Everybody is ill
Chris called in sick, while Alan Shearer was also unavailable for his usual Wednesday chart update. A stream of listeners reported being sent home from work or listening from bed, leaving Scott to conduct the programme alone.
The previous day’s Danny Howard Innuendo Bingo provided material for “In for Grimmy This Week on Breakfast Wednesday”. Listeners requested the Gary Lucy lasers, Alan Dedicoat’s Birmingham montage and Ola Jordan saying somebody had “massive mouth”.
Studying the Scott Mills language
Lucy was using the programme for her A-level English language investigation. She had abandoned a project about the Scottish referendum and begun transcribing five January podcasts to examine the show’s relationship with its audience.
Her main finding was that Scott and Chris used several features traditionally associated with feminine language. They overlapped each other, placed expressive emphasis on individual words, changed pitch frequently and filled pauses rather than speaking in a flat, conventionally masculine style.
Scott wondered whether discussing Dial-a-Carol and matchmaking on trains made masculine delivery impossible. He tried to identify Radio 1’s most masculine programme, then noted that Alan Dedicoat at least brought some deeper authority into Real or No Real.
Lucy promised to send the finished work and report her mark. Scott wrote down “be more masculine” and “be more butch”, although his delivery immediately contradicted both instructions.
Other listeners revealed that they had also studied the show at school, adopted “off of” in ordinary conversation or learned about Scott’s route into radio for GCSE English.
A difficult Bumblello
The weekly Bumblello became a listener-request show in miniature. Scott inserted “Yas” from the Lady Gaga fan, “It’s just a potato, darling”, the bodybuilder’s fish-and-rice-cake diet and older clips from the programme.
A listener preparing his summer body blamed the show for making fish and rice cakes impossible to hear normally. Scott replayed the bodybuilder who had once eaten so much fish that he claimed to smell of it, before later replacing the regime with crisps and chocolate.
Alice Levine becomes more masculine
Alice Levine, addressed as Barbara Windsor, joined Real or No Real and attempted to make her delivery more masculine for Lucy’s benefit.
Sue Barker did not win an annual all-you-can-eat Chinese contest after filming A Question of Sport. Vin Diesel really taught Dame Judi Dench to play Dungeons & Dragons while they made The Chronicles of Riddick.
A Lithuanian tradition genuinely involved buying a live carp and keeping it in the bath before eating it at Christmas. Christina Aguilera also bought the Osbournes’ Gothic Los Angeles mansion and redecorated its dark interior.
Alice finished by calling Scott “fella” and “old mucker”. Neither could sustain the more masculine language for long.
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