Chris teaches a comedy club about volcanoes
Scott opened by checking that the previous day’s French revision had made a difference. A listener who met her French teacher had resisted using Scott’s lost-rucksack phrases, although the song was evidently memorable enough to have lodged in her head. Scott also confessed to a new interest in French hip-hop stations, which he thought sounded like British rap with a more glamorous accent.
The main event was Chris’s report from the comedy night. He had been booked as if he were a new comedian, watched several actual stand-ups perform, then walked out alone to teach GCSE geography. The room gave him an excitable welcome because it was his “first time”, a chant Chris quickly learned to trigger whenever he needed encouragement.
His subject was volcanoes. Chris recruited a volunteer as a human volcano, filled his mouth with water as “magma” and drew an enormous diagram on a flipchart. Beccy had warned that the drawing looked unfortunate in rehearsal, and the crowd’s reaction suggested the warning had been justified.
Chris nevertheless got through the science: magma collected in a chamber, pressure and plate movement caused an eruption, and once it emerged it became lava. On his cue, the volunteer threw the water into the air, making the eruption far more vivid than a normal revision guide. Chris then explained that the lava cooled into rock.
The audience took the three-stage lesson away as a chant: “Magma, lava, rock.” Scott was genuinely impressed that Chris had turned a room expecting comedy into a geography class without losing it. The Lady Gaga documentary also gained two new talking heads, Donna Air and Crimewatch presenter Rav Wilding, whose verdict was that Gaga ought to rename herself “Lady Complete Bonkers”.
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