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21 March 2007: Girls Aloud Phone Number Prank and Social Experiment

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21 March 2007: Girls Aloud Phone Number Prank and Social Experiment

 

Scott conducts a cheeky social experiment by giving out what listeners think is a Girls Aloud member’s phone number, then calls back the men who ring it posing as the band members themselves — with hilariously awkward results.

After teasing a “new celebrity phone number” in his phone book the previous day, Scott reveals the prank: the number wasn’t actually a Girls Aloud member’s at all, but a SIM card belonging to the show. The social experiment was designed to see what kind of people would call, and what they’d say if they genuinely believed they’d been given access to a famous pop star’s mobile number on air.

The calls that came in were varied and entertaining. Some callers were straightforward and honest, others tried clever chat-up lines (“You’ve met me before, but you probably don’t remember because you’re a bit drunk”), and many attempted the classic “I’ve got a new number, don’t say who you are” routine. One particularly memorable caller gave a detailed self-description — height, hair colour, build, age, and the fact he owned a car — before leaving his callback number.

Scott and the team then called several of the callers back, with Chris posing as “Sarah” from Girls Aloud. One caller insisted he didn’t know any Sarah and kept apologizing; another who’d left a message claiming to have met the caller before was confronted with confusion. The prank culminated in an increasingly absurd callback where Chris and another team member, pretending to be Girls Aloud members in their bedroom having a pillow fight, invited the bemused caller over — complete with unnecessary details about their pajamas — before hanging up.

The whole segment played on the comedy of people’s willingness to believe the show could be incompetent enough to accidentally broadcast a real celebrity’s number, and how differently men behave when they think they’re talking to a famous pop star.

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March 2007 Podcasts

39.81 MB 11926 downloads

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