Finishing a dissertation still felt like a major life event
Scott and Chris began by congratulating listeners Dan, Lizzie and Annabel in Leeds, who had finally handed in their dissertations and were heading for Prosecco in the garden.
Chris remembered the odd emotional stages of finishing his own university work.
First came the moment when there was simply nothing more he could sensibly add.
Then came getting the dissertation bound so it looked like an actual book.
Finally there was the act of handing it over and realising the work was no longer his problem.
Scott’s advice was simple:
get the Prosecco open.
Chris was going back to football
Outdoor organised sport had returned in England and Chris’s football WhatsApp group was suddenly full of enthusiasm.
Normally they sometimes struggled to get enough players.
For the first session back, everybody wanted in.
Chris was excited but realistic.
He had not played for months.
He did not consider himself particularly fit.
His prediction was that the first game would be chaotic, everybody would overdo it and several players would get injured almost immediately.
Scott noticed Chris had even started eating more sensibly in preparation.
The discussion then moved to shin pads.
Chris had worn them to five-a-side and seven-a-side before, only to discover this apparently made him look overly cautious.
Scott compared it with using the barriers at bowling or stabilisers on a bike.
Chris still intended to wear his “shinies”.
Evan Jacobson brought the unnecessary brass
Earlier in the week Scott and Chris had discovered TikTok musician Evan Jacobson, whose speciality was adding saxophone to pop songs which had never asked for it.
They challenged him to create two bespoke versions.
First came Dua Lipa’s We’re Good.
The sax solo fitted so neatly that Scott immediately wondered why the original had not included one.
Then came Stormzy’s Vossi Bop.
Scott initially struggled to imagine where jazz brass could possibly sit inside the track.
Evan found the space.
The sax entered immediately after the Boris Johnson reference, giving Scott an obvious cue to listen for.
Both presenters loved it.
The whole joke was that the extra brass was unnecessary.
The problem was that it also genuinely worked.
TV themes turned out to be real songs
Chris had recently discovered that a familiar advertising line — “someone’s knocking at the door, somebody’s ringing the bell” — was actually Paul McCartney and Wings’ *Let ‘Em In* rather than simply something invented for an advert.
That led into other television themes and jingles which were ordinary songs before broadcasters adopted them.
Scott and Chris realised how often people know a few seconds of music for years without ever hearing the complete record.
Don’t Look It Up later included celebrity fandoms, continuing the day’s theme of pop-cultural knowledge everybody assumes they have until somebody actually asks a question.
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