Danny O’Donoghue gets soaked before The Voice semi-final
With The Voice semi-final approaching, Danny O’Donoghue brought Team Danny contestants Karl Michael and Andrea Begley into Radio 1. Both were excited simply to be there, while Danny already looked like the proud coach viewers knew from television. He admitted he became so involved during their performances that he would stand at the side singing along like an overenthusiastic parent.
Karl and Andrea were given safe positions near the wall while Danny faced Chris in his first Innuendo Bingo. Scott encouraged both players to fill their cheeks properly and avoid using their hands to stop any escaping water. Danny needed little encouragement. The opening clips from Hayley Williams and the sports desk started the spraying quickly, and his glasses soon became so wet that they had to come off.
There was plenty of material from The Voice itself, including Danny giving very thorough feedback and Tom Jones describing all the areas he could explore with a contestant. Gregg Wallace insisted that something needed more filling and had to be wet, a Crimewatch Roadshow discussion of a police horse revived one of the week’s favourites, and Test Match Special admired an unusually large handle. Dale Winton, BBC Radio 4, Helicopter Rescue and the now-familiar climb up Lord Hereford’s Knob completed an especially wet game. Karl and Andrea spent much of it laughing safely from the edge of the splash zone.
Jessie J becomes Auntie Jessie
Jessie J arrived later and immediately revealed how seriously she was taking her role on The Voice. She had been cooking for her contestants because catering around a live television show could be difficult, making large quantities of chicken curry and rice and talking enthusiastically about the next meals she could bring. Scott decided she had effectively become Auntie Jessie.
That care extended beyond food. Jessie said she made sure her acts had eaten, warmed up properly and were prepared mentally as well as physically. Ash Morgan in particular had impressed Chris, and Jessie explained that part of her job was teaching somebody with that much ability to recognise it without becoming overconfident. She did not believe in simply telling performers that everything was wonderful; there was always something constructive they could improve.
She also warned them about the demands that came with being recognised. Stopping for fans mattered, but an artist could not make everybody happy if doing so meant arriving late for interviews, performances or other commitments. Jessie knew how tightly her own days could be divided into small diary slots. She was also bemused by fake social-media accounts, especially when other artists contacted her about messages supposedly sent by accounts which were not hers.
Wild, short hair and a deliberately distracting game
Jessie’s shaved head was beginning to grow out after the charity shave, but she was enjoying keeping it short for the moment. A discussion of possible styles somehow produced the phrase “pixie crop” in increasingly mangled forms, while Scott reminded her that she had successfully made an enormous change to her appearance while raising money in the process.
Her new single “Wild”, featuring Big Sean and Dizzee Rascal, represented a more grown-up direction. Jessie said the video had come together at remarkable speed, with the song still being finished at 2am before filming began a few hours later. She wanted the next album to be rounded enough to contain club records, love songs and songs people could eventually use at weddings rather than staying in one narrow lane.
Scott then introduced a new game. Jessie simply had to finish familiar lyrics, but the studio would attempt to distract her. Straight answers to Carly Rae Jepsen, PSY and other songs quickly became harder as a head massager appeared, contortionists twisted themselves around her, somebody touched her chest and strong-smelling fish products arrived. Jessie stayed surprisingly focused, even while laughing at the increasingly dreamlike scene around her. Scott had promised she would neither get wet nor be harmed, and technically he had kept his word.
Huw Stephens tries to recover some Real or No Real points
Huw Stephens joined Scott for Real or No Real. The final man to walk on the Moon really had scratched his daughter’s initials into the lunar surface, where the lack of weather meant they could remain for an extraordinary length of time. Michaela Strachan was not volunteering with St John Ambulance while filming Springwatch, despite the claim sounding perfectly suited to her outdoors image.
The Italian name for the @ symbol really does use the word chiocciola, meaning snail, because of the shape. That fact prompted Scott to complain that the English “at sign” sounded spectacularly unimaginative by comparison. A final story claiming Mumford & Sons songs had been rearranged into a hymn book for British schools was false.
Scott finished with 30 points while Huw failed to score, an unusually brutal result. By then the programme had moved from Danny O’Donoghue firing water across the studio to Jessie J calmly completing lyrics with contortionists wrapped around her, which made a conventional quiz feel almost restrained.
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