A pocket tweet and inflation-linked points
Scott’s attempt to post from the Radio 1 account stalled after a single letter, reminding the team of Moira Stuart’s brief and confused encounter with Twitter. Her tiny archive had included an announcement that she was new to the service, the unexplained words “Fiona Bruce” and another admission that she remained confused. Scott insisted that his own isolated “B” had been a pocket tweet rather than evidence that he could not use technology.
In Dear Scott, a listener challenged the decision to raise each Real or No Real reward from ten to 12 Danny Howard points. Since inflation was only 3%, the mathematically correct total should be 10.3 points per answer, with Innuendo Bingo also increasing to 257.5 points per clip. Chris was horrified by the prospect of decimals and fractions, while Scott was amused that the listener had given his age as 19.58 years.
Names banned around the world
Another message followed up an earlier discussion about whether authorities could reject a baby’s name. Sweden had prevented parents from using Metallica, Elvis and Ikea, while New Zealand had rejected entries including a single letter, the number 89, an asterisk, Fish and Chips for twins, Detroit and Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii.
The apparent logic became harder to defend when the team learned that other New Zealand parents had successfully registered Number 16 Bus Shelter and Violence. Scott was particularly taken with Asterisk and struggled to understand why punctuation was unacceptable when a bus stop could become somebody’s legal name.
Ski instructors on snow and dry slopes
A listener asked the show to wish his friend Adam luck as he travelled to Canada for three months to qualify as a ski instructor. Scott, Chris and Beccy immediately assumed that the job involved constant romantic opportunities and invited any instructor who had failed to benefit from them to respond.
Katie from Cambridgeshire provided the necessary distinction. Instructors working in ski resorts on real snow did live up to the reputation, but her own experience of teaching on a dry slope had produced no such result. Her conclusion was simple: on snow it happened constantly, while on a dry slope it did not happen at all.
An album advert for S-Dosser
After listeners responded warmly to “Hanging in the Morning”, Scott finally made the album trailer S-Dosser had requested. The exaggerated advert combined clips from “Bish Bash Bosch”, “Drink Up” and the new single before announcing Get Rich or Try Dossing. It turned a friend’s homemade tracks into the kind of heavily promoted compilation that might genuinely be advertised on Radio 1, while retaining enough roughness to make clear that a finished album did not yet exist.
Phil Taggart and Alice Levine play Innuendo Bingo
New evening presenters Phil Taggart and Alice Levine joined Chris for a three-way Innuendo Bingo. Alice had eaten kippers for breakfast, Phil had chosen beef stew and rice for lunch, and neither decision improved conditions at close range. Alice’s opening supermarket clip concerned checking the girth to make sure something was the right size for a ring, and the first spray of water confirmed that all three were committed.
Phil’s fringe was hit during a reference to Raymondo getting out his triangle, while Countryfile warned somebody not to stand too close in case they were blown off. A discussion of how everybody now ate out, an artist still knocking them out on his deathbed and a hopeful diner looking for a squirter kept the studio soaked. One of the most sustained clips came from River Monsters, where a concrete pipe had only a tiny gap for entering and Dylan was expected to put both legs into the hole.
Kirstie Allsopp advised viewers to use one or two pins depending on the weight of a ball, and Undercover Boss Australia produced a declaration about sharing a love of bush. By then Alice’s supposedly waterproof mascara had run dramatically down her face, giving the cameras one of the feature’s clearest visual casualties. The final clips included an invitation to sit down and have a nosh before another repeat of the hopeful squirter, leaving Phil and Alice several hours to dry out before their own programme.
Delicacies instead of compensation
An airline apologised for a serious delay by offering Scott a selection of delicacies from its home country rather than a partial refund. He chose the food without knowing exactly what would arrive and hoped for sausage and cheese. Beccy suspected it might resemble a Bush Tucker Trial, but Scott preferred the personal apology and began imagining faulty televisions being compensated with local cheese instead of replacement equipment.
Real or No Real
Chris played alone under the inflation-linked scoring system. Hypnosis could work on vegetarians, although his flatmate’s vegetarian girlfriend had previously failed to be hypnotised. The Brazilian city Não-Me-Toque really did have a name which translated as “don’t touch me”, and the dot above a lowercase i or j was called a tittle.
The original meaning of “geek” really did refer to a circus performer who bit the heads from live chickens, while venustraphobia was the fear of beautiful women. Scott and Chris admitted that they could find extremely attractive women intimidating, with Chris sometimes putting on his DJ headphones to escape a difficult conversation. Four correct answers at 10.3 points left him with a fittingly awkward total of 41.2.
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