Luke Campbell’s Olympic life
Olympic boxing champion Luke Campbell arrived with the gold medal he had won in London. He admitted carrying it around because it still opened doors: showing it had secured a first-class train upgrade and a free haircut at Toni & Guy. His home city of Hull had also given him a gold postbox, a gold telephone box and a gold bus, while Royal Mail had put him on a stamp.
Luke said the attention could still feel strange. On his first run since the Games, strangers had joined him and begun talking as they ran alongside, creating a scene reminiscent of Rocky. The medal itself represented a lifelong ambition and all the dedication and sacrifice required to reach it.
Chris then explained that being punched by an Olympic champion sounded like an honour. Luke agreed to give him a dead arm and landed a controlled punch on his upper arm. Chris immediately turned red and conceded that it hurt, although the full extent of the bruise would not become clear until the following day.
Innuendo Bingo with Luke Campbell
Luke faced Chris in Innuendo Bingo, with an instruction from somebody at his boxing club to spray him freely. Bob Harris’s question “Does my ring burn your finger?” opened the game, followed by an Audience contributor discussing the only time one of his cockles had been squashed.
Hugh Grant’s National Lottery appearance produced repeated references to “head”, while Dragons’ Den included the surprising sentence that it had been a pleasure to have somebody’s mother in the den. Golf commentary about strong wrists and gripping well down the shaft finally broke Luke’s concentration.
A man described as a “top boner”, a farming clip about a strap being fitted before a leg was winched up and a complaint about vandals spraying a rear entrance completed the contest. Luke proved more restrained than several previous guests but still landed a number of sprays, then received one final instruction to punch Chris again before leaving.
Homemade breakfast jingles and Dear Scott
Listeners responded to the previous day’s request for breakfast-show branding. Five-year-old Isabella voiced a professional-sounding jingle which ended by asking, “But where’s Grimmy?” Scott liked it, although the question made the ident sound slightly like a complaint about his presence.
Oscar in New Zealand supplied a jazzier alternative, which Scott immediately imagined using out of the news. With no official budget for a one-week programme, the audience had effectively built the show’s sound themselves.
Elsewhere in Dear Scott, a listener described her sister becoming trapped in an automatic car wash after steering while the vehicle was already being pulled on a conveyor. The same part of the car was washed repeatedly until she sounded the horn, staff stopped the machinery and every vehicle behind her reversed out.
A viewer also noticed that ITV2 had shown The Shawshank Redemption immediately after Chris reviewed it. Scott treated this as evidence that the channel was rearranging its schedule around the show, replacing one of its regular repeats with whatever old film Chris had just discovered.
Real or No Real
Listener Kelsey joined Scott and Chris for Real or No Real. Turkish delight had not begun as “turkeys’ delights” fed to birds before Christmas, and sneezing with open eyes did not force the right leg to kick aggressively. Zebras genuinely were black with white stripes.
Touching the tongue could stop a yawn, while catchy pop songs really could trigger dopamine in the brain and produce a pleasurable response. Dividing the speed of light by the speed of sound did not reveal how long an owl needed to travel around the world. Scott finished with 40 points and Kelsey with 30.
Chris finishes his GCSEs and meets Lee Latchford-Evans
The classic 24 Years at the Tap End chapter returned to Chris’s final GCSE exam. His revision methods involved coloured cards, extensive timetables and helping knock down an outbuilding in Dugsy’s garden while Dugsy’s parents made their son stay upstairs and study. When the exams finally ended, Chris met Dugsy and Webbo in the Cottage of Chicken before heading to a park.
Their technique for meeting girls was to roll a football close enough to create an excuse for conversation. Chris aimed at a woman sunbathing, then discovered a muscular sleeping man beside her. When the man woke and removed his sunglasses, Chris recognised Lee Latchford-Evans from Steps.
Chris had to ask Lee for the ball because it had come to rest between his girlfriend’s legs. Lee laughed, stood up and joined the group for a series of kick-ups. The day ended with a second visit to the Cottage of Chicken, and Chris regarded meeting “the Latch” as an excellent beginning to his post-exam summer.
Scott claims a role in Adele’s success
Scott remembered an old show parody called Adele Laughs Popular TV Themes. He had heard that Ryan Tedder later recognised Adele in a record-company lift because of the laugh played on Radio 1, starting the conversation which led to their work together on 21.
Although he had no evidence, Scott reasoned that the programme had indirectly introduced the pair and might therefore deserve a share of the album’s proceeds. The discussion also revived the theory that British accents worked well in America, with a returning traveller estimating that the effect succeeded about two times out of five.
Wing’s new album
A listener alerted the show to a new release by Wing, the Hong Kong-born singer living in New Zealand whom Scott had previously flown to Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Maidstone. The album included her versions of Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face”, Justin Bieber’s “Baby”, Lana Del Rey’s “Born to Die” and “I Will Always Love You”.
Scott and Chris tried to identify each song from Wing’s distinctive delivery. “Poker Face” was dramatically slower, “Born to Die” initially sounded like the show’s “Balls of Disappointment” parody, and the final ballad took several lines to recognise. The download shop’s recommendation that Wing fans might also enjoy William Hung or Madonna seemed to cover an unusually broad musical range.
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