Scott discovers the speech jammer
Scott had found a new way to make Chris sound ridiculous. By feeding Chris’s own voice back through his headphones with a fraction-of-a-second delay, he could disrupt the feedback the brain normally uses while speaking. Chris could hear exactly what he had just said, only late enough to make forming the next words unexpectedly difficult.
The first test used lyrics from Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky”. Without the effect Chris sounded normal; with the delay switched on his speech immediately slowed, stretched and lurched strangely in pitch. Chris knew how he wanted to speak but could not force his voice to obey. Scott, hearing the unaffected output in the studio, found the contrast hilarious.
Naturally, reading lyrics was not enough. Scott phoned a senior Radio 1 colleague called Joe and told Chris to ask whether he could stay at his house because he had suddenly lost his flat. The speech jammer made Chris sound so peculiar that Joe stopped worrying about accommodation and asked whether he had been drinking. Chris insisted he would never drink at work and tried to blame his condition on a cold, which sounded even less convincing through the effect.
Scott then left the jammer switched on when Chris called back to apologise. The attempt became more chaotic when Zane Lowe appeared at the other end and was asked to help explain what was going on. Chris eventually decided the only solution was an email to the whole staff explaining that he had not been drunk on air.
The feature quickly acquired the possible name Jammer Time. A clip of a 1Xtra newsreader suffering a similar delayed-monitoring problem proved how destructive such a tiny timing change could be, and Scott immediately began imagining who else at Radio 1 should be made to try it.
Kesha leaves Scott an invitation
Kesha had been in with Nick Grimshaw and left Scott a message after failing to find him in the building. She told him she loved him, wanted to play Innuendo Bingo next time she visited and invited him to her Brixton Academy show on Monday.
Scott was tempted but wary. He remembered having a brilliant night with Kesha around the Brit Awards and suspected that going to her concert would not end with simply watching the show and going home. Chris thought she might be too much for him, which only made the invitation more appealing.
The breakfast show had also supplied an awkward encounter involving Harry Styles and Diana Vickers, which Scott replayed with the kind of horrified fascination reserved for conversations that become impossible to stop watching once they go wrong.
Scott discovers Sharknado
Friday also delivered a film apparently engineered specifically for Scott’s tastes: Sharknado. The premise, a tornado pulling sharks from the sea and hurling them across Los Angeles, had already caused a huge reaction during its American television premiere. Scott played the trailer and immediately wanted the UK Sci-Fi channel to bring its scheduled broadcast forward.
He and Chris began inventing sequels before they had even seen the film. Flying ants, bees, worms, fish and other creatures were combined with increasingly unsuitable natural disasters. A screenwriter called Lauren phoned to say that similarly preposterous combinations really were being discussed in the film world, which Scott treated as evidence that he and Chris might have a viable Hollywood career after all.
That fitted perfectly with Radio 1’s forthcoming movie week. With guests including Daniel Radcliffe, Nicolas Cage and Hugh Jackman due around the station, Scott wondered whether the show could use the opportunity to pitch one of its own terrible disaster-film concepts.
The invisible summer pub barrier
After a couple of sunny evenings out, Scott and Chris had noticed another peculiarly British summer ritual: pub staff repeatedly ordering drinkers to move back behind a boundary that often seemed to exist only in the staff’s heads. The restrictions made sense where pavements and roads needed to remain clear, but the pair had managed to stray over the invisible line several times without realising it.
Listeners said some venues used more obvious barriers, while one person had seen security use a whistle to summon wandering customers back into the approved area. Scott’s solution was simple: if the boundary mattered that much, draw an actual line on the ground. With reliably warm weather rare enough already, he wanted everyone to be allowed to enjoy standing outside without constantly being herded back into position.
Danny Howard confirms the beer-crate story
Danny Howard joined Real or No Real and first confirmed one of Wednesday’s claims. He really had performed a DJ set while standing on an upturned beer crate because the booth had been built so high that the audience could barely see him. Radio 1 provided a flight case for his studio appearance, instantly making him tower over Scott and Chris.
The new claims included an elaborate emergency escape chute supposedly hidden in Elton John’s Los Angeles home, which was no real. Potatoes really had been served as a sweet dish or alternative to oatcakes after their introduction to Britain, and a study really had linked needing the toilet with particular forms of decision-making and self-control. The idea that model Gemma Kenny secretly transferred high-street purchases from an H&M bag into anonymous packaging to protect her fashion credentials was invented.
Chris finished on 30 points to Danny’s 10. A request for birthday bonus points briefly improved Danny’s total, but Scott rejected the principle on the grounds that somebody had a birthday every day and the scoring system would collapse completely if that became a rule.
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