England can still survive, technically
England’s defeat by Uruguay had made elimination likely, but Chris arrived with a route through the group. Italy needed to beat Costa Rica and Uruguay, after which England had to defeat Costa Rica by enough goals. He presented the sequence as simple, while Scott heard a plan dependent on almost everything going right.
To support Italy, Scott searched for suitable party music. Eiffel 65 qualified as Italian, a fact he had not known, but “Blue” did not produce quite the atmosphere he wanted. Andrea Bocelli was authentically Italian but even less useful for a football rally.
One street, two very different answers
Stupid Streets became a social experiment. Chris and producer Amy would separately make the same unreasonable requests to male strangers and compare the answers. Chris asked for a back massage, permission to sit on somebody, a foot massage and somebody to blow in his face while he took a Beyoncé-style selfie. Every man refused.
One respondent suggested that Chris use a dustbin or the exhaust from a Tube train instead. The rejection was comprehensive enough to establish the control side of the experiment.
Amy then received agreement after agreement. Men allowed her to sit on their backs, massage her feet and blow into her face for the photograph. One used the encounter to ask for her phone number, at which point she escaped. The show named the behaviour “flanta” — flirty banter — and concluded that the questions had never been the decisive variable.
Scott’s following list requires an audit
Chris inspected the accounts Scott followed on Twitter. Joanne Beckham was a possible route to David. Islington Council had been followed during a dispute about bins, the Ministry of Waxing after some personal grooming, IKEA because of a bed problem and an airline because of a complaint.
Scott followed only the members of The Wanted who followed him back, but all of Lawson to avoid awkwardness. Other unexplained or highly specific choices included Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed, Mob Wives personalities Big Ang and Renee Graziano, Legoland Windsor, Lisa Scott-Lee and Aaron Renfree.
The most elaborate connection was Finnish radio presenter Jan Grönroos, partner of 2013 Eurovision entrant Krista Siegfrids. Paul the Octopus, who had predicted football results, could no longer be explained at all. The list revealed a mixture of complaints, celebrity proximity, Eurovision research and accounts followed in a moment that Scott had since forgotten.
Meeting almost David Beckham
Scott had met a David Beckham lookalike at a party and assessed how the resemblance changed as both men aged. The encounter was close enough to be entertaining but not enough to justify the lengths represented by Joanne Beckham’s place on his follow list.
Dev finds a football war
Dev played Real or No Real. Ariana Grande did not explain her surname by saying “Grande, like a mocha”. The BBC really had launched Holiday 69, followed by annual editions such as Holiday 70.
A Facebook outage had not caused a surge in coffee consumption, but electricity demand really had increased at half-time during England’s game. El Salvador and Honduras really did fight a brief war in 1969 after tensions intensified around World Cup qualifiers. Scott won 20–10, although the day’s least plausible story remained England’s route to the next round.
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