Will joins the stags
Will answered the phone beside the Danube, surrounded by the 21 strangers whose Budapest trip he had bought on eBay. The first night had included a stretch vehicle, drinking and the growing celebrity of Seth, the toy badger he carried to festivals and concerts.
He explained that he had been searching for a festival ticket when he found the stag-do listing. The decision to buy it had been simple, and he was already considering making random hen and stag parties a regular part of his life.
The programme’s bosses thought the idea could become a television series. Listeners immediately offered Will more spare places, while Scott noticed that his schedule could fill every weekend without him attending any of the eventual weddings.
Chris versus the song app
After Rixton failed to make a song-recognition app identify one of their own tracks, Scott found services that claimed to recognise tunes from humming or singing. Chris tested one and got nowhere.
Scott’s explanation was straightforward: the technology was not failing, Chris was simply a bad singer. To give the experiment a fair chance, the show called vocal coach Felicia Richie, who had previously taught Chris “Fairytale of New York”.
Felicia’s Ellie Goulding lesson
Felicia chose Ellie Goulding’s “Love Me Like You Do” and broke the lyrics into exaggerated sounds rather than conventional singing instruction. Chris had to reproduce Goulding’s breathy delivery, turning familiar words into phrases that sounded more like “lub me laik yuh do”.
The lesson became a test of imitation rather than musical ability. If the app recognised the song, Felicia would have successfully converted Chris into Ellie Goulding using pronunciation alone. If it failed, he could still blame the software.
Friday’s Real or No Real
The week’s final Real or No Real included claims involving Busta Rhymes, Ryanair and Huntingdon. They were conventional facts beside Will’s genuine plans, which had now generated requests from strangers who wanted him and Seth at their own celebrations.
The story had developed from an invitation Chris could not accept into a new role for somebody he had never met. Will was no longer merely filling one spare place, he was becoming the programme’s resident guest at other people’s stag dos.
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