Tim Minchin talks America, orchestras and his “awful head”
Beccy opened the week with a distinctly odd family prediction: after Sunday dinner, her boyfriend’s dad had told her that in 25 years she would be like Joanna Lumley. Scott decided it was a compliment, largely because Lumley was “hot stuff”, although he also thought Beccy’s excitable voice was rather less Absolutely Fabulous than the comparison suggested.
The Radio 1 film was moving closer to a rough cut, but Scott was still learning the language of editing as he went. An editor was dealing with “codecs”, which Scott initially treated as a mysterious technical dialect, and he appealed again for listeners to help with the project. The audience had already supplied an Auto-Tuned version of Lady Gaga’s “enjoy the boob” line, mime videos and jazz hands, while animation students at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham had joined in too.
Scott’s latest request was for somebody skilled at Photoshop or similar software. Beccy immediately interpreted this as a way for Scott to make himself look thinner, while he insisted it was for the film. The exchange turned into another invitation for listeners to send before-and-after versions of Scott for Beccy’s amusement, which was not quite the crowd-sourced production help he had meant to seek.
The day’s Danny Howard Points game came from Young Lion’s early-hours 1Xtra show. Scott and Beccy counted how many times the presenter made an excited “oh” noise while mixing, discovering that the answer was a spectacular 19. It gave Scott a new sound effect to imitate and the listeners another very easy points round.
Tim Minchin then joined Scott to discuss touring the US, where he found the most enthusiastic crowds were often in conservative places such as Dallas because his audiences there had fewer like-minded performers to see. He spoke about taking his orchestral show to the O2 and Royal Albert Hall, the anxiety of rising onto the stage on a scissor lift, and the DVD of the show, which he said he could not watch because he disliked his own head, voice and jokes. Scott, naturally, suggested that was not the most persuasive way to sell a DVD.
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