Adele was apparently sending Scott signs everywhere
Mysterious billboards displaying the number 30 had appeared around the world.
Nobody had formally confirmed what they meant.
Adele fans did not need much convincing.
Her previous albums had been titled after ages.
The obvious theory was that 30 was the beginning of a new era.
Scott and Chris immediately began seeing the number everywhere.
A bus route was 30.
A shop had 30% off.
Somebody spent £30 on fuel.
A listener had turned 30 that year.
Another noticed two numbers adding up to 30.
Scott even joked that something on the pavement looked vaguely like the number.
Once the connection with Adele had been planted, absolutely anything became evidence.
Scott was not about to run a marathon
The London Marathon had also taken place.
Scott briefly experienced the classic post-marathon feeling where watching thousands of people finish makes running one seem achievable.
Chris immediately offered to bet his house that Scott would never actually do it.
The burst of inspiration did not last long.
Scott accepted that admiring marathon runners and becoming one were very different things.
Memes: Where Are They Now? found Paul
The programme returned to its hunt for the real people behind famous internet clips.
This time the target was:
“I can’t believe you’ve done this.”
The 2007 video shows a young man reacting after his friend suddenly hits him.
The response became one of the internet’s most reusable phrases.
Scott and Chris tracked down the man himself:
Paul.
The punch had been completely real
Paul explained that the clip had not been staged.
He and his friends had been filming something which never properly became a finished sketch.
Paul had earlier pushed his mate Tim from a chair.
Tim responded by hitting him.
Paul’s bewildered line was a genuine reaction.
The original video first went viral in 2007.
Years later it re-emerged through Vine and then continued resurfacing whenever somebody online needed a reaction to unexpected bad news.
Paul said the fame came in waves.
Sometimes nothing happened for months.
Then strangers would suddenly recognise him again.
Paul wanted the meme at his funeral
Scott pointed out the strange permanence of internet fame.
Paul would always exist online at exactly that age, reacting to exactly that punch.
Paul had made peace with it.
In fact, he wanted the clip projected at his funeral.
The phrase which had followed him for more than a decade could eventually become part of the goodbye.
Even on a recent night out, Paul’s girlfriend and friend had asked strangers whether they knew the meme.
One passer-by immediately recognised it.
The internet had not forgotten.
The Who Game and famous exes rounded out Monday
The Who Game returned with everything from Rainforest Cafe thunderstorms to Venn diagrams and old phone habits.
Don’t Look It Up also moved into celebrity exes and old chart material.
The programme had spent the afternoon proving two different kinds of memory work in almost the same way:
sometimes all it takes is one number, phrase or name and an entire period of life comes back.
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