Scott puts a university to the test to see if they can sing any Christmas carol on request — including The Pogues’ famously tricky festive hit.
The episode opens with Scott discussing the chaos of office Christmas parties in full swing, complete with people wearing novelty headwear. He plays one of his favourite recent features — a prank involving a listener who found a note in a bag of cheese and onion crisps claiming he’d won a prize, and who called the flirt divert number (the show’s callback number at the time) hoping to claim his win. Scott speculates amusingly on whether this was a crisp company publicity stunt or someone simply playing a trick by slipping a note into the bag while unobserved.
The main feature of the show sees Scott testing a university’s knowledge of Christmas carols. The challenge is straightforward: the team will attempt to sing any Christmas carol requested by the show — the hook being whether they can actually pull off The Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York,” one of the most culturally significant and lyrically distinctive Christmas songs ever recorded, which goes well beyond the traditional carol repertoire most people learn.
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