Drake’s mum supplied a new rule for criticism
The leaving announcement had produced an enormous amount of support, but inevitably there had also been criticism online.
Scott admitted that telling yourself not to care did not necessarily stop a nasty comment from getting under your skin.
He had been tempted to reply.
Then a friend sent him a clip of Drake explaining advice from his mother.
The idea was simple: if something public upsets you, wait roughly 72 hours.
It may still bother you the next morning, slightly less the next day, and by the third day somebody else will probably have done something stupid enough to take everyone’s attention.
Scott immediately adopted it.
No emotional replies.
No instant reaction.
Wait three days and see whether it still matters.
He then threatened to apply the same system to ordinary WhatsApp messages, which producer Amy pointed out would be a dramatic change from his habit of replying almost before a message had finished sending.
The microphones had been recording his chart rehearsals
Scott has always taken the Official Chart seriously.
He wanted the countdown to sound fast, slick and exciting every Friday.
What listeners normally did not hear was how he got himself into that state before the microphone officially opened.
Producer Amy had recordings.
A lot of recordings.
They contained fragments of links, vocal warm-ups, nonsense noises, fake chart announcements, sudden shouts and Scott apparently talking to himself like somebody sleepwalking through pop music.
Collected together, it sounded considerably stranger than it probably did in context.
Scott protested that these were simply rehearsals.
Chris thought they sounded like the final moments of somebody leaving a pub.
The fact the studio microphones could capture so much off-air material suddenly felt dangerous.
Listeners requested old moments
With the end approaching, people were also asking for memorable archive clips.
The requests included Scott performing the rap from *Moana*, a Christmas interview with Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson, the call to an Italian restaurant in which Scott pretended not to understand what a tomato was, and the gloriously lengthy 1990s Radio 1 web address once read aloud by Pete Tong.
There was also another airing of Becky Hill ranting about being expected to create endless TikTok content around every release.
The archive was beginning to become part of the live show rather than something kept for Fridays.
The Jennifer Aniston prank still made Scott sweat
One requested clip took Scott straight back to one of the most uncomfortable interviews of his career.
Years earlier, the show had arranged for Jennifer Aniston to appear increasingly irritated by his questions while Chris secretly controlled the prank from nearby.
Scott had no idea what was happening.
Jennifer questioned whether one of his questions was appropriate, leaving him desperately trying to recover while believing he had offended one of the world’s biggest actors.
Hearing the clip again made him visibly uncomfortable even years later.
His nose was sweating simply from the memory.
Bangers reached a Nottinghamshire village
The show eventually headed to Misson, where listener Megan was preparing for a cruise to Norway and Iceland.
She chose Scott’s Foo Fighters option over the alternative.
As ever, the supposedly simple task of choosing the next song became a tour of local geography, pubs, parking and whether merely mentioning a village on Radio 1 might be “good for the town”.
By the end of Wednesday, Scott had acquired a new social-media survival policy and listeners had acquired far too much knowledge about the noises he made before the chart.
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