Chris reports back from Pinner
The Pinner Pantomime Evening had indeed contained no actual pantomime. Instead there were shops, costumes, mulled wine, Morris dancers and a distinctly local Christmas atmosphere. Chris’s dad Ron was there too, while Chris found himself surprisingly taken with the Morris dancing and could imagine joining in when he was older.
Even the funeral directors had embraced the evening, with balloons, drinks and a gathering inside. For Chris, the strange mixture of high-street businesses and festive activity was exactly the appeal.
The relationship transfer window opens
Scott then brought back one of the show’s seasonal institutions: the Christmas relationship transfer deadline. The premise was that somebody already planning to end a relationship should not drift into Christmas and then dump their partner in the middle of the festivities.
For 2013, the deadline was set precisely. At 3pm on Wednesday 4 December the window would shut. Anyone still in a relationship at that point was, under the show’s entirely invented rules, committed until 3pm on Monday 6 January 2014.
Scott and Chris repeatedly stressed the small print. This was a joke about accelerating a decision somebody had already made, not advice to end a functioning relationship. Dating and being officially together also had to be distinguished before the rules could apply.
Deadline Day needs rolling coverage
Once the time had been fixed, the football-transfer metaphor expanded. Scott wanted rolling coverage, rumours, correspondents in town centres, graphics and the relationship equivalent of managers being interviewed through car windows.
There would be no loans. Instead, the show’s imaginary reporters would need to establish which couples were attempting last-minute moves before the window slammed shut at 3pm. The deliberately over-serious sports presentation was becoming almost as important as the relationship rule itself.
Mrs X suddenly has a decision to make
The deadline landed at a particularly bad moment for Mrs X. Her Tinder experiment had left her with roughly six men still somewhere in the picture, ranging from new dates to people she had seen four or five times.
On one recent date she had spotted friends of another man she had been seeing in the same pub. They recognised her, waved and stared, while her current date became increasingly tactile. It made the practical difficulty of running several dating threads at once very visible.
Mrs X admitted she had a tendency to fade out conversations rather than formally end them. The Christmas deadline now forced a question: was she going to progress with one person, deliberately remain single over Christmas, or find herself buying a present for somebody she had only recently met? She had only a few days to think about it.
Chris discovers Black Friday
Chris had also just discovered Black Friday, the American post-Thanksgiving shopping day. Scott explained the basic idea of a concentrated day of discounts, while Chris compared it with the British instinct to look for Boxing Day bargains.
The timing mattered because Chris normally approached Christmas presents through a familiar gadget shop. A whole new day devoted to buying discounted gifts sounded like useful information arriving just before December.
The Perfect Christmas Single returns
Scott revived the show’s “Perfect Christmas Single” from the previous year, built from ingredients gathered from people associated with festive hits. It had been deliberately engineered to contain as many Christmas-song components as possible, right down to the word “frankincensational”.
A year later, listeners still remembered parts of it. That supported Scott’s earlier theory that a Christmas record might simply need time to become familiar. With December about to start, festive music was now ready to become a regular part of the programme again.
Real or No Real closes November
Danny Howard joined Real or No Real. Michael Fabricant’s distinctive moustache being used for a Movember-related joke was real; an Engelbert Humperdinck claim connected with Leicester was not; and a Kings of Leon story involving St Andrews golf course was real. A claim about Twitter removing blue ticks from people who were no longer famous was not.
Danny won with 40 points to Scott’s 30. November ended with the Christmas machinery fully switched on and, more urgently, a relationship transfer window due to close the following Wednesday afternoon.
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