The Greeters Guild had captured the show’s imagination
Scott and Chris had been watching Troy Hawke, dressed in a flamboyant velvet smoking jacket, standing outside ordinary shops and welcoming strangers as though they were arriving at a royal reception.
His Greeters Guild character offered compliments, encouragement and unnecessarily formal greetings to customers who had only intended to buy shampoo or stationery.
Shop staff did not always know what to make of him.
Managers sometimes came outside to establish why a strange man had appointed himself official greeter without permission.
Scott and Chris loved the commitment to making a completely ordinary trip to the high street feel like an event.
Rich the Service Station King was somewhere on the motorway network
Then Rich, the programme’s resident motorway-services expert, returned with another location challenge.
He supplied clues one by one.
There were two sides to the services.
Drivers heading towards Southampton might pass him.
The site had undergone significant work in 2022 and a new drive-through was on the way.
One clue also played with the fact that Scott had his own famous motorway landmark, the bridge at Fleet Services, but Rich was not there.
Listeners began trying to identify the location from the road network and redevelopment details.
The answer was Rownhams
Rich finally revealed he was at Rownhams services on the M27.
For Scott, the answer should perhaps have been easier because it was close to the part of the south coast where he grew up and was somewhere he had stopped while travelling to see his dad.
Rich explained that the site had been reconfigured and that new facilities, including a drive-through, were part of the work.
Once again the show treated the exact identity of a motorway service station with the tension of a major game-show reveal.
That was the entire appeal of having Rich involved.
A hot-tub cancellation threatened a birthday
Listener Hannah also had a problem.
A hired hot tub for a birthday celebration had been cancelled only hours before it was due to arrive because the supplier’s child was unwell.
After losing her 30th birthday celebrations to Covid restrictions, she had hoped to make this one count, including watching Stranger Things from the water.
Scott and Chris began suggesting emergency alternatives, including whether a paddling pool could somehow recreate enough of the experience.
It was not quite the same.
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