Scott makes his own Wimbledon montages
Andy Murray’s Wimbledon victory had given Scott and Chris plenty to celebrate, but Scott had also come away from the television coverage obsessed with something rather less important: the montages. During gaps in play, the BBC had repeatedly cut to dramatic slow-motion sequences of things viewers had only just watched, from players hitting the ball and flexing their hands to sweatbands, facial expressions and even apparently random details around the grounds.
Scott had tracked down the music and decided there was no reason the technique should be restricted to sport. Without warning, the show suddenly dissolved into its own slow-motion-style audio montage, recycling fragments that had happened minutes earlier over the Wimbledon soundtrack. There was no particular logic to which moments qualified, which was exactly what Scott liked about it. A listener said it captured the programme perfectly, while somebody else thought it sounded like Scott’s early-morning shows.
The joke was a fitting postscript to a week in which Wimbledon, or “Brian Belo” as the programme was still calling it, had generated grunts, animal tennis and the annual men’s semis routine. The tournament was over, but its most unnecessarily dramatic production technique had made the journey back to Radio 1.
Chris reports back from Henley Regatta
Friday’s emergency shopping trip had worked. Chris had made it to Henley Regatta in the outfit Scott helped him buy and, to his surprise, felt as though he fitted in. The sunshine helped, although Chris admitted it was so nice that he could not tell whether he had enjoyed the regatta itself or simply enjoyed being outside. He had seen very little actual rowing and instead felt as if he had wandered into the opening titles of Made in Chelsea.
Scott was delighted that the clothes had passed the test, but less impressed by Chris’s improvisations after they left the shops. Despite being specifically warned about visible socks with boat shoes, Chris had worn trainer socks and received a stream of comments about them. He had also chosen a different shirt from the one they agreed on. Chris nevertheless rated the shopping experience remarkably highly, explaining that Scott had made crowded shops less stressful, asked a female shop assistant for a second opinion and even used the promise of a beer as an incentive to keep him moving.
There was one casualty of Chris’s brief new interest in fashion. A hat he had bought at the till for £7.99 had disappeared from the studio. Chris was outraged that somebody had apparently taken it, briefly casting suspicion on Robin Thicke simply because he was one of the few people Chris had seen near the area that day. Scott was mostly appalled that Chris had intended to make the hat part of his everyday look.
Dear Scott searches for Green T-shirt guy
In Dear Scott, Pearl Mackie read a message from Chantelle asking the programme to help find a man she had met at Glastonbury. She had been watching Frightened Rabbit when a tall man in a green T-shirt lifted her onto his shoulders for a couple of songs. His friend joked that he had “never felt so cool”, but the group then disappeared into the festival crowd before Chantelle could find out more about him.
She supplied a fairly elaborate description of the mystery man and hoped the show could reunite them. Chris thought this had all the ingredients of a lovely festival romance. Scott was much less convinced. To him, the fact that the man had disappeared rather than staying to exchange details might itself be the answer, and he questioned whether everybody should simply preserve it as a good Glastonbury memory rather than launch a national search.
Even so, the appeal went out. If the green-T-shirted, Frightened Rabbit-loving stranger, his distinctive group of friends or anybody who saw the encounter was listening, the programme wanted to hear from them.
Greg James begins sofa surfing with a mystery present
Greg James was travelling through Scotland on his way to T in the Park and once again relying on Radio 1 listeners to put him up for the night. His route would take him through Inverness, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow before the festival, with the identity of each host deliberately kept secret until late in the day. Greg would be blindfolded on the journey and then discover exactly what sort of evening Radio 1 had arranged for him.
Scott decided that turning up empty-handed would be rude, so he created an additional complication. Every day, Greg would be given a wrapped present to hand to his host as though he had personally chosen it. Greg was not allowed to know what was inside before the listener opened it.
The first gift was already hidden in the BBC building in Inverness. Greg found a suspiciously battered tube wrapped in unusual paper and immediately wanted to know what he was being made to give away. Scott refused to tell him, insisting it was simply a thoughtful present and definitely would not create an awkward situation. The reveal would have to wait until Greg reached his first host’s house.
Dan and Phil take on Real or No Real
Dan and Phil returned for Real or No Real, complete with Dan’s unusually spiky high-top shoes. A claim that Sweden had developed a craze for lunchtime raves was real: clubs were allowing workers to spend their lunch break dancing before the DJs stopped after an hour and everybody returned to work. Olly Murs did not have an entire room in his house dedicated to hats.
The strangest real fact concerned the nervous system in the stomach. Scott’s wording about a “mini brain” the size of a cat’s brain sounded ridiculous, but the underlying claim referred to the large number of neurons in the digestive system. A final story claiming Gerard Butler and Bradley Cooper had taken a shared Wimbledon picnic containing cucumber sandwiches, strawberries and protein shakes was no real, despite the actors having been photographed together at the final.
Dan and Phil also pointed listeners towards their latest Radio 1 video, which manufactured some extremely tenuous “beef” between Taylor Swift and Alan Titchmarsh. Phil finished the game on 10 points, while Chris took 20.
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