Nick the “lovely boy” drinks wee
As Nick arrives at the scene of the task, it is apparent that his reflection has again been edited out of the shot, in which a large puddle on the driveway features prominently, in keeping with his decision to dress as a vampire.
As he cuts a fingertip off of the third hand, he wonders out loud whether all of the gloves are filled with “things that are connected” (presumably meaning that they are all somehow connected to the individual he is attempting to identify). Having removed the fingertip, he asks Alex “Can I smell it?” and receives the response “Do what you want with it.” He then trepidatiously tastes the contents of the glove, and correctly identifies it as “Egg” (recording this on the board as “egg (scrambled)”).
Grasping the fifth hand, he states “I think that’s someone real”, correctly identifying that it contains a hand (but initially recording this on the board as “human”).
Nick cuts the tip off of a finger of the seventh hand, causing a stream of rum to run out onto his feet, which prompts him to observed that it is “doing, like, a wee on me”. He then immediately decides to taste the mystery liquid peeing out of the glove, and correctly identifies it as “Rum” (though it appears that he initially recorded on the chalkboard that it was “tequila”).
Nick uses the scissors to partially remove a fingertip from the ninth hand, identifying it as “more egg” (which he records on the board as “egg (boiled”). He also cuts the thumb off of the eight hand, and correctly identifies it as containing “Nails”.
He then returns to the ninth hand and, observing that he hadn’t actually completely removed the fingertip, patches the cut finger of the glove back up with a plaster, and reclaims that cut for re-use on the first hand, after which he correctly identifies the contents of that glove as “Acorns”.
He subsequently identifies that the answer to the task is spelled out by the first letter of each of the words he has written down on the chalkboard, and then realises that the first letters of the last five items he has written down on the board spell out ‘Horne’, before gasping with the realisation that it’s Alex’s full name. With just 35 seconds left, he only has five correct answers written on the board. However, with the knowledge of what the first letter of each of the gloves’ contents is, he re-shakes the fourth hand, and guesses that ‘X’ stands for “Xbox”. He presumably also has time to fill in some of the other missing slots with the correct answers, as he ends up with correct answers in eight of the slots (only guessing incorrectly for the fourth hand).
At the end of his attempt he states “I’m shaking hands with Alex Horne”, and then gasps before observing “And I shook your hand at the start!” and adding “That was nice.”
In the studio, as Nick’s success is revealed, Sophie high-fives him. When Greg questions her on this, she states that she and Nick are usually at the bottom together, so his victory also felt like a win for her.
Greg delights in highlighting to Nick how quickly he’d started drinking the rum, after observing that it was “doing a wee” on him.
When Alex checks in with Greg on whether Nick’s use of a plaster to repair the cut in one glove and reclaim that cut for use on another one is permitted, Greg reveals that he’d missed that that’s what had happened, stating that he’d just thought that Nick was being “a lovely boy”. Apparently swayed by his own misunderstanding of what had happened, and his favourable perception of Nick, Greg decides to allow this workaround.
Nick ultimately wins the task, having correctly identified the contents of eight of the gloves, and named Alex as the person he had shook hands with, earning himself 5 points.
(Written by Karl Craven)
(Illustrations collected by Jenny R and adjusted by David Fuller)
