Scott and Chris were starting 2022 on breakfast
Scott and Chris were covering Radio 1 Breakfast, which meant beginning the year at a time of day their normal audience did not usually hear them.
The adjustment produced all the usual conversation about being awake properly, getting out of the house and trying to sound functional while much of Britain was still returning to work after Christmas.
The programme also brought in Yesterday’s Quiz, testing callers on things which had happened only 24 hours earlier.
One contestant, Dan, was taking part from a Wiltshire dairy farm while milking roughly 180 cows.
Scott loved the contrast between breakfast radio’s polished jingles and a caller answering current-affairs questions while doing a real morning job.
BlackBerry finally reached the end of the road
One of the day’s biggest nostalgia stories involved BlackBerry.
Legacy BlackBerry devices were reaching the point where key services would no longer function properly.
For Scott and Chris, that meant remembering the era when a BlackBerry Messenger PIN was practically a second phone number.
People did not always ask for your mobile number.
They asked for your BBM PIN.
Chris remembered the speed of the little physical keyboard and the strange prestige of being able to say:
“Ping me.”
The conversation even revived the memory of Pitbull once emailing the show from a device which signed messages with a BlackBerry-style footer — remembered by Scott and Chris as the wonderfully specific “sent from my Pitberry”.
A piece of technology which had once felt impossibly modern was now being retired as nostalgia.
220 Kid’s mum accidentally wore the smell of an ex
Then 220 Kid joined the show with a Christmas story.
On Christmas Day, his mum had put on a perfume.
The moment he smelled it, he was transported straight back around a decade.
It was the exact fragrance associated with “the one that got away” — or at least an ex from that period of his life.
The smell was so specific that the emotional memory arrived instantly.
Scott and Chris were fascinated.
Songs are famous for bringing old relationships back.
Photographs do it too.
But smell can be even more immediate.
One spray and somebody you have not thought about for years is suddenly in the room again.
Scott wanted to call his mum
Naturally, Scott and Chris thought the obvious next step was to get 220 Kid’s mum on the phone and ask about the perfume.
220 Kid was less enthusiastic.
The story was already awkward enough without turning Christmas fragrance choices into a family investigation.
He discouraged them from making the call.
That left the programme with a broader question instead.
What smell instantly reminds you of an ex?
Pilau rice joined the smell of romance
Listeners supplied an unexpectedly varied set of answers.
Specific aftershaves.
Perfumes.
The smell inside a particular car.
And, in one case, pilau rice.
Scott loved how personal the associations were.
A luxury fragrance might make sense.
A takeaway side dish is much less romantic.
But memory does not care whether the smell is glamorous.
If it was there at the time, it can stay attached to the person for years.
The first proper show of 2022 had therefore managed to combine obsolete smartphones, dairy farming and emotional damage caused by perfume.
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