A week of progress produces one voicemail
At the start of the week, Scott had promised to create a World Cup song better than Pitbull and Jennifer Lopez’s “We Are One (Ole Ola)”. By Friday he had no music to play, but insisted he had been working behind the scenes. His evidence was a promising email containing a telephone number.
The first call went directly to voicemail. Scott left a deliberately vague message about the recipient’s worldwide fans and the possibility of making something massive, while Chris assumed the number was fake or belonged to a reality-show contestant. Scott ruled out Conchita Wurst, although the Eurovision winner had still not responded to the show’s invitation to play Innuendo Bingo.
The team’s neglected post provided a make-your-own Conchita kit alongside old Christmas and birthday cards, several issues of Love It! magazine and a mug made for Scott. He modelled the wig and beard and accepted that opening the mail once every three months was probably not good enough.
Calum Hood says yes
When the return call finally connected, Scott revealed Calum Hood from 5 Seconds of Summer. Calum had discussed the proposal with the rest of the band and said they were “100 per cent in”. A Liverpool supporter, he dismissed speculation about Luis Suárez leaving the club and assured Chris that his football interest was genuine.
The song would not favour England or Australia but work as a global football anthem. 5 Seconds of Summer would write, sing and play, while Scott would work out his role later and call himself the executive producer. The band were due back in Britain after the Billboard Music Awards, allowing them to arrange a recording session despite a year dominated by touring.
Listeners reacted immediately, with fans saying they had screamed at the announcement. Chris was impressed that Scott had recruited a major band but remained determined to supervise the football content and prevent the project from being described as a “soccer song”.
Chris attempts a career laugh
Scott identified “career laughing” as the small, strategic laugh employees offered when a boss made a weak joke. He considered himself highly skilled after years of practice; Chris had tried the technique in a recorded meeting and demonstrated precisely how not to do it.
Their boss asked about the Glasgow broadcast, the viral potential of Kylie and Hugh’s Innuendo Bingo and Chris’s ambitions during the World Cup. Chris inserted forced laughs in the wrong places, including after being told Scott’s chances of a pay rise were slim. One noise resembled Father Christmas and another sounded like a person who had forgotten how laughter worked.
The recording also captured Chris suggesting he should be sent to Brazil because Scott, Fearne Cotton and Nick Grimshaw knew too little about football. Scott was less offended by the criticism than by the quality of the laugh intended to protect Chris’s career.
Gary Lucy checks Simon Cowell’s criminal past
Gary Lucy played Real or No Real. At the age of 12, Simon Cowell really had hijacked a bus with a toy gun because he lacked the change to travel into Watford. The BBC iPlayer’s volume really did go up to 11 as a tribute to This Is Spinal Tap.
Glasgow Airport did not lack space for all the private jets expected during Big Weekend, despite a line-up including Calvin Harris, Tiësto and Martin Garrix. Gary was preparing to open the Friday-night stage, while Scott and Chris had somehow been booked for three DJ appearances on the main stage across the weekend.
Gary lost 30–20 but was more concerned with coordinating music so he and Scott did not duplicate one another. The show ended with three very different Innuendo Bingo videos from the week and a World Cup song that had finally moved beyond Scott’s inbox.
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