Too high maintenance for a phone call
The relationship discussion resumed with Louise, whose water-damaged mobile made the first call almost impossible. Scott persuaded her to enter a phone box and supplied enough time for her to worry about being seen using something so unfashionable in Essex.
Louise explained that her boyfriend had once booked a London hotel that she considered too cheap. She refused to stay, went to a Tube station and threatened to sleep there until he reserved the more expensive hotel she wanted. On another occasion, after he suggested a trip to Tunisia rather than Barbados for their anniversary, she took his credit card and booked the first-class honeymoon suite herself.
They had nevertheless been together for nine years. Scott suspected her boyfriend enjoyed the challenge, a theory supported by Tom, who rang specifically because he wanted a high-maintenance girlfriend. Tom enjoyed the pursuit, expensive meals and gift-buying, and had once traced a pony through its successive owners so a former girlfriend could be reunited with the horse she had owned as a child. Laid-back relationships simply failed to hold his interest.
Bamboleo gets the harvest moving
A student from Harper Adams looked ahead to the Student Tour and explained that Radio 1 had helped the young farmers through the summer harvest. Scott and Chris discussed wellies and the different conditions they might encounter at the five universities before the week’s Bamboleo.
Listeners delayed coffee breaks, played the song in trucks and used it to push themselves towards the weekend. The latest version also reused the week’s best clips, including Unlucky Gary’s honest description, Ringo Starr promising to toss his fan mail and the enormous haboob from Adele Roberts’s Innuendo Bingo.
Will and Seth go worldwide
Will had first joined the programme when Chris could not use a spare place on a stranger’s stag do. The show’s campaign then produced invitations almost every weekend, turning Will and his toy badger Seth into recurring characters.
The story had now spread through national newspapers and into coverage in America, Australia and Africa. Will estimated that he had spent at least £10,000. Hosts often covered flights and hotel rooms, but the other costs remained his responsibility.
The expense had not persuaded him to stop. More stag dos were already being arranged, including a possible trip to Monaco. Seth had developed enough independence to travel with another group without Will, while Will continued discussing the Radio 1 origins of the adventure in every interview. Scott warned him not to let worldwide fame change either him or the badger.
Packing for five universities
Scott tried to prepare Chris for the Student Tour by making a packing list. The requirements might include wellies, swimming trunks, football boots, shin pads and warmer clothes, although producers refused to explain every planned activity. Listeners added vodka, a tweed bonnet and farming equipment for Harper Adams.
The programme also revealed that Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman would play Innuendo Bingo the next day ahead of a Radio 1 and 1Xtra edition of Pointless Celebrities. Scott and Chris could only say that their own appearance had made Pointless history, leaving the result secret until transmission.
Alice Levine joined Real or No Real and insisted she was low maintenance. Her evidence immediately undermined the claim: after accusing her boyfriend of taking her missing passport to Germany, she found it but forgot to tell him, leaving him to search his belongings for another five hours.
Alice correctly identified as real both Selena Gomez’s childhood crush on Barney the Dinosaur and the Swedish title of Come Dine with Me, which translated as Half Past Seven at My Place. A claim that a pigeon had delayed One Direction’s tour bus was false, although Louis Tomlinson really was frightened of pigeons after one had entered his bathroom. Scott then prepared to attend the band’s final London concert using tickets offered by Liam Payne.
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