Beccy helps Chris into Radio 1
The final 24 Years at the Tap End featuring Beccy combined a genuine thank-you with the usual interruptions. Chris remembered staying loosely in touch after meeting her through Scott at a pub. He was trying to build a career after student radio, and Beccy, already established in production, offered advice and helped him look for opportunities.
Chris had contributed occasional telephone material to the show when Scott called with much bigger news. Radio 1’s controller had heard some of his work and wanted him to record trial material in a studio. On the day of his first proper visit, Chris waited nervously in reception until Beccy appeared and took him downstairs. They recorded a half-hour programme which sounded like a real broadcast, then made several more pilots before Chris was given the job.
He said the most important part of the experience was feeling from the first day that he belonged to a team he liked and respected. Beccy had played a major role in his appointment and had therefore shaped the years of stories which followed. The phrase inevitably sounded like another innuendo when Chris said that she had shaped his Tap End, but the sentiment survived the interruption and left Beccy genuinely touched.
Beccy’s path through Radio 1
Chris attempted a short biography using what he had found online, then invited Beccy to correct it. Her early radio work included promotional appearances for local stations as one of the “Black Thunders”, driving to events and distributing items such as promotional meatballs. She had also briefly read the news, but abandoned that route after deciding that a formal newsreading style did not suit her.
She progressed to Radio 1 and worked with Sara Cox and Edith Bowman before spending five years as a central part of Scott’s programme. Asked to choose her favourite presenter, she demonstrated what Chris called excellent talent-management skills by publicly naming Sara while privately reassuring Scott that he was really the best.
Chris finished with the hope that Beccy would remember their shared stories whenever she sat at the tap end of a bath. He expected new projects to produce new memories even though the daily partnership was ending. For once, the farewell section reached its conclusion without a fake romance or argument replacing the sincere message underneath it.
Beccy prepares her final rap
Beccy had spent a long time learning “Gangnam Style” phonetically and planned to perform the whole song in Korean on Friday. Scott had repeatedly heard fragments as she walked around the building practising. Beccy insisted that she had learned the actual sounds rather than an improvised imitation and wanted the result tested on somebody who spoke Korean.
The rehearsal prompted a return to earlier Beccy performances, including her versions of “212” and “Wild Ones”. Their heavily accented and occasionally approximate lyrics made Scott and Chris wonder how much West Country pronunciation would enter the Korean, but Beccy said the difficulty was precisely why the final rap had to be her most ambitious.
Electric Dreams enters the modern world
Beccy was introduced to Electric Dreams and immediately recognised its unmistakably eighties theme song. Scott and Chris explained the plot, Edgar the computer and the central triangle, while Beccy questioned whether filmmakers in 1984 had genuinely imagined that people might be conducting affairs with computers by 2013.
Scott offered to buy her the film as a leaving present, preferably on VHS, before the discussion moved towards a stage remake. The basic triangle of man, woman and home computer now seemed dated, so they proposed replacing Edgar with a generic tablet, Kindle, satellite-navigation system, Bluetooth headset or dongle. A satnav already had a voice and could plausibly become jealous when its owner began dating somebody else, although the Bluetooth version created practical problems during intimate moments.
The possible musical retained “Together in Electric Dreams” while updating the machinery. It also gave the show another deliberately modest option for Beccy’s final celebration after Scott admitted that persuading Pitbull to appear on Friday was looking unlikely. A lookalike, or somebody bald from daytime television, was considered as a rapidly deteriorating substitute.
Real or No Real
The Roman emperor Spudlius had not beaten himself to death with his own sandals, but the average speed of human wind really was seven miles an hour. That fact produced more discussion about the people paid to measure it than the speed itself. Bill Gates had not received his surname because he owned many gates, while the average woman really would spend approximately a year of her life deciding what to wear.
Beccy briefly entertained the possibility that some deserts consisted of an even mixture of flour and sugar, allowing buried butter and eggs to become cake after three days. She ultimately recognised that the supposed camel-feeding method was nonsense. Chris finished with 41.2 points against Beccy’s 20.6, another result made needlessly complicated by the decision to increase each award from ten to 10.3.
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