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17 February 2014: Lauren Goodger narrowly avoids a Radio 1 puddle

HomeShow Diary

17 February 2014: Lauren Goodger narrowly avoids a Radio 1 puddle

 

Goodbye to Sara Cox

Radio 1 was marking Sara Cox’s departure from regular presenting duties. Chris remembered her welcoming him during his earliest breakfast-show appearances, while Scott searched through older memories and found a coat associated with the 2006 Big Weekend.

There was some concern that the coat might since have entered a charity bag, but its rediscovery connected the farewell to an era of early starts, festival weekends and presenters accumulating unexplained clothing. The affection was sincere even when the archive was untidy.

A major development in puddle avoidance

A MailOnline photograph showed Lauren Goodger narrowly avoiding a puddle. Scott and Chris admired the precision of a headline that transformed walking around water into breaking celebrity news.

Chris attempted to manufacture the next instalment. He made a puddle outside Radio 1 and photographed Greg James and Fearne Cotton passing it without incident, then called a picture agency to offer the results. The agency explained that ordinary avoidance was not especially saleable. A celebrity might need to be dressed fashionably, step into the puddle or produce some other event; Fearne at least offered a recognisable possibility.

The plan therefore failed on the same detail that made the original story funny. Chris had successfully documented people walking around water, but not even a celebrity photo desk could pretend that this was automatically news.

The all-staff email crisis

BBC-wide messages became another source of drama. Someone reported three missing cereal boxes, only to discover that they had taken them home. Another employee urgently needed two coconut halves to create the sound of a horse.

Listeners supplied their own workplace examples, confirming that the larger the mailing list, the smaller the problem likely to be. Each message produced replies, apologies and more attention than the missing item could justify.

One listener also described taking a photograph of a dog to the hairdresser so that her hair colour could be matched to its coat. This sounded absurd until the show learned more about the same friend later in the week.

Harry Styles, burgers and a bat

Greg played Real or No Real. Harry Styles had not been sick in Henry Holland’s hair, but he really had brought burgers to Nick Grimshaw’s late-night show. Chris Moyles had not used a credit card to fund an all-staff shopping spree.

Scott and Greg drew twenty points each, an appropriately inconclusive result for a day on which the strongest photographic evidence showed that nobody had fallen into anything.

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