing somebody.
The woman had a boyfriend.
He sent a long, firm message explaining that the situation was unfair, that future sessions would become awkward and that she could have her money back and find another trainer if necessary.
She replied that the message had only been meant light-heartedly.
They met for one more session.
Later Liam spotted her in a Morrison’s car park with the boyfriend and tried his best to avoid the entire situation.
One employer delivered a 400-word WhatsApp breakup
Listener Emily had experienced the feature from the other direction.
Her employer ended her role during the pandemic with an enormous WhatsApp message.
It discussed the company’s finances, thanked her for years of loyalty and wished her love, health and happiness.
Scott thought the final line sounded less like redundancy and more like somebody ending a long relationship.
That prompted the inevitable question.
How would Radio 1 eventually get rid of Scott and Chris?
The pair decided the most likely answer was not a meeting at all.
One day their BBC passes would simply stop opening the door.
Blow Your Own Trumpet rewarded another round of tiny victories
Listeners celebrated finally receiving a flat deposit back after months of argument, baking successful vegan cupcakes despite not being vegan, driving a new car without stalling and completing a first workout of lockdown.
Another caller had begun arranging tins of soup in density order.
By 2020 standards, Scott accepted this as a perfectly valid achievement.
The trumpet blew.
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