Here's what happened when we locked Greg James into the Radio 1 Escape Room

It wasn't your usual Breakfast show on Monday

Before Monday morning, neither listeners nor Greg himself knew anything about what would be in store. One minute Greg was tweeting on his way to work (as he often does), the next thing we know is that Scott Mills is mysteriously being called in to the studio without any reason given as to why.

Upon arrival at Radio 1, Greg was swiftly commandeered by a member of security staff, who placed both a blindfold and ski mask (for good measure) on Greg before leading him out the building.

Without knowing where he was being led or why, Greg quickly turned to the more important matters. "Have you got my phone?" he asked. "Because I left it up there."

After a short drive, Greg was led to a secret location before eventually having his blindfold removed. And where did he find himself? In his very own escape room, of course.

The rules of the game are simple enough: the door unlocks with a six digit code. However, it's pretty hard to simply guess the code (there are about a million potential combinations).

Instead, it soon became clear that Greg needed to put his wits to the test and seek help from the Radio 1 listeners if he was to get out of the white-walled room any time soon.

Oh, and Greg's every move was being live streamed on the Radio 1 website.

What was standing between the Radio 1 Breakfast host and freedom? Only a series of fiendishly hard puzzles that ever the most talented code-cracker would find difficult to solve.

First, there was an old-school classic game of Hangman...

A puzzle that was a perfect way to spend a rainy Monday...

A clock stuck on 10:56... Or 13:04, when viewed in a mirror.

A music box...

And finally, this very bewildering grid on the wall...

Before tackling the puzzles though, Greg needed a bit of fuel for the challenge ahead. Thankfully, meals were delivered throughout the day through a letterbox in the corner of the room.

It's safe to say that the grub on offer wasn't particularly of high culinary standards. In fact, it reminded some people of the food on offer at the infamous Fyre Festival...

A couple of hours in, and Greg's listeners had identified all the artists in his hangman game.

Just a bunch of famous musicians? Not quite. They were linked together by having songs with the word Star or Stars in the title. Coldplay's A Sky Full of Stars, Lady Gaga's A Star is Born, Tinie Tempah's Written In The Stars, etc.

The grid and the jigsaw, however, weren't so easy to solve.

Stuck inside a tiny room for what could have been weeks, Greg received a lovely message from his mate Marcus Mumford, from Mumford & Sons: "You’re an idiot and I really hope you don’t get out."

Not long after, a mysterious – but very familiar – voice rang out in the room, saying just one word. "Hello." Ominous.

And on day two, when Greg had been stuck inside for over 24 hours, BRITs host Jack Whitehall turned up to give some moral support. Their rendez-vous resembled some kind of prison scene, though...

After a serious amount of time spent trying to complete his jigsaw, Greg began to cotton on to the fact that his way out of the Escape Room relied on his star listeners.

After some of the clues began to unravel, it dawned on Greg that somehow this whole thing involved Ainsley Harriott.

Listener Claudia rang up to say she might be involved in this somehow. She had the same first name as Claudia Winkleman, the voice behind day one's "hello" clip, and last Monday (11 February), Greg picked her to be a star listener, and as a present he sent her an Ainsley cookbook.

The thing is, Claudia hadn't received the cookbook yet, but she'd received a call on Monday to say it would be delivered on Tuesday.

Whatever it meant, it was all beginning to piece together. Especially when Greg received a clue containing a tiny snippet of Gorillaz song Feel Good Inc.

The name of Ainsley's recipe book? The Feel-Good Cookbook.

After 28 hours, Greg realised an old Ainsley Harriott cookbook from 2006 was at the centre of the mystery.

At 1pm, Claudia received confirmation that she'd be getting a special delivery between 2-3pm.

In another twist, the delivery turned up early, thanks to super punctual delivery driver James.

Lo and behold, it contained Ainsley's cookbook:

Inside the book was a recipe for smoked haddock rarebits, containing:

• 4 slices of bread
• 1 tub of fresh cheese sauce
• 2 teaspoons of Dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon of snipped fresh chives
• 8 cherry tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons of freshly grated parmesan

Could this be the code? 412182?

But how did he actually crack the code? It's simple, really:

• The hangman clues were all artists who had songs about stars, and...
• The first musical clue contained 4 songs about listening, which therefore hinted at Greg to listen to his star listeners.
• The voice saying "hello" was Claudia Winkleman’s, pointing to the star listener of the same name.
• The jigsaw was a picture of Ricky Hatton and the words Shake, Rattle & Roll. This was the exact song Ainsley Harriott danced to when he left Strictly. And Hatton also happens to be the surname of Ainsley’s favourite This Morning viewer Jill.
• The second musical clue was four songs about feeling good, pointing Greg to Ainsley’s Feel-Good Cookbook.
• The diagram on the wall was the piano theme for Postman Pat, telling listener Claudia to expect a delivery.
• And together, they guessed page 104 in the cookbook because the time 13:04 was reflected in the mirror.
  
  

Told you it was simple.