Gemma Cairney returns as the queen of Bingo
Gemma Cairney returned for Innuendo Bingo with the status of one of the feature’s most dependable players. Scott had called her the queen, only to realise that Rhianna Dhillon had previously received much the same treatment. He decided not to resolve the constitutional crisis.
Gemma arrived prepared for water and somehow made a black bin liner look like deliberate avant-garde festival wear. The visual absurdity fitted the game perfectly. She and Chris worked through the latest clips while Scott celebrated having one of the feature’s regulars back after a run of celebrity and sporting guests.
Newsbeat then provided an unplanned mini-round of Bingo immediately afterwards, with an accidental phrase about being a hardcore “Larry shipper”. Scott and Chris were delighted that they had not even needed to prepare the material themselves.
Lady Gaga talks about coming back
Scott’s main interview was with Lady Gaga, speaking as “Applause” launched the ARTPOP era. Gaga said she felt better than ever after the hip injury that had forced her to cancel shows and described rehearsing every day for the VMAs and the opening night of the iTunes Festival in London.
She expected to perform six new songs at the festival and said ARTPOP contained 15 tracks. The scale of the writing process was even larger: she estimated that she had written between 70 and 100 songs with producers including DJ White Shadow, Zedd and Madeon before reducing them to the album.
For all the deliberately elaborate art language, Gaga’s description of normal life was almost aggressively ordinary. Asked about her last normal evening, she said she had lain on the sofa with her mum and dad, eaten spaghetti and watched television. She explained that time with her family gave her perspective on returning to stages filled with tens of thousands of people.
Scott enjoyed the seriousness of the conversation. Chris, listening afterwards, admitted some of the discussion about the avant-garde and the grotesque had gone a little too “blue cheese” for him. Both agreed that Gaga sounded unexpectedly normal beneath the concepts.
Why does the flying bottle always find Scott?
Scott was still complaining about being hit by a warm, wet bottle while watching Rudimental at a festival. He had temporarily asked for their music not to be played on the show because it recreated the exact sensation.
Listeners responded with their own stories of apparently magnetic bad luck: balls, bottles, people and even dolphin-related debris finding the same person in a crowd. One caller described a festival bottle splashing him in the face with liquid he very quickly realised was not beer.
Scott found comfort in discovering he was not alone, although none of the stories made him more willing to stand beneath flying festival objects in future.
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