Bring Sir Dosser to Work Day
The last Monday of January became the first Bring Sir Dosser to Work Day, with Chris’s friend Oli taking a day off from his own job to sit in the Radio 1 studio. It created an unusual problem for 24 Years at the Tap End: Chris had planned a chapter introducing the friends who appeared throughout his stories, but now had to describe Sir Dosser as though he were not sitting in the corner listening.
Chris ran through the wider group. Cantona was prepared to risk repeated rejection on nights out, Chazza and Chinese Dave were usually the sensible ones, and Chinese Dave preferred cultural activities and teppanyaki to an ordinary burger. Ducey had known Chris since childhood, while Rob could order a hot chocolate during a round of beers. Sir Dosser was the man behind “Bish Bash Bosh” and “Hanging in the Morning”, a rapper with a distinctive attitude to holidays and a tattoo of his own nickname on his arm.
Hot weather was Sir Dosser’s enemy. On group trips to Faliraki, Malia, Magaluf, Ayia Napa and Kavos, he refused to remain on a sun lounger and treated daytime tanning as a distraction from the night out. Chris particularly enjoyed watching him struggle to climb onto an inflatable lilo, an operation he compared to wrestling a seal. Their Watford nights often ended with the taxi money spent on kebabs, followed by a walk back to Northwood and sleep in Butler’s garage until the gardener arrived.
Madness at the exotic-dancing pub
At 18, the friends finally visited a notorious Northwood Hills pub advertising exotic dancing. About ten of them arrived together, sat awkwardly around the room and were told to put pound coins into a tin. The dancer took one of the coins to the jukebox, where Chris expected Christina Aguilera or Shakira. Instead, somebody appeared to press the wrong button and Madness’s “Driving in My Car” began.
The dancer carried on professionally, but the sight of the whole routine unfolding to Suggs proved too much for Chris. He started laughing, noticed the pub owner emerging from behind the bar and escaped before the song was halfway through. He never returned and said every later appearance by Madness, including the Diamond Jubilee and Olympic closing ceremony, took him straight back to that room.
Loving the Trolls
Lawrence’s calming computer voice returned to remove the sting from the show’s latest online abuse. One critic wanted the entire team to move to Romania after hearing about Chris’s Eurovision ambition. Another called Chris an “idiot fool” and demanded the return of Mark and Lard, despite the pair having left Radio 1 years earlier.
The feature itself became a target when somebody renamed the autobiography 24 Years at the Crap End. Innuendo Bingo was dismissed as infantile trash, a Live Lounge performance attracted a complaint about both the cover and the original song, and Chris was repeatedly described as useless. The final message impersonated him boasting about his funny friends, which Chris accepted was a fair effort. A listener then tried to troll Loving the Trolls simply by declaring that it was a feature, leaving the segment trapped in a satisfying circle.
Celebrities who do not follow each other
The show had found a quick way to check whether famous collaborators followed one another on Twitter. The results suggested that recording a huge song together did not necessarily produce an online friendship. DJ Fresh followed Rita Ora, but she did not follow him. Dappy and Brian May did not follow each other, Blue Cantrell and Sean Paul were similarly disconnected, and Mikky Ekko followed Rihanna without receiving a follow in return.
Scott also admitted to a costly weekend of breakages. The slats had collapsed on his side of the bed, forcing him to arrange a replacement, and a new toilet seat was due the following day after he broke the old one. His explanation was not that either item had been faulty, but that he was unusually clumsy and capable of breaking almost anything.
Dan and Phil play Real or No Real
Dan and Phil returned after the latest edition of their Sunday-night show, where a medical guest had challenged them to exercise with an Olympic personal trainer. Ten star jumps left Dan tasting blood. They had also produced a deliberately excessive parody video for Muse’s “Supremacy”, combining Phil’s James Bond idea with Dan’s desire to show slow-motion Pomeranians and dubstep. The finished plot involved a villain using a satellite to turn everybody into dogs, plus the uncomfortable experience of Dan filming himself in the shower.
In Real or No Real, they learned that the mummy of Ramesses II really had been issued a passport before travelling to France, with his occupation listed as king and his status as deceased. Florence and the Machine had not been used to clear bats from Leicester Town Hall, Florence Welch and Dizzee Rascal did follow one another, and Judi Dench’s grandson had not joined Bring Me the Horizon. The complicated follow-or-not-follow questions produced a diplomatic three-way tie on 20 points.
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