Valentine’s cards for two
Scott and Chris compared quiet Valentine’s weekends after deciding that restaurants and ambitious home cooking were both dangerous choices. Their television viewing included Take Me Out and Harry Hill’s version of Stars in Their Eyes, whose tone and prizes left them confused.
Cards arrived addressed to both of them, making the relationship between the show and its listeners look more established than either presenter’s private Valentine’s plans. The previous Friday’s cinema call had also become one of the most requested items of the year, particularly the moment the employee suggested Chris wait for the Fifty Shades of Grey DVD.
Escaping a sleeping passenger
Listener Rachel asked for help after taking a window seat on a train. The woman beside her fell asleep, then spread out enough to block the route to the aisle as Rachel’s stop approached.
Rachel tried tapping, moving with the train and making enough noise to wake her without direct confrontation. Nothing worked. She eventually climbed over the passenger with her legs awkwardly positioned on either side, escaped towards the door and refused to look back after leaving the train.
Scott and Chris debated whether waking somebody was ruder than scaling them. Suggestions included coughing near an ear, setting a phone alarm, shouting “Tickets, please”, using smelling salts or inviting passengers to sit beside you so enthusiastically that nobody would accept. Licking the sleeper’s face and carrying an air horn were rejected.
Chris admitted buying a prawn sandwich purely to make the neighbouring seat less attractive. He had also taken an entire Chinese meal onto a train and occupied much of a carriage, leaving him poorly placed to lecture Rachel on etiquette.
Guess the South Side Story song
Scott had become obsessed with BBC Three’s South Side Story, a structured-reality programme in which young people from south London interrupted conversations to perform chart hits. He created a game based on Homes Under the Hammer: after hearing the set-up to a scene, Chris had to predict which song would begin.
Scenes included uncertainty between friends in a club, a personal trainer commenting on a rapper’s body and preparations for a Saturday night. The song choices were sometimes obvious but the sudden shift into a complete performance remained wonderfully strange.
The game led to a practical experiment. Scott would arrange incidents in Chris’s real life and provide a list of suitable hits, forcing him to burst into song on trains, in the office or wherever the moment occurred. Unlike the programme’s cast, members of the public would not have been briefed to treat this as normal.
Real or No Real
Greg James played the Monday round as the show settled back into its afternoon routine. The facts competed with Valentine’s cards, Fifty Shades feedback and South Side singing for attention, but the strongest practical lesson was clear: waking a stranger was probably easier than climbing across them.
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