McFly return to Radio 1
McFly arrived in matching white shirts and red ties, bringing Scott a copy of their autobiography with personal messages inside. An old photograph from a Radio 1 event in Brighton showed Harry Judd and Dougie Poynter beside a round-faced Scott, with another presenter appearing behind them. For Halloween, the programme’s online version replaced that presenter’s face with a pumpkin.
The band congratulated Tom Fletcher on receiving a Spectacle Wearer of the Year award. Tom thought it slightly strange to be rewarded for poor eyesight, although the award promoted a positive message to children bullied for wearing glasses. The conversation moved to the trophies the band had collected, some of which had deteriorated. Their Brit Awards were beginning to rust and fall apart, while Dougie had not been allowed to keep the full jungle set after winning I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!.
Scott lamented the end of Radio 1’s long-running McFly Day, which the band said had affected their PRS payments. Their new single Love Is Easy prompted enthusiastic messages from listeners around the world, and the group discussed their forthcoming tour. Their rehearsals always began with good intentions but tended to start late and finish early because they already knew the songs.
The energetic performances left most of them with “rock neck” after throwing their heads around for an hour and 45 minutes. Harry said he prepared physically and avoided the worst of it because he was seated behind the drums, while the others pointed out that he merely suffered “drum neck” instead.
Chris versus the Halloween ghost
The Halloween edition of 24 Years at the Tap End returned to Chris’s first year at Southampton University. His halls bar was holding a party before buses took everybody into the city centre. Chris kept his costume cheap and conventional, choosing a red cape, horns, tail and plastic devil’s pitchfork.
The halls bar had been covered in cobwebs and decorations, although its smoke machine repeatedly triggered the fire alarms and sent everybody outside. The interruption did not spoil the party, and the students eventually continued to a club called Ikon. Chris found the venue hot, crowded and full of people in fancy dress. He was not a confident dancer, but discovered that holding the pitchfork gave him something to do with his hands.
A group nearby repeatedly pushed into Chris and his friends. He initially ignored them, but the arrival of the Ghostbusters theme changed his mood. It was one of his favourite songs, and the fact that his antagonist was dressed as a ghost made Chris feel obliged to act. Without a proton pack, he used the only ghost-fighting equipment available and prodded the man hard with the pitchfork.
The man’s friend joined the confrontation and a pushing match followed. Security grabbed Chris, removed him from the club and told him that he was banned. They also confiscated his pitchfork. He walked back to halls alone with cheesy chips and his devil’s tail in his hand, only to realise during the reading that the expression he wanted was “tail between his legs”.
Chris later returned to the same club disguised as a sheep, reasoning that staff would not recognise the former devil beneath a black top covered with cotton wool. Scott was less convinced that changing costumes amounted to going incognito.
Is Scott getting a parrot for Christmas?
Scott’s flatmate had warned him that somebody might be giving him a live parrot for Christmas. The information was not certain, but the clues said the present was exotic, arrived in a cage and could talk. Scott could not understand why anybody familiar with his home would choose such a demanding gift.
Chris and Beccy thought the bird would be ideal entertainment and could repeat Scott’s most familiar sayings. It could also operate as a private detective, memorising suspicious telephone conversations and exposing secret meetings. Scott remained horrified by the prospect, although he admitted that the mysterious gift might instead be a Dreamboy dancer, which he considered preferable.
I Have Never with McFly
McFly joined Scott, Chris and Beccy for I Have Never, with pickled onions as the penalty for anybody who had done the thing being discussed. The opening claim concerned being naked in public, and most of the band had stories. Dougie had swum naked in shark-infested Australian water, while his bandmates had stripped him and put him in a shower when he was ill. Chris had once run naked to a Subway restaurant at university simply because it seemed funny at the time.
The conversation became more awkward when Chris said he had never kissed a celebrity. Several members of McFly had kissed one another, while Harry nominated his fiancée Izzy Johnston, who had appeared on Britain’s Got Talent. Scott encouraged discussion of Harry’s much-publicised earlier kiss with Lindsay Lohan, which Harry said had taught him something about good kissing.
Scott was then challenged to reveal his own celebrity encounters. He reluctantly mentioned a swimmer and a former talent-show contestant, along with a stage kiss at G-A-Y that became more enthusiastic than he expected. The band steered the conversation towards One Direction’s new song Little Things before Scott could be pressed any further.
Beccy discovers an hour of organ music
Beccy’s Show and Tell came from Radio 2. She had left the station playing when one presenter handed over to a man named Nigel and almost switched it off, only to hear an hour of cheerful organ music. The sound reminded her of Barry Morgan and his World of Organs, one of the team’s favourite performers from their Edinburgh run.
Scott played some of the programme and enjoyed the unexpectedly upbeat arrangements. He struggled to imagine Radio 1 accommodating an hour of organ versions of familiar tunes, although the others suggested that the schedule might yet have room for it.
McFly play Real or No Real
McFly divided into two teams for Real or No Real, with Harry and Danny against Tom and Dougie. The real facts said that the word “nook” once meant any place of pleasure and that seven people died in the London Beer Flood of 1814 after more than 300,000 gallons escaped from a brewery.
Sweden did not give Rotherham a yearly Christmas tree to apologise for ABBA, the Romans had not catapulted townspeople across the Thames before London Bridge was built, and Keith Chegwin was not voted the 18th most influential man in the United States in 1992. Harry and Danny won by 30 points to 20, although much of their reasoning had been distracted by the wording of the supposed Roman bridge fact.
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