The Love Island parties were bigger than the ending
Scott had watched the final after spending the previous programme talking about everybody else’s parties.
His verdict was similar to several listeners’.
The setups had been fun.
The ending itself felt relatively predictable.
Nobody was seriously expecting the winning couple to suddenly take all the prize money and abandon their partner.
Some listeners admitted the final was merely the excuse.
The more important thing was having friends together again for one of the first proper group evenings since restrictions eased.
Tom Cruise had turned Birmingham into Dubai
The programme then moved to one of the strangest sights in Birmingham.
A film production involving Tom Cruise had transformed part of the city’s transport hub into what was supposed to look like Dubai airport.
Scott and Chris were fascinated by how ordinary British places can disappear behind film dressing.
Signs change.
Extras arrive.
Vehicles are controlled.
For the finished movie, viewers may never realise the glamorous international location was actually Birmingham.
Scott wanted to know what happens to normal commuters and city traffic while an entire station is pretending to be somewhere else.
Tom Cruise was also eating curry
The actor’s Birmingham stay had already generated local stories.
He visited Asha’s restaurant and reportedly enjoyed his chicken tikka masala enough to order the same dish again.
Elsewhere, a Warwickshire family had made headlines after a helicopter associated with Cruise landed in their garden during production.
Scott and Chris loved the contrast.
A Hollywood star might be filming a giant action movie.
To local people, the memorable detail was often still:
Tom Cruise had a curry.
Superfan Steve met Charli XCX
The archive feature Superfan Steve returned with Charli XCX.
The premise remained one of Scott and Chris’s best tricks.
Chris secretly has the answers.
He pretends to be an ordinary fan named Steve.
The celebrity has to compete against somebody who appears to know terrifyingly specific details about their life.
Charli was asked why she used XCX, where her father was from, the name of an early mixtape, favourite chocolate, school subjects, favourite animal, favourite fruit and other personal trivia.
Steve kept winning.
Charli realised something was wrong
The questions became increasingly personal.
Then came the name of the first person Charli had kissed.
At that point she stopped playing along normally.
Who exactly was Steve?
How did he know all this?
Was this a prank?
Scott finally revealed the truth.
Steve was Chris.
Charli’s response captured the whole feature:
she had thought she possessed an extraordinary superfan.
Instead she had Chris Stark with a crib sheet.
The game survived — although Scott acknowledged that if celebrities ever began recognising the trick in advance, Superfan Steve would be finished.
Amy and Taylor looked far too much like lovers
Brother or Lover then went to the Isle of Sheppey.
Amy and Taylor shared martial arts as a passion.
They had been in a hot tub together more than once.
They had spent seven nights in New York.
Amy had seen Taylor naked within the previous month.
Every member of the Radio 1 team chose:
lovers.
They all thought it was obvious.
It was not.
The easiest Brother or Lover was a complete trap
Amy revealed Taylor was her brother.
The hot tub belonged to Taylor.
They trained together and then used it.
The naked sighting had happened around changing.
The New York stay had been a family holiday.
Amy said they had always been an unusually open and close brother-and-sister pair.
Scott and Chris could hardly believe the result.
A game which sometimes depended on tiny clues had just presented them with the most apparently romantic evidence possible and fooled everybody.
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