Goat or Grunt is born
Scott’s obsession with Wimbledon noises had reached its logical next step. After hearing just how animal-like some of the players sounded, he created a game in which a listener had to decide whether each noise came from a tennis player or an animal. The working title “tennis noise or animal noise” was quickly improved by listeners to Goat or Grunt.
Sophie played the first round against Chris. A fox fooled them, Maria Sharapova was mistaken for an animal, and Scott deliberately added the sound of a tennis ball to some genuine animal recordings to make the choices harder. Carlos Berlocq, Michelle Larcher de Brito and Victoria Azarenka joined deer, pigs, goats and a gibbon in a sequence which became progressively less like a conventional quiz.
Scott’s real discovery was that he could create imaginary tennis matches between any of them. A pig could rally with a gibbon, an animal could return serve from a professional player, and the sound effects were close enough for the game to become genuinely confusing. Scott won the first round 60–50, but the scoring soon mattered less than listeners requesting increasingly ridiculous combinations. He decided the idea had enough life to remain on air for the rest of “Brian Belo”.
Chris survives Jess’s birthday meal
Listeners wanted to know what had happened after the previous day’s disastrous intervention by “Fernando”. Chris reported that he had gone to Jess’s birthday meal and escaped without being slapped, although there had been an atmosphere after she heard his alleged friend complaining about somebody arranging too many birthday events.
Chris was careful to maintain that Fernando was real and that the similarities were entirely coincidental. His ability to remain diplomatic had been tested further when Jess opened presents from her friends and became emotional. After the radio discussion about excessive birthday celebrations, Chris decided that was a particularly good moment to keep his opinions to himself.
Radio 1 meets Dr Radha
Scott introduced Radio 1’s new resident doctor, Dr Radha, who was joining Aled for a refreshed version of The Surgery on Sunday nights. Scott stressed that the programme was not only for dramatic medical emergencies or traditionally “big” problems. Anything worrying a listener, from relationships and family holidays to exam stress, drinking or anxiety, could be worth discussing.
Dr Radha agreed that feeling isolated was often part of the problem. Hearing that somebody else had experienced the same concern could itself make things feel more manageable, and no issue needed to be dismissed simply because somebody feared it sounded too small.
Chris then tested her advice with several suspiciously cinematic personal problems. He described a Las Vegas stag night involving a spiked drink, a missing friend, a sudden marriage and a tiger in the bathroom. Dr Radha sensibly warned about the dangers and illegality of spiking drinks before beginning to recognise The Hangover. A holiday romance involving secret meetings, a disapproving family, a portrait “like a French girl” and a sinking ship made the Titanic source rather harder to conceal. Even so, she continued offering serious advice until the joke became impossible to miss.
Sara Cox takes on cats, Potter and the Nesbitts
Sara Cox joined Scott for Wednesday’s Real or No Real. Nina Nesbitt was not the niece of Cold Feet and The Hobbit actor James Nesbitt, disappointing Scott because he had already begun imagining their family gatherings. Daniel Radcliffe really had been allowed to stay up an extra half-hour to watch Fawlty Towers as a treat after getting the role of Harry Potter.
Sue Barker was not regularly spotted playing Swingball in her front garden with a rotating cast of celebrities, despite the claim being precisely silly enough for everyone to want it to be true. The strangest fact was marked real: the particular frequency of a cat’s purr had been associated with healing bones and tissue. Scott was quick to note that Radio 1’s actual medical team was not suggesting listeners replace doctors with cats.
Scott and Sara ended level on 20 points. More importantly, Thursday now had its own appointment: Aled would celebrate the new-look Surgery by facing Innuendo Bingo for himself.
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