Demi Lovato on recovery and her fans
Demi Lovato joined Scott for a long studio interview while adjusting to the time difference from America. Scott had noticed the unusually intense affection in the messages from her fans and asked whether the bond came from being open about the difficult parts of her life. Demi agreed that speaking honestly about her experiences had allowed listeners to learn from them and had also given her a reason to stay accountable in her own recovery.
She spoke directly about eating-disorder recovery and the temptation to return to harmful habits. Her advice to somebody who recognised that they were struggling was to admit there was a problem and tell a trusted person who could help, with immediate help especially important if they felt in danger. She described happiness not as one perfect past moment but as something she continually worked towards.
Away from the serious discussion, Demi talked about reconnecting with childhood friend Selena Gomez, growing up and being homeschooled together, and the difficulty of fitting ordinary friendships around an unusually busy life. She recalled a luxurious Barbados holiday, complete with a villa, pool and chef, which naturally led Scott and Chris back to their own much less sophisticated cooking skills.
Demi also confessed that she had queued for the original iPhone and described how she settled into hotel rooms by unpacking when she was staying for long enough. Scott’s fascination with free hotel biscuits baffled her because her hotels did not tend to offer the small kettle-and-biscuit arrangement he knew.
X Factor, Simon Cowell and private jets
The American X Factor occupied a large part of Demi’s year. She was returning alongside Simon Cowell, with Kelly Rowland and Paulina Rubio joining the panel. Demi said Simon’s habit of arriving late could be annoying, particularly because his explanation was effectively just a casual “hello darling” when he finally appeared.
She thought the girls would be the most natural category for her to mentor, although she was prepared to take whatever the show gave her. Scott remained fascinated by what famous judges actually said to one another during the dead time between auditions and by the scale of the American production compared with the UK version.
The interview ended with a misunderstanding which instantly became Scott’s favourite moment. While talking about private jets, Chris wanted to know whether passengers received free “nibbles”. For a moment Demi heard “nipples” instead. Once everybody had established that he meant snacks, Demi dryly accepted that some private jets might offer the other kind too. She had received nibbles, not nipples.
Chris has to touch Wretch 32
Dan and Phil’s second Big Weekend challenge moved from verbal awkwardness to physical invasion. Chris had to interview Wretch 32 and, at some point, touch his nose. Before playing the video, the team briefly convinced Chris that Wretch’s management had complained about the stunt and wanted the interview stopped.
Phil even attempted to impersonate an angry manager on the telephone, demanding that Chris apologise and promise not to touch the noses of anybody else on the “team”. The accent and increasingly ridiculous threats eventually gave the game away, but Chris admitted he had believed the complaint at first because the original interaction had felt so uncomfortable.
In the actual interview, Chris waited nearly a minute before finding his opening. He moved towards Wretch, claimed there was something on his nose and touched it. The recovery was almost more impressive than the stunt: Chris immediately changed subject and asked about the strangest thing anybody had thrown at him. Dan and Phil had been unable to watch the moment properly at the festival because they were laughing too much.
There was no genuine fallout. Wretch recognised Chris on the flight home, they had food together and the incident was fine. The challenge therefore counted as a complete success, even if everybody agreed that a nose was far too intimate a place to touch somebody during an interview.
Jennifer Lopez’s BGT performance
Jennifer Lopez’s performance on Britain’s Got Talent had dominated the entertainment pages. Scott admired the fact that she was audibly out of breath afterwards because it proved how much dancing had gone into the number. Chris was rather more interested in the revealing stage outfit and the dramatic slide towards the camera.
Jennifer was due in the studio the following day, so Scott jokingly asked whether she could wear the same outfit for the interview. Demi watched the performance during her visit and thought Jennifer looked incredible. The discussion also supplied one of the claims when Sara Cox arrived for Real or No Real.
The suggestion that Jennifer had used an entire roll of double-sided tape to secure the outfit was false. “Textaphrenia”, the sensation of feeling or hearing a phone alert when none had occurred, was treated as real, while the claim that Jay-Z had the world’s largest collection of tandem bicycles was invented. Daniel Radcliffe really did say he liked catching up on Pointless when he got home, neatly promoting his own Radio 1 programme later that evening.
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