Those who struggle to keep up with the seemingly never-ending stream of comments submitted to the Daily thread (and nowadays I count myself as one of those), may have missed something of a seminal moment in Sidepodcast's rather short history earlier today. Not only did Christine make her singing debut on a BBC radio station, but that same voice carried all the way to Italy, Maranello and to the ears of one Rob Smedley.

To cut a very long and convoluted story short, last Saturday a certain lady decided to pen a tune for Felipe Massa in the hope it might inspire the man to score some points in Bahrain. It didn't exactly work out, the Massa suffered another poor showing, and because we didn't do a podcast Sunday evening we sort of forgot about it.

Yesterday there was much discussion in the comments about a number of blogs / forums that had found, and enjoyed the song. So this morning, having decided that the Autosport forums helped to make Me and Page 22 happen, a link was copied over there too. Just a couple of hours later the following response was posted on that same thread:

BBC Tees played the first verse to Rob Smedley this afternoon.

The two of us did a bit of a double take upon reading this, and after some swift investigation from other commenters, it turns out that Lisa McCormick who hosts a light-hearted afternoon chat show on BBC Radio Tees, happened to be talking live to Felipe Massa's race engineer Rob Smedley, and really had played Christine's song to Rob. I wouldn't have believed it without hearing it, so here's an extract:

Anyone who's known Christine for more than five minutes will be well aware of her long term (but frequently denied) crush on Rob and I'll leave you to imagine her reaction upon hearing that particular radio segment.

I'm pretty sure when she wrote and recorded the lyrics, Christine's intention wasn't for it to be played on the radio. I'm absolutely certain she didn't for one minute expect anyone at Ferrari to hear it. However, we will both be eternally grateful to Lisa and the team behind the show for finding and then playing that snippet today.

Even if Christine doesn't know it yet, today has been an amazing day in our lives. Thank you to everyone who's picked up on it, to the Autosport Forums for highlighting the broadcast and to all those who have listened.

Update: BBC Tees have a post on story, as well as the full interview for your listening pleasure.