Lord Blunkett enters the experiment
Scott received an email with the subject line: “BBC Sounds broke my smart speaker.”
The sender was Lord David Blunkett, the former home secretary and MP for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough.
Lord Blunkett said the device had begun repeating material every few hours after Scott’s rewind experiment.
Scott was surprised to discover that a member of the House of Lords listened to the show and jokingly concluded that Baron Blunkett had become trapped in the programme’s time paradox.
Smart-speaker aftermath
Listeners continued reporting whether the rewind command had worked.
Moira in Horsham and Adam in Wallingford were among the people whose devices appeared to repeat parts of the broadcast.
Most others experienced nothing beyond a misunderstood command, but Scott regarded the limited success as proof that the theory had at least been possible.
Listeners also sent recordings of the unusually formal or forceful voices they used when addressing devices.
The Birthday Game: Jen
Jen from Southampton turned 40.
She lived with her husband and their daughter Viviana, who regularly listened to the Birthday Game and shouted: “Spin it, Scott.”
Viviana believed Scott was marrying Sam Ryder rather than his fiancé Sam.
Jen loved a broad range of music, including soul, hip-hop, R&B and rock, and was deliberately introducing her daughter to records from several decades.
Her first spin was The Beatles’ From Me to You. Jen admired it but chose to continue.
The second was Madness’s House of Fun. She gambled again despite knowing listeners might object.
Her compulsory final spin was Ace of Base’s All That She Wants, number one in 1993.
Jen immediately recognised it from her own birthday and gave one of the strongest positive reactions Scott had received to an Ace of Base record.
The week in review
Scott replayed the most memorable petty workplace rules, including separate management water coolers and restrictions on charging phones.
He also revisited Ella Henderson’s Music Police case and the successful identification of Paula Cole’s Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?
The smart-speaker experiment formed the other major feature of the week, with Scott admitting it had failed for most listeners but succeeded spectacularly enough in a few homes to justify the attempt.
The Wonder Years
The Friday Wonder Years began in 1983.
The sequence included Tina Turner, Alison Moyet and Yazoo, alongside Fleetwood Mac for Stevie Nicks’s birthday.
Handover
The available transcript ends during The Wonder Years and does not preserve the final handover.
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