Chris goes to the bingo
Chris had spent Sunday night at a bingo hall and returned with enormous enthusiasm and several suggested improvements. He loved the experience but was surprised by the speed of the number calling. Experienced players handled numerous cards at once while he struggled to keep up, and the traditional phrases he expected, including “legs eleven” and “two fat ladies”, had largely disappeared.
The biggest shock came whenever somebody called house. Rather than celebrating the winner, the rest of the room muttered insults and complained that the same person had won the previous week. Chris regarded bingo as the only sport in which everybody openly disliked one another and wanted a winner’s moment to feel much more important.
His proposed overhaul borrowed heavily from darts. The caller would enter through smoke with walk-on music, glamorous assistants would appear, and a successful house would trigger a huge tune and a room-wide celebration. Scott promised to pass the suggestions to somebody he knew in the bingo world, particularly because Chris was already determined to return.
Festivals at the Tap End
Chris used 24 Years at the Tap End to examine his limited festival history. Growing up, he had imagined festivals as gatherings for people wearing flowers, smoking strange things and searching for spiritual enlightenment. His friends never suggested attending one, leaving them to spend their teenage years at under-18 club nights or in a park hoping to see a girl.
His first outdoor music event was Proms in the Park in Hyde Park with two aunts and his grandmother. The picnic, Pimms, clean toilets and patriotic singing were far removed from a conventional festival. Chris made the occasion slightly less refined by wearing a T-shirt celebrating England’s recent 5–1 victory over Germany. He sensed that some people were offended, particularly when the rest of the crowd had gathered for “Land of Hope and Glory”.
Reading Festival became his first proper attempt. He went for one day rather than camping, watched the Black Keys and tried to create a mosh-pit experience by nudging himself towards a lively group. He performed the Inbetweeners dance until some girls joined him, but crowd-surfing failed because his friend could not lift him.
Chris was also alarmed by the toilets, having heard stories about portable toilets being pushed over. The open-air urinals offered very little privacy, but he decided to get involved rather than appear shy. Watching Foo Fighters perform “Best of You” finally showed him why people loved festivals, and he vowed to attend more of them and collect wristbands as badges of honour. Scott warned that keeping old wristbands on indefinitely simply looked dirty.
How quickly can a guest ask for Wi-Fi?
Scott had visited the home of a friend of a friend before a DJ booking in Sheffield. He knew few people at the birthday gathering, felt too shy to make extended small talk and wanted to use his phone, but the mobile reception was poor. The question was how long a first-time visitor should wait before asking for the Wi-Fi password.
Chris recommended going directly to the router and photographing the code before anybody noticed. Listeners suggested asking at the door, pretending they needed to show the host an essential online video, or slipping away towards the toilet before finding the router. One exceptionally organised party host had displayed the password on a sheet of paper so guests never had to ask.
Loving the Trolls
Lawrence’s computerised voice returned to soften more online abuse. Critics had told Scott he had no chance of winning Millie’s Brit Awards tickets and described him as a rabbit in headlights multiplied by a thousand. Scott could answer both messages with the result: he had won.
One original critic even sent a formal retraction after the competition, allowing Lawrence to read an apology. Another listener described the post-Brits programme as a shambles and assumed Scott had been drinking all night, although he had left shortly after ten and consumed only one drink.
Scott and Jameela Jamil’s homemade video for Labrinth and Emeli Sandé’s “Beneath Your Beautiful” generated another accusation. A viewer thought Scott was making his attraction to Jameela embarrassingly obvious. The final contribution turned the feature back on its participants by insulting the trolls themselves as small-minded people receiving no romantic attention.
Dan and Phil review the video
Dan and Phil joined Scott to discuss the music video, which had premiered on their Sunday request programme. Jameela wore multiple costumes, including her beloved chicken suit, while Scott appeared as an egg and slowly removed her layers. Dan and Phil concentrated on the prolonged eye contact and unexpected chemistry between the pair.
The video had not won the weekend DJs’ competition. Scott accepted that the winning production for Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop”, filmed inside a real charity shop, deserved its victory. Dan and Phil encouraged listeners to keep making videos for songs played during their show, having received everything from simple lip-syncs to productions polished enough for film festivals.
An Oscars edition of Real or No Real followed. The nominees’ gift bag did not include a burger meal and an exclusive Meryl Streep art book, although its real contents were still extremely expensive. Walt Disney really had presented an award which he then won himself, and sound engineer Kevin O’Connell really had accumulated 20 Oscar nominations without a victory by 2007. The story about guests fleeing a power cut at Elton John’s party for Vicky Pattison’s nearby house was no real. Scott and Dan finished level on 30 points, with Phil on ten after staying awake all night.
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