Chris swaps football for Andrea Bocelli
Chris worried that his friends would think he had changed after leaving a football match at half-time to attend an Andrea Bocelli concert at the Roundhouse. He approached the venue as if he were seeing The Streets, arriving with drinks and wanting to push towards the front, but discovered that the audience did not welcome the same behaviour.
He then spent the night in the hostel next to Radio 1 to avoid a long journey before breakfast. A noisy roommate talked throughout his sleep, while Chris’s top bunk made the early-morning descent especially difficult. The arrangement succeeded only in the narrow sense that he reached work on time.
Caroline Flack plays spoons on Chris
Caroline Flack joined Scott to discuss The Xtra Factor. She explained that filming had reached the stage where the finalists were known, although she carefully avoided revealing their identities. Judges’ houses had taken the production to Dubai, Las Vegas, Saint Lucia and the English countryside, and Olly Murs was due to return for the live shows after Caroline handled the auditions alone.
Caroline also described seeing a shadow cross a mirror while searching for a toilet in a cold room at Gary Barlow’s judges’ house. The story had grown into reports that a ghost touched her bottom, although she said the encounter had not been quite that forward. Scott recalled taking part in ghost-hunting programmes where hours of waiting produced no actual apparition.
Photographs of Caroline’s bruised thighs led to the revelation that she entertained people at house parties by playing the spoons on her legs. With her own thighs too sore, she demonstrated the technique on Chris’s unbruised arm. The spoons produced a convincing rhythm and added another bruise-related performance to the week.
Georgie Twigg and British asparagus
Olympic hockey bronze medallist Georgie Twigg brought her medal into the studio. Scott thanked her for the summer’s success and said even people who knew little about sport had become invested in the Games. Georgie was proud to have taken part but admitted feeling sad that the experience had ended.
Her other distinction was being the face of British asparagus. The show replayed a promotional recording in which Georgie explained that asparagus formed part of her balanced training diet. She had done it as a favour for a family friend, never expecting the clip to become widely shared.
Rachel Stevens’s educational vegetable songs were offered as evidence that Georgie was not alone in celebrity produce promotion. Chris, still seeking his own role in the industry, continued to favour becoming the face of British plums.
Georgie Twigg plays Innuendo Bingo
Georgie warned that she laughed at almost everything, making a wet game likely. A Great North Run reporter hoping somebody would “get my ring” broke her immediately, before a radio discussion of what somebody did with a hockey stick brought the sport directly into the feature.
The Great British Bake Off asked for a pie to be brought up for inspection, an antiques negotiation repeatedly offered a toss and an old television theme promised that an unexpected hit could arrive between the eyes. Rugby commentary then referred to a big drill going down the channel.
A fishing programme said it was not long before a rod began twitching, Andrew Lloyd Webber introduced “my big but”, and Dev described somebody as having fingers in several pies. By the final Jamie Oliver clip about getting in through the back door, Georgie’s trousers and hair were soaked. She left having fully met the show’s prediction that this would be a particularly wet game.
Real or No Real with Caroline Flack
Caroline joined Real or No Real and learned that Elton John had legally adopted Hercules as a middle name. A supposed world-record chain of 16,632 yawns lasting four days was false, as was the claim that onions made people cry by forcing the brain to imagine drowning kittens.
A snail really could sleep for three years. The round continued the show’s attempt to turn unlikely facts into material listeners could repeat in pubs, while Scott warned that people needed to remember which claims had been exposed as inventions.
Foam defeats Chris at a nightclub
The day’s classic 24 Years at the Tap End chapter followed teenage Chris and Dugsy into a Watford nightclub where Blazin’ Squad were performing. Their attempt to dance with the same woman created a difficult three-person arrangement before foam began pouring onto the dance floor.
Chris panicked as it rose around him and thrashed his arms in an attempt to escape. Security staff interpreted the movement as fighting and removed him from the club, with Dugsy following. Outside, rows of waiting fathers watched Chris being escorted away.
Rather than admit he had been frightened by foam, Chris told girls that he had been thrown out for fighting. He treated the evening as a lesson not to buy drinks for women without speaking to them first, and remembered David Hasselhoff’s more direct tactic of sending his unfinished steak to a nearby table.
The Pet Shop Boys Show netball team
Two of Chris’s friends had lost their first netball match 21–2. He sent motivational emails, appointed himself chairman and suggested that Scott should fund a new kit carrying the name “The Pet Shop Boys Show”. Chris believed the branding would intimidate opponents and give him the authority to tell the players what to do.
The women did not respond warmly to being described as potentially the worst netball team in the world. Scott also heard from a 15-year-old whose team had once lost 95–0, a result so overwhelming that their opponents began high-fiving after every goal. Chris nevertheless wanted his friends ready for their next fixture the following Tuesday.
Samantha Cameron’s surprising playlist
The programme’s morning news included the birth of Robbie Williams’s daughter, Hugh Laurie leaving his own film premiere when the screening began late and a report that Leonardo DiCaprio disliked filming in water despite being a certified scuba diver.
The most arresting claim was that Samantha Cameron enjoyed Azealia Banks’s “212”. Scott imagined the explicit song playing around 10 Downing Street during visits from Angela Merkel and Silvio Berlusconi, and hoped that any official playlist used the radio edit.
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