Chris discovered Dublin through an open-top bus
Chris had been away in Dublin with friends for a birthday.
One morning they boarded an open-top sightseeing bus.
Scott wanted to know whether anybody has ever genuinely been buzzing about a bus tour at 11am.
Chris admitted the group were partly killing time before the pubs felt socially acceptable.
The driver, Michael, was also the tour guide and did his best to sell them the history.
Chris mainly wanted to hop off.
The whole experience was affectionate rather than negative.
He simply recognised that an open-top tour competes badly with the promise of a pint when you are away with friends.
Lincoln had lost an institution
A listener from Lincoln then reported local news which Scott and Chris treated with national importance.
The late-night takeaway Charcoal Grill had rebranded as Lincoln Grill House.
More seriously, the listener was no longer sure customers received the familiar branded paper hats with their kebabs.
Scott and Chris were appalled.
The kebab-and-hat combination had become part of student-night culture.
Changing it felt less like a business rebrand and more like removing a landmark.
The reaction briefly threatened a DJ booking
Scott and Chris were due to DJ in Lincoln.
They jokingly suggested refusing to go if the hat tradition had disappeared.
Then they remembered the booking was real and approaching.
The boycott ended almost immediately.
Still, the programme treated the old Charcoal Grill name as local heritage.
Renaming it, Scott suggested, was like deciding the Eiffel Tower needed a new identity.
The comparison was ludicrous.
The affection from former Lincoln students was not.
What is your town weirdly famous for?
The discussion widened.
What tiny business, object, food or tradition instantly means a particular town to the people who live there?
Not the official tourist attraction.
The smaller thing locals actually care about.
Messages arrived with regional quirks which would mean almost nothing to somebody from elsewhere.
The kebab hat had opened an entire category of local identity.
The Who Game returned
Monday’s nostalgia game fitted perfectly.
A programme already mourning a takeaway hat did not need much encouragement to start remembering other things which had quietly disappeared.
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