Student Radio Association

The Big Chewsie is an entertainment show that has firmly placed itself on the RaW schedule having maintained the same Prime Time slot for the last seven terms, making it the longest running Prime Time show in the station’s history. As a group of theatre students we have always brought an element of performance to radio, and creativity and innovation have always been two things on our ‘to do’ list. Having said that, we have been doing the show for three years for one reason only; we love it. Friday’s 3pm – 5pm have become the highlight of our week, and we all sorely miss the show now that we have graduated and have had to find something to do that will make us enough money to pay back our mountain of debt.

The Big Chewsie consists of five people, something that could be hazardous when trying to broadcast a slick and professional show. However, having worked together for so long, any bad habits (interrupting each other, all talking at once, etc) are definitely something of the past as we have all grown to understand our specific roles, helped by constant visual as well as vocal communication in the studio. Although Ben takes the role of operating the desk and guiding the show, all of the Chewsie boys have equal responsibility, preparing features, giving song introductions and choosing which tracks we play.

As you will hear in the audio entry, we often have separate features that we go away and prepare individually after a group brainstorming session. This has introduced a strong element of fierce competition in the Chewsie boys; we all want to write and perform the funniest feature. This friendly competition has made the show what it is, as over the last three years the quality has increased dramatically. Although we all know the basic structure of the show, we have a strict policy of not letting each other hear the final versions of our feature until it is performed on air. This means that we spend two hours laughing every Friday, and this genuine laughter on air encourages our audience to laugh with us. However, some of our best moments have been completely improvised and have come from us interacting in the studio; the ‘Secret Millionaire’ section of our audio entry was one of these improvised moments, which is why the "You’re tired" line sent us into huge amounts of laughter. We are not comedians, but we do try to produce a light-hearted, entertaining and comedic show.

The show focuses around material that can relate to a large number of our student audience, whether that be about Warwick University, life in Leamington Spa or even wider, on any topic that would make people our age laugh. ‘Making people laugh’ has been repeated a few times in this written entry, but that is really what the show is all about. Even when satirising the university in our ‘Warwick University radio advert’, we weren’t criticising the place which has given us three great years, but simply poking fun at the institution, following the student mantra of (gentle) rebellion. Doing an entertainment show is all about doing things that people enjoy listening to, and although this can be achieved through a number of different formats we have opted to go down what is perhaps the easiest route; funny stuff that will hopefully induce out-loud-in-the-library-laughter.