Chris’s listener friendships were apparently not unique
Scott was still trying to establish whether Chris spending several hours drinking with people who had simply asked for a photograph was strange.
Listener Rachel supplied a much more extreme version.
She and her wife were returning from a Bring Me the Horizon concert when they spotted somebody her wife followed on Instagram.
The man was Bob from Geordie Shore.
They asked for a photo.
That should have been the entire interaction.
Instead they ended up having cocktails together.
Then another bar.
Then a strip club.
One photograph request turned into an entire night.
Scott admitted Chris’s story suddenly seemed much less unusual.
Fruit or Root refused to die
Producer Amy brought back a quiz round Scott thought the team had already agreed to retire.
Fruit or Root.
Amy had not merely ignored the criticism.
She had spent around half an hour making a trailer for it.
The premise was straightforward.
Does the plant or edible thing grow above ground or below ground?
Above ground went into the “fruit” side of the game.
Below ground became “root”.
Scott objected that the categories were botanically questionable.
Amy did not care.
The trailer existed.
The round was happening.
Beetroot opened the controversy again
The first question concerned the humble beetroot.
Scott and Chris began arguing about which part of the plant counted, what “fruiting” actually meant and whether the game was internally consistent.
Amy insisted the problem was not the round.
The problem was the presenters overthinking it.
Scott remained unconvinced.
By then Fruit or Root had achieved the highest form of Radio 1 feature survival:
everybody complained about it while still discussing it at length.
Bryan Cranston became Heisenberg for Little Mix
The archive Golden Moment returned to Bryan Cranston during the height of *Breaking Bad*.
Scott and Chris had introduced him to Little Mix’s then-number-one single Shout Out to My Ex.
Cranston barely knew the group.
He did know how to become Walter White.
Scott asked him to read the lyrics in full Heisenberg mode.
The transformation was extraordinary.
Words which sounded like a pop breakup anthem when sung by Little Mix suddenly became vaguely threatening.
Scott remembered the clip spreading widely and Little Mix sharing it themselves.
Years later, it still sounded like Heisenberg delivering a warning to an ex-partner.
The strange combination summed up the programme
The episode began with Chris making accidental friends in pubs.
It moved into vegetable taxonomy.
Then one of America’s most respected actors threatened somebody using Little Mix lyrics.
No single feature connected with any other.
That was exactly why it sounded like the Scott Mills show.
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