Luisa Zissman arrives for Innuendo Bingo
Fresh from finishing runner-up to Leah Totton on The Apprentice, Luisa Zissman came to Radio 1 for Innuendo Bingo. She already knew the show and had come prepared with spare clothes because she had an important meeting with investors immediately afterwards.
Luisa explained that losing the final had not stopped her business plans. She had pitched for investment within hours and secured backing, leaving her free to enjoy the less conventional consolation prize of being sprayed with water on daytime radio.
She needed very little encouragement. Clips from The Apprentice, Come Dine with Me, Five Live, golf, Let’s Do Lunch, EastEnders and the ever-reliable Dick Strawbridge repeatedly caught both players. Luisa sprayed forcefully enough to complain about water reaching her eyes and finished soaked from top to bottom.
Scott thought it was one of the wettest editions they had done. The final indignity came after the cameras stopped, when Luisa rubbed her wet clothes against Scott during the group photograph and transferred a large damp patch onto him too. She then had to go and face her investors.
The royal town crier gets his facts wrong
With the royal baby now born, the programme turned to the unofficial town crier who had appeared outside the hospital and loudly announced the news to the assembled cameras. Scott had initially suspected he was part of a joke or even a stripper because he appeared to have materialised without any obvious official role.
Listeners then spotted a more serious problem: he had described the baby incorrectly in the line of succession and family tree, calling the child the Queen’s third grandchild rather than her third great-grandchild. Scott sympathised with the pressure but enjoyed the idea of somebody having one enormous public job and getting the crucial line wrong.
That led to a collection of famous live mistakes, including Barack Obama’s first presidential oath, the disputed missing article in Neil Armstrong’s moon-landing line, the confused Eurovision: Making Your Mind Up result involving Fearne Cotton and Terry Wogan, and the notorious Australia’s Next Top Model final in which the wrong winner was announced before an agonising correction.
Jonathan Agnew admits he knows Innuendo Bingo
Scott was delighted by a Test Match Special conversation in which Jonathan Agnew and Phil Tufnell discussed Radio 1 and then casually mentioned Innuendo Bingo. Agnew tried to sound as though his knowledge of the station was incidental before returning immediately to the cricket commentary.
The clip was enough for Scott to issue an invitation. If one of cricket’s best-known radio voices already knew the feature, he wanted Agnew to come in and play it. The idea sounded improbable enough to become a target for the show, and would eventually pay off in August.
Scott still cannot get Friday off
Scott continued experimenting with a technique for asking his boss for Friday off. He had been told that confident body language, particularly a decisive hand movement or bang on the desk, might help.
The real attempt did not. Scott began firmly, declared that he “will take Friday off”, was asked why he needed it and immediately lost his nerve. Within seconds he had withdrawn the request and confirmed he would be in. Chris enjoyed the contrast between Scott’s preparation and his instant surrender once challenged.
Charlie Sloth plays a royal Real or No Real
Charlie Sloth joined a royal-baby edition of Real or No Real. Prince Philip really had missed Prince Charles’s birth and was associated with playing squash at the time, while the claim that Beyoncé had arranged a personal film crew and lighting team for Blue Ivy’s birth was no real.
An absurdly long supposed royal name assembled partly from Made in Chelsea surnames was also invented. The final genuine surprise concerned golf commentator Peter Alliss, who really had reportedly weighed 14lb 11oz at birth. Scott and Charlie finished level on 20 points after spending much of the feature insulting each other, discussing Charlie’s extraordinary legal middle name and making plans for a still purely hypothetical Christmas show.
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