Scott wanted better people-on-the-street interviews
The news was full of reporters asking ordinary people how late changes to Christmas restrictions had affected their plans.
Scott understood why.
He was also bored of hearing identical answers.
If a reporter ever approached a Radio 1 listener with one of those enormous socially distanced microphone poles, Scott wanted the listener to use the opportunity properly.
Do something memorable.
One interviewee had already achieved that by giving an unusually loose answer about going to the mother-in-law’s before wandering off.
For a few seconds, serious television news had become entertaining.
Scott wanted more of it.
The Who-Vent Calendar opened another strange memory
Door 22 contained another collection of audio from the show’s recent past, including deliberately absurd impressions and references which barely made sense without the original context.
That was increasingly the point of the calendar.
By this stage, Scott and Chris were not just remembering famous events.
They were remembering scraps of show language and jokes which regular listeners would instantly recognise.
Dial-A-Carol had fallen victim to 2020
Scott and Chris then remembered an American service where callers could request a Christmas carol.
The normal operation was not happening because of coronavirus.
So Radio 1 created its own improvised version.
Rather than waiting for listeners to call a carol service, Scott and Chris would call people.
They would begin singing.
The person answering simply had to continue.
This sounded easy.
Ding Dong Merrily on High was a terrible choice
The first song was *Ding Dong Merrily on High*.
Scott sang the opening line.
The person on the other end did not continue.
Another call failed.
Then another.
The problem became obvious.
Everybody knew the phrase “Ding dong merrily on high”.
Almost nobody knew what came next.
Scott kept trying anyway, with increasingly desperate high notes.
The strangers mostly hung up.
Mariah Carey finally rescued the feature
Chris suggested trying something people actually knew.
They switched to Mariah Carey’s *All I Want for Christmas Is You*.
This time a caller called Jessie immediately continued the lyrics.
Success.
The issue had not been that people hated spontaneous carolling from strangers.
The issue was that Scott had chosen a carol nobody could finish.
The pair regarded this as an important distinction.
The quiz looked back at 2020
Don’t Look It Up also began reviewing the year itself.
After months of unprecedented headlines, viral clips and show moments, there was no shortage of material.
The quiz tested how much of 2020 listeners and presenters could still remember only days before it ended.
Considering how long the year had felt, some events already seemed as though they belonged to several years ago.
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