Beccy announces her final week
Scott opened the week with the news that Friday would be Beccy’s last regular show with the team. The decision had been discussed privately for some time, particularly because listeners had already noticed that she had been appearing on fewer days. Beccy explained that she had become seriously ill, had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and had experienced frightening periods in which she could not walk properly or speak as she normally would.
Some listeners had recognised the possible symptoms after hearing her describe them during a previous breakfast show and encouraged her to see a doctor. Beccy joked that losing the ability to rap had been the most disruptive symptom, but she was clear about the real reason for moving on: she wanted to return to full-time work and needed a role which allowed her to put her own health and safety first. She was not leaving Radio 1 and would instead work on other projects elsewhere in the building.
Scott said that Beccy had been with his show for five years and admitted that the studio would feel very different without her. They would still be able to meet for lunch, and she promised Chris that her change of job did not necessarily mean the end of collecting his food. Scott left the door open for future appearances and gave Chris four days to organise a suitable farewell, although Beccy remembered that one of his previous birthday surprises had been the misjudged arrival of two dancers dressed as Chip ’n’ Dale.
Chris and Beccy at the Tap End
Chris dedicated 24 Years at the Tap End to his friendship with Beccy. He remembered first meeting her when she worked on Edith Bowman’s show and finding her confidence and eccentricity immediately intriguing. Their shared history included Beccy accidentally exposing herself during Innuendo Bingo, Chris eating sushi from her chest for a video which proved particularly popular with middle-aged men in Jersey, and countless lunches built around a mutual enthusiasm for food.
The story then returned to a night at the Edinburgh Festival. Chris remembered Beccy wearing jeans, Converse and make-up which he had failed to realise was part of a half-man, half-woman costume. After several drinks, he believed that their conversation had taken on the emotional quality of “Beauty and the Beast”. Beccy’s version was rather different: she said Chris had appeared, put his arms around her and demanded to know why she did not like him more in the office.
Scott asked whether anything had happened between them. Chris claimed he could not be completely certain, while Beccy firmly denied it and said the encounter had been misinterpreted. The disagreement became the first of the week’s deliberately awkward farewell memories, with Chris presenting their friendship as an unresolved romance and Beccy repeatedly bringing it back to reality.
Loving the Trolls
The internet’s criticism was passed through the soothing computer voice of Lawrence in Loving the Trolls. Chris’s patterned jumper was described as something belonging to his dad, while Beccy was told that a little lipstick or make-up would not hurt. She was more offended by the use of the word “lippy” than by the criticism itself and paired it with “bubbly” and “hubby” as language she could happily do without.
Another viewer said that it was nice to put a face to Beccy’s voice before concluding that she looked strange, while somebody else advised listeners never to meet their favourite radio DJs because they inevitably looked weird. Scott accepted that radio presenters rarely matched the faces listeners had imagined for them, and the team tried to work out how each of them might look if they had only ever heard the voices.
The farewell announcement also attracted much warmer messages. Listeners described Beccy as a constant presence through school and university and thanked her for the humour she had brought to the show. She clarified one badly contextualised report by explaining that an inability to rap was not a defining symptom of MS, but a joke based on her own occasional slurred speech and the programme’s long history of asking her to perform songs.
Dan and Phil begin their Radio 1 show
Dan and Phil visited after presenting their first live Sunday-night programme. They had previously made a recorded Christmas Day show, but the new series combined live radio with video and allowed the audience to contribute homemade music videos for the songs. The first edition had included callers, online interaction and the discovery of a male Justin Bieber fan, whom they regarded as sufficiently unusual to become news.
They joined Real or No Real and were initially treated as a single unit until they objected to being bundled together like Ant and Dec. The former Radio 1 DJ “Casualty” had not performed in an eighties group called My Time, but celebriphilia really was the intense desire for a romantic encounter with a celebrity. Dan and Phil, presented as representatives of the internet, correctly rejected the suggestion that the entire internet would become full by the end of 2014 unless people deleted material.
The game also considered red sweat from distressed hippos and other unlikely claims before Dan and Phil left with a giant truffle containing a USB stick. They gave the chocolate to Beccy as an early leaving present and thanked her for helping them through their first Innuendo Bingo. Their visit closed the first day of a week which would increasingly turn into a celebration of Beccy’s time on the programme.
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