Three very familiar faces arrive for Bingo
Scott spent the first part of Tuesday’s show enjoying the fact that he knew exactly who was about to walk into Innuendo Bingo while Chris did not. He would only promise that three guests were coming and that the feature would make considerably more sense if listeners watched the studio camera.
The reveal explained why. Chris opened his eyes to versions of Simon Cowell, Lady Gaga and Daniel Craig, three tribute/lookalike performers who were close enough to the originals for the sight of them together to be thoroughly unnerving. Scott committed to the fiction throughout, addressing them as though Radio 1 had somehow assembled an impossible A-list line-up for an afternoon soaking.
The clips included Len Goodman confronting a studio “covered in knobs”, cricket commentary about a new piece of wood, Julia Bradbury, Sunday Morning Live, Antiques Roadshow and the usual Dan and Phil material. “Daniel Craig” proved particularly effective at keeping a straight face, while the Gaga tribute had history with Chris from an old student event. The whole thing was less about fooling anybody than watching the ridiculous visual of three familiar celebrity faces earnestly playing the show’s wettest game.
Sue Perkins accidentally accepts a hair makeover
Scott had been watching The Great British Bake Off and found himself distracted by Sue Perkins’s hair. He tweeted that he really wanted to “do something” with it, then remembered that he now had enough followers for the person concerned to see the remark.
Sure enough, Perkins replied asking what he had in mind. Scott suddenly had to turn an impulsive comment into an actual proposal. His initial offer was essentially a wash and a brush, delivered with the confidence of somebody whose previous on-air hair experience had not necessarily qualified him to run a salon.
The exchange also led to a less glamorous hygiene dispute in the studio. Scott wanted new plastic sheets for Innuendo Bingo because the old ones smelled, while Chris pointed out that the clothes he wore for the feature were still sitting around after being repeatedly covered in other people’s water. Scott insisted that hosting the programme did not make the laundry his job.
Radio 1 learns about Eminem
Radio 1’s “Even More Music” month gave the daytime presenters a shared Track of the Day, with Eminem’s “Berzerk” getting Tuesday’s turn. Scott turned the promotion into a memory test: a listener on the street and a caller were each given 15 facts about Eminem, then asked to repeat as many as possible after 30 seconds.
The facts ranged from Marshall Mathers’s full name and age to his childhood nickname, his ambition to become a comic-book artist and his 13 Grammy wins. It was deliberately difficult, and the feature gave Scott a way to play the record without simply reading out a conventional list of artist facts.
There was also news of a much less famous new track. The show had been talking about “Vicer Dosa” and his homemade song “Lads Holiday”, which he had apparently made in his bedroom and built around a Frank Sinatra sample. Scott wanted to get the audio onto the programme the next day as his own contribution to Radio 1’s month of new music.
Charlie Sloth gets run over at four miles an hour
Alan Dedicoat arrived for Real or No Real, but the game was repeatedly derailed by Charlie Sloth’s accident outside Radio 1. Charlie revealed that a street-cleaning vehicle had driven over his foot while travelling at about four miles an hour, leaving his toes black and blue.
Scott and Chris had sympathy, up to a point. The combination of a very slow vehicle and Charlie apparently not seeing it coming was too much for them, and the studio descended into jokes about whether the cleaner had shouted “out the way, fatso” before impact. Charlie protested that he had been standing with his back to it and described the collision as coming out of nowhere.
They did eventually get through Real or No Real, including the genuine fact that the first Glastonbury Festival cost £1 and included free milk. Charlie finished the game having survived both the quiz and an afternoon in which his bruised foot generated substantially less sympathy than he had hoped.
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