The mystery star is revealed
The morning after the interview, Scott finally confirmed that Chris had met Robert Downey Jr. Chris described the experience as a rollercoaster and admitted he had left Radio 1 white with nerves. He travelled to an exceptionally grand London hotel, where uniformed staff opened the car door and his T-shirt and jeans felt conspicuously informal.
On the interview floor, Susanna Reid recognised him and asked whether he was there for the junket. Before Chris could process that surprise, Disney staff called Radio 1 forward. He hit his head hard on a lampshade immediately before entering, then walked into a room filled with cameras, lights, publicists and Downey himself.
When Chris met Robert Downey Jr
Chris opened by asking Downey to excuse his nerves and explaining that his only previous celebrity interview had ended with an invitation to Nando’s. After confirming that he had enjoyed Iron Man 3, his first proper question was whether Downey was naked inside the Iron Man suit. Downey replied that it depended on the outdoor temperature.
The answer led Chris into the story of his Batman arena-show audition and his terrible American accent. Downey briefly requested a demonstration before deciding against it. Chris then praised the actor’s British accent in Sherlock Holmes and revealed that, until seeing Iron Man 3, he had assumed Downey was British and merely performing an excellent American voice.
Chris moved to dating and asked whether anybody ever rejected him. Downey said he preferred committed relationships and had therefore missed many opportunities. Chris explained that bringing Iron Man on a night out would make his entire group more successful with women. Downey said they had missed the right moment by about 20 years and should have caught him between marriages.
That imagined night out developed into one of Chris’s lads’ holidays, complete with personalised shirts carrying names such as Chango the Beast and Sir Dosser. Downey’s chosen nickname would have been “Shirley”, the name Guy Ritchie used for Sherlock Holmes, rather than Iron Man. When Downey wondered aloud why he had three names, Chris panicked and deployed his emergency question: did he enjoy coming to Britain?
Downey said he felt like an honorary Brit, had brought his wife and baby and now regarded London as an exciting international centre, unlike his memories of dreary visits and disappointing food in the 1980s. Chris attempted to ask whether the star ever escaped posh restaurants for an all-you-can-eat buffet, eventually telling him about Chango eating 25 slices in a Pizza Hut challenge. Downey preferred gluten-free pizza and countered with the more rarefied British experience of shooting at Guy Ritchie’s country estate.
As the publicist made increasingly large circles to end the interview, Chris tried to complete the invitation he had forgotten to make to Mila Kunis. He explained that he and Tony Stark shared a surname and invited Downey to a Watford match. Downey called him the number-one lad and asked not to be forgotten if his luck changed. Chris left uncertain what the final remark meant, but Scott concluded that the awkward conversation had still revealed sides of Downey which a conventional film interview might have missed.
will.i.am brings thatPOWER
will.i.am arrived impeccably dressed in a cream leather jacket, black shirt, porcelain bow tie, silver glasses and grey zippered trousers. He had lost weight but rejected the word diet, preferring to describe the change as a lifestyle which could continue indefinitely.
His single “#thatPOWER” with Justin Bieber was competing with Rudimental for number one. The hashtag was silent, a joke he compared with the silent “D” in Django. The video had demanded carefully rehearsed synchronised movement, an unfamiliar discipline after years of the Black Eyed Peas developing ideas through improvisation. His schedule had taken him from his birthday to Barcelona with Bieber, Los Angeles for choreography, Japan for filming and back to America for editing.
will.i.am compared an unfinished song leaking online with somebody publishing pictures of a bride undressed before her wedding. He carried a bag containing his musical life, including recordings made at 13. When the bag was once stolen from his car, Find My iPad led him and the police to its location.
The album included K-pop group 2NE1, whose producer Teddy and distinctive style had interested will.i.am years before “Gangnam Style”. He praised Psy’s video for forcing the song onto international radio and argued that imaginative visuals would increasingly decide which records travelled around the world.
His longest story concerned meeting James Brown at a party in 2004 and arranging a studio session two days later without having written the song. Brown conducted the musicians and ordered the saxophonist to begin with “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, not because it belonged on the finished record but because it would place him “on the one” before he improvised. will.i.am carried the lesson into later sessions, even if he did not literally make Justin Timberlake sing the nursery rhyme.
On The Voice, Tom Jones sometimes appeared to enter screensaver mode, although will.i.am compared him with Yoda: apparently still until the moment his power was required. He indicated interest in working with Tom, Kim Kardashian with Kanye West’s approval and Tulisa, but his silence over James Arthur supplied its own answer. The conversation covered clothing, technology, K-pop, James Brown, Bieber and television with the long, unpredictable detours Scott had expected.
The final breakfast Real or No Real
Katie from Pembrokeshire joined the last breakfast-time edition of Real or No Real before the feature returned to the afternoon show. Koalas and silverback gorillas were not the only animals capable of learning to drive, although a genuine video of a dog controlling a car briefly made the claim seem possible. Duncan Bannatyne had not caused trouble on Dragons’ Den by poking Davina McCall on Facebook.
A camel presented to French president François Hollande really had been eaten in a stew after an administrative error. A survey had not found that 78 per cent of DVD copies of The Wire remained unwatched, even if Scott and Chris owned several neglected box sets themselves. Chris won 20–10, while Katie admitted that learning she would appear on the show had made her cry with happiness.
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