The phone call every fresher’s parent fears
With students making their first calls home, Scott revived an old idea: find a fresher with a parent willing to worry and make the conversation go catastrophically wrong using sound effects.
This time the student was George, newly at university in London, and the parent was his dad Nick at home in Windsor. George said university was actually going well, he had made friends and settled in. The prank would suggest the opposite.
Scott would play noises without warning while George tried to fit them into the conversation. The important plot point was that George had supposedly been given a week’s notice and might therefore have to move back home.
Nick absolutely does not want him back
The call started with normal discussion of lectures before party noises, chaos and animals appeared in George’s background. George improvised wildly, claiming there was a gathering in the flat while attempting to steer towards his supposed housing disaster.
Nick was far less interested in the improbable noises than in the idea his son might return home. His reaction was immediate enough to make Scott nervous: whatever had happened at university, moving back was not the preferred solution.
Scott stopped the joke and called him back quickly. George admitted he had been working with Radio 1 and Scott apologised before Nick could get properly angry. To Scott’s relief, Nick took the explanation well. He was mostly pleased that his son was not actually coming home.
The whole thing inverted the usual worried-parent Freshers story. George’s dad trusted him to get on with university; what truly alarmed him was the possibility of the nest suddenly refilling.
Unlucky Gary and food done three ways
Unlucky Gary checked back in with a plan to try a pizza with burgers built into the crust. That prompted an argument about the escalating arms race of stuffed-crust food and whether pizza had reached the point where manufacturers should simply leave it alone.
Scott had another restaurant complaint: dishes being advertised as an ingredient “three ways”. Beef three ways, chicken three ways and similar menu language struck him as an excuse to make dinner sound more elaborate and charge more for it. He wanted one good version of the food, cooked once.
Listeners naturally began suggesting people who could be served “three ways”, while the studio remembered an even more baffling menu item encountered by a colleague: “chicken under a brick”.
There was also discussion of unlikely Freshers bookings, including Duncan Bannatyne appearing at a student event. By this stage September had taught Scott that almost anybody could apparently become part of university welcome week.
Gary Lucy on Real or No Real
Gary Lucy arrived for Real or No Real, slightly sweaty from running to the studio. The round included the genuine story that Eminem missed the Oscars ceremony when “Lose Yourself” won because he did not expect to win, plus questions about Justin Timberlake, Avicii and Kings of Leon.
Avicii really did label his computers with “Tim Bergling”, a habit that helped one stolen machine return to him after a repairer recognised the name. It was exactly the kind of practical celebrity detail that made the game’s real facts harder to distinguish from the invented ones.
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