The annual Radio 1 photo had become a Zoom problem
Every year Radio 1 needed new promotional photographs.
2020 required something different.
Scott and Chris were asked for an image which looked like the two of them on a Zoom call.
This sounded extremely easy.
Set up Zoom.
Take a screenshot.
Send it.
Scott could not do it.
Every attempt to press the correct buttons turned his phone off instead.
He reopened the call.
Tried again.
Turned the phone off again.
Chris watched the frustration build while the supposedly simple photograph became a full radio feature.
Scott did not trust where the photograph might eventually appear
There was another concern.
Radio 1 had previously taken apparently harmless festive photographs of presenters and then used them far more widely than expected.
Scott remembered images ending up on buses and other promotional material.
That made him reluctant to submit a lazy lockdown photograph without doing his hair or making any effort.
A quick Zoom screenshot today could become the image everybody saw for months.
Brother or Lover made its debut
The new game had circulated in various forms online.
The Radio 1 version was simple.
Scott, Chris and the team would meet two people on a call.
They could ask questions.
Then they had to decide:
Brother or lover?
Alice introduced James.
The clues immediately conflicted.
James had bought Alice an Alexa for Christmas.
They had gone on holiday to Scotland together.
They were spending Christmas together.
Alice called him “Jam Jam”.
All of this could fit either a close sibling relationship or a couple.
The team split over the evidence
Listeners started sending guesses.
Some thought the Scotland road trip sounded like obvious couple behaviour.
Others felt the lack of romantic nicknames suggested siblings.
Chris leaned towards lover because the pair appeared guarded.
Scott trusted the opposite instinct.
His final answer was brother.
Scott was right.
James was Alice’s brother.
The game had survived its first outing.
Whether it needed to become a permanent feature remained undecided.
Celebrity merchandise produced some extraordinary products
Don’t Look It Up opened with celebrity merchandise.
Scott had an unfair advantage when the first question asked which *X Factor* band had launched a condom range.
JLS.
Scott knew because he had actually hosted the press conference unveiling them.
He remembered standing at a lectern while different condoms associated with the members were presented to the media.
It remained one of the stranger professional duties of his career.
Another question involved *The Hunger Games* golf balls carrying the phrase “I volunteer as tribute”.
Harry Styles merchandise also appeared through a badge using the lyric “I’m having your baby”.
Celebrity branding had apparently found a way to reach almost every possible object.
The Who Game and forgotten Live Lounges closed November
The Who Game delivered another round of things whose moment had passed.
Then Don’t Look It Up returned to the Live Lounge archive.
Rita Ora, Tom Odell and Nick Mulvey were among the names appearing through old covers.
One performance slowed an already slow song down even further.
Another made Scott recognise the lyrics long before he could identify the track.
It was an appropriate way to end November.
The month had spent plenty of time looking backwards at things people had forgotten, while simultaneously documenting a year nobody was likely to forget quickly.
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