The German exchange continues
Chris returned to his German exchange for another chapter of 24 Years at the Tap End. Communication with his host family had not improved, largely because they continued speaking German to the visiting pupil who was supposedly there to learn it. His relationship with exchange partner Andreas was also deteriorating, and every school day began with a terrifying sprint across a busy autobahn rather than a walk to the distant bridge.
The group’s organised activities included a tour of an Opel factory, where Chris was reprimanded for taking photographs, and a visit to a German radio station. Invited to introduce a song, he confidently used almost all the German he knew: his name, a declaration of love and an announcement for Zayn Malik and Lulu’s “We’ve Got Tonight”. He believed the performance impressed even the German pupils.
German Karen and the flying sausage
Attention then moved to Karen with a K, the German girl Chris and his friend Paul both wanted to impress. The Mainz festival offered their opportunity, with decorated floats moving through the city and participants throwing sweets into the crowd. Chris collected as many as possible for Karen, while Paul had already made a strong early move by buying her goulash.
When Paul began throwing sweets back towards the floats and made Karen laugh, Chris looked for something more ambitious. He took one of Andreas’s sausages and launched it towards a passing float. The throw was perfectly judged: the sausage kept pace with the vehicle, looped through the air and hit a man squarely in the face.
Chris turned towards Karen expecting approval and instead received an angry German reprimand. She stopped speaking to him, including when the group later visited England, and any hope of romance disappeared. The moment nevertheless produced one unexpected success. A friend had captured the sausage in mid-air, and Chris later entered the photograph in a local newspaper competition under the idea that a symbol of German culture was being thrown back in Germany’s face. It won.
The glass-lift video
The team revisited Friday’s Comic Relief challenge after the finished video showed the full scale of Chris’s trip through Broadcasting House in his boxer shorts. Footage from several floors revealed people gathering in front of and behind the lifts, passengers stepping inside with him and camera phones following his progress throughout the building.
Chris had expected to pass through quickly with only a few people noticing. Instead, the stunt brought work to a standstill and left him facing senior managers as well as colleagues from across the BBC. His polite invitation of “after you, ladies” to fellow passengers and the phrase “standing ovation in my pants” became the most uncomfortable moments to watch back.
Loving the Trolls
Lawrence’s soothing computer voice returned to read the latest attacks on the show. One listener asked whether Scott and Chris realised their microphones were switched on, while another compared Radio 1’s music to an angry goat and complained that a two-year-old already provided enough screaming at home.
The departure of Beccy produced a demand that the “nasty boys” bring her back. Chris was also called a fool for hiding from Pixie Lott and talking about his female friends without ever confronting the pop star. He admitted that this particular criticism contained a fair point. The most elaborate complaint described the team’s “toxic faeces” spreading through the radio and noted that even the Midweek Lottery could not provide an escape because Scott appeared there too.
Does music make a phone heavier?
Chris had mocked a friend who thought a phone became heavier when more songs were loaded onto it. Listeners then pointed out that stored data did technically increase the weight of an electronic device, although only by a billionth of a billionth of a gram. Chris accepted this as confirmation that his friend had been right in principle, if not in any way a person could actually feel.
Dan and Phil play Real or No Real
Dan and Phil joined a round which began with a Detroit woman genuinely addicted to eating cat hair. McFly had not included a hidden recording of the band passing wind on the Japanese edition of Room on the Third Floor, despite everybody agreeing it sounded like something they might have done.
Scooby-Doo really was short for Scoobert Doo, to Phil’s delight, and humans genuinely had roughly the same number of body hairs as chimpanzees even though most were much shorter. Take That had not marked Comic Relief in 1994 with a sponsored walk around Wigan town centre. Scott, Dan and Phil each finished with 30 points, producing a diplomatic three-way draw.
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