B-Traits plays Innuendo Bingo
B-Traits arrived in protective clothing and became the latest Radio 1 DJ to submit herself to Innuendo Bingo. Scott liked the fact that specialist presenters were now willing to join a game which had started with much more familiar faces, while Chris treated his twice-weekly soaking as routine enough to call himself a veteran.
The clips ranged across BBC radio and television. A business owner revealed that customers could see her “great tits” through a webcam in a bird box, Michel Roux Jr told a protégé to grasp what he had put on a plate and Springwatch returned to cameras on great tits. Helicopter rescue featured somebody being winched for the first time, and one of B-Traits’s own broadcasts supplied her disappointment at seeing Canadian wildlife with “no beavers”.
Clare Balding admired the way a big shape passed through a little hole, Bargain Hunt discussed keeping a rug tidy and Town with Nicholas Crane introduced the team to a stone called clunch. Dick Strawbridge’s need to whip his beef out returned from Lucy Spraggan’s game, while an unfortunate This Morning comment and a final set of clips left both players thoroughly wet.
There was little time to recover. Jennifer Lopez was already on her way, leaving Chris anxiously changing clothes, adding too much fragrance and debating whether the studio chair needed an extra cushion.
Jennifer Lopez answers the BGT criticism
Scott opened with the performance he had been watching repeatedly. Jennifer Lopez’s appearance on Britain’s Got Talent had generated newspaper complaints about the revealing bodysuit, but Jennifer saw it as normal stage clothing. She pointed out that she was an experienced dancer who understood how to prevent wardrobe problems and would never deliberately take the sort of risk being suggested.
The outfit also had a practical purpose. Rehearsals and floor slides had hurt her knees, so its tall boots allowed her to hide a small knee pad. She had worn a similar look at the Billboard Music Awards without comparable fuss and thought people sometimes simply needed something to talk about. The positive reaction to the actual performance, she said, had been much larger than the controversy suggested.
Jennifer explained that the breathlessness Scott had noticed immediately afterwards was real. Three and a half minutes of singing and dancing created an adrenaline rush which did not disappear the moment the music stopped. She treated performance preparation like an athlete preparing for an event, tightening her diet and increasing cardio work before a run of shows, then rewarding herself afterwards with foods such as pizza.
Live It Up, Pitbull and old hits
“Live It Up” had originally arrived under a different title, “Give It Up”, but Jennifer did not want to sing the original idea. She liked the track enough to rework the words into something more celebratory, fitting the theme of enjoying life and moving forward after the message of “Dance Again”. Scott particularly appreciated the return of a disco whistle and Pitbull’s simple “Jenny from the block, let’s rock” contribution.
Jennifer said Pitbull was genuinely the person his records suggested: focused and professional when working, but also somebody who enjoyed clubs, drinks and music. She called him Armando when she particularly wanted his attention, otherwise usually “Pit”. His immaculate suits were not simply a stage costume.
Looking back across her own catalogue, she admitted “If You Had My Love” had once become difficult to enjoy because she had performed it so many times. A stripped-back arrangement had revived it for her. A less obvious favourite to perform was “Hold It Don’t Drop It”, whose funkier feel let her channel some Tina Turner energy onstage.
She also discussed producing The Fosters, a drama about a family led by two mothers with biological, adopted and foster children. Jennifer saw television as a reflection of the world and liked the show’s argument that people could build families through love and acceptance as well as the ones they were born into.
Jennifer Lopez still goes to the supermarket
Scott finished with questions designed to discover which ordinary tasks still existed in Jennifer’s life. She had not done her own laundry for a very long time and saw little reason to do it if somebody else could. She had recently taken a private jet from Los Angeles, although its seats were converted into a bed rather than it containing a separate bedroom, and she had called a plumber not long before because of leaking pipes.
Cleaning was different. Jennifer described herself as a “straightener”, somebody who disliked dishes and clutter being left around and would instinctively tidy things herself. She also still went to a supermarket near home because her son Max loved the trip. Her daughter preferred shopping of a different sort.
Chris admitted he sometimes started eating food while walking around a supermarket before paying for it, which Scott found horrifying. Jennifer understood the temptation but did not share the habit. She also knew the strange experience of being asked by strangers whether anybody had ever told her she looked like Jennifer Lopez. Sometimes she suspected they knew perfectly well who she was and were simply choosing a less direct approach.
The Vaccines and Olly Murs endure Chris’s challenges
Dan and Phil brought two more Big Weekend videos. The first challenged Chris to fit as many diseases as possible into an interview with The Vaccines. The band’s name gave him the excuse, but the execution still required extraordinary nerve. After hearing that somebody had once thrown a dog onstage, Chris worked in measles, salmonella, chlamydia, flu and finally a question about whether Kendrick Lamar might have chickenpox.
The Vaccines never openly identified the game. To Scott’s amazement, they simply treated Chris as an interviewer with an unusually intense interest in contagious illness. Dan and Phil counted it as one of his strongest performances of the weekend.
They therefore made the Olly Murs challenge deliberately harder. Chris had to create the longest possible silence after Olly answered a question. He asked about objects being thrown onstage, listened to Olly’s answer and then simply stopped speaking. Around 17 seconds passed as Olly, Chris and the surrounding crew waited for somebody to rescue the conversation. Chris finally admitted the challenge and ended the interview.
After meowing at Conor Maynard, touching Wretch 32’s nose and interrogating The Vaccines about diseases, doing nothing at all had somehow produced the most uncomfortable clip yet.
Hanson’s beer on Real or No Real
Greg James arrived after a day in which Jennifer Lopez and Alicia Keys had briefly been in Radio 1’s green room at the same time, a level of celebrity traffic which left him delighted by the building. He then joined Scott for Real or No Real.
Noel Edmonds had not taken out a full-page newspaper advert simply to thank celebrities for attending his birthday, however perfectly the story seemed to fit. Wagner had not boycotted a supermarket because staff refused to let 11 items through a ten-items-or-fewer checkout.
The more unlikely-sounding music facts were genuine. Australian radio presenter Zan Rowe really existed, giving Scott an irresistible comparison with Zane Lowe, and Hanson really were launching their own beer, named Mmmhops. It brought an exceptionally busy show back down to the kind of ridiculous fact with which Real or No Real worked best.
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