The podcast gets somebody into university
Listener Lucy had prepared for a Cardiff University dentistry interview by listening to an old Scott Mills podcast. The programme discussed the puzzle asking how to put a giraffe and then an elephant into a fridge.
The next day, Lucy received the same question in her interview. She explained that the giraffe went in after opening the door, then had to be removed before the elephant could be placed inside. She was offered a university place and credited the archive with supplying the answer.
Scott accepted full responsibility for her future career. It was a rare example of listening to an old programme for relaxation producing a directly useful professional result.
Unlucky Gary goes to France
Unlucky Gary joined from Luton Airport while waiting to visit his friend Melvin’s family in France. The invitation had been agreed during drinks and now required Gary to stay with people who spoke little English despite knowing no French himself.
Scott described the trip as a school exchange happening about 12 years too late. Gary, aged 26, had never taken one as a teenager and regarded this as catching up. A photograph of the single bed waiting for him made the arrangement feel even more authentically adolescent.
Listeners supplied warnings from their own exchanges. One had been woken each morning by a host family’s young child sitting on her and farting, while another accidentally sang the proposition from “Lady Marmalade” to a French girl without understanding it. Scott promised to call Gary after arrival and provide safer phrases for meeting the family.
Is Jamie related to Eddie Redmayne?
Listener Jamie Redmayne hoped that Eddie Redmayne’s Oscar success might reveal a useful family connection. He initially believed there could be only a handful of people with the surname, then heard a long list of Redmaynes who had contacted the programme.
Jamie tried narrowing the field by insisting that only particular spellings counted. Beth Redmayne had relatives from an area near his own family, and amateur genealogist Karen began building a tree from the information.
The evidence suggested Eddie might be a distant cousin, although nothing was close enough to justify access to an actor’s holiday home. References to ancestors connected with the Middleton family allowed Jamie to call himself a royal Redmayne, but the investigation had not produced the emotional revelation Scott expected from Who Do You Think You Are?.
Greg at the Brits
Greg James joined from the Brit Awards as the carpet and backstage areas were still being prepared. Alice Levine would interview stars while receiving wrapped presents from Greg which she had to pretend were her own choices.
In Real or No Real, ITV4 genuinely offered a celebrity fishing programme involving Dappy during the Brits. Michael Parkinson had also genuinely been considered for Who Do You Think You Are?, only for researchers to find no sufficiently interesting family stories after weeks of work.
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