The student-election season returns
The first student campaign songs of the year began appearing online. Scott and Chris remembered the previous year’s videos, especially “Vote George”, which forced policies into a mash-up of “Swagger Jagger” and “Drunk in Love”. The campaign had apparently worked, making George both a successful student officer and the possible cause of another season of musical manifestos.
They worried that this year’s candidates would try too hard to attract the programme’s attention. The best videos had previously been the ones Scott and Chris discovered accidentally, not those designed to become Radio 1 features.
The quickest University Challenge answer
Scott surprised Chris by revealing that he watched University Challenge. He enjoyed the rare moment when he knew an answer and Jeremy Paxman’s increasing impatience as time ran out. An episode between Oxford and Trinity Cambridge had produced an exceptional piece of quizzing.
One contestant buzzed in less than a second after a complicated question had finished and gave the correct answer almost immediately. Scott replayed the moment repeatedly, trying to understand whether the contestant had solved it during the question or simply committed to an inspired guess.
Chris proposed Only Connect as an even more punishing experience. Its sequences and connections made him feel stupid before he had properly understood the question, although a round involving One Direction surnames might have offered a way in.
What kind of ex is Scott?
Chris found an online quiz promising to identify somebody’s break-up personality and compare it with a celebrity. Scott agreed to take it only if Chris contributed stories rather than turning the entire investigation against him.
The questions covered Beyoncé songs, disappearing from parties, checking an ex’s social-media profile during working hours and dealing with possessions left behind. Scott admitted looking at former partners online and favoured the dramatic option of burning unwanted belongings. He remembered throwing a chain into a shallow pond, where it was probably still visible and rusting.
The quiz drifted towards a Britney Spears comparison, but its greater value was the amount of personal information it extracted. Scott decided it should be used on future celebrity guests, who would be unable to answer without revealing how they behaved after relationships ended.
Real or No Real
Barbara Windsor joined the daily facts, bringing the authority of one of the show’s favourite voices. The round moved through celebrity names and unlikely modern habits, but Chris’s discovery that people could watch strangers eat meals online proved especially difficult to explain without making the activity sound more extreme than it was.
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