Pinner’s almost-pantomime
Chris was preparing for the Pinner Pantomime Evening, an event whose name promised rather more theatrical narrative than it actually contained. It was essentially the local Christmas lights and shopping evening, with businesses joining in, mulled wine available and a traditional high-street atmosphere.
Scott and Chris debated the rules for celebrity Christmas-light appearances. Chris liked the idea that the person doing the honours should have a genuine local connection, while Scott was perfectly happy for towns to import somebody more famous. Chris also remembered encountering a future X Factor contestant at the event years before, adding to his belief that the evening deserved proper attention.
Meeting The Vamps
The Vamps — Bradley Simpson, James McVey, Connor Ball and Tristan Evans — came in with new single “Wild Heart”. Scott initially needed help keeping all four names straight, while Chris had the advantage of remembering them from the Radio 1 Teen Awards.
They described “Wild Heart” as a more acoustic, folk-leaning record, complete with the kind of banjo and knee-slapping sounds that were appearing in pop at the time. The video had been filmed in Los Angeles and the single was due in January.
Four Vamps, two at a time
Four band members required some Innuendo Bingo logistics. Rather than trying another six-person line-up, The Vamps rotated through in pairs: Bradley and James took one round, then Connor and Tristan, with further swapping as the clips continued.
Michael Portillo supplied particularly dangerous material about eating a sausage from his hand. There was a gymnastics “big release”, Countryfile fossil polishing, cricket’s “enormously big handle”, Paul Hollywood offering seed and further appearances for Portillo, onion sellers and unfortunate discussions about balls.
The water exposed a practical lesson in wardrobe choice. Light-blue jeans did not hide any part of the soaking, although the band members’ pop-star hair proved impressively resilient. By the end all four Vamps had experienced the chair, just not simultaneously.
Can a pizza look like Julia Gillard?
The show then became interested in the special requests people attach to bookings and deliveries. Hotels had seen requests for pillow forts, towel animals and elaborate fruit arrangements, so Scott and Chris wondered how far a takeaway would go.
They rang a pizza shop and asked whether the pizza could be made to resemble former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard. If that was too ambitious, they wanted a happy creature drawn on the box and the delivery driver to sing a Christmas song on arrival.
The shop made a genuine effort. The pizza itself required a generous imagination to see the requested resemblance, but there was a happy spider drawn inside the box and the driver delivered his own unusual version of “Jingle Bells”. The special request had worked far better than Scott expected.
Gogglebox and Real or No Real
Scott and Chris also enthused about Gogglebox, a programme whose simple idea of watching people watch television was rapidly becoming essential viewing for them.
Greg James joined Real or No Real. A Chinese thief returning stolen contact details in handwritten form was real; an Eastbourne donkey-tax story was not; Eminem’s relationship with a dictionary was real; and a supposed instant-messaging university module was not. It closed a day in which the most improbable request — a takeaway box drawing and singing delivery driver — had actually happened.
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