The Sound of Sunday on HRB

It’s been a while since this blog of any of this website were updated – too long!  However, this weekend marks the 800th edition of the show, so we’ve taken the opportunity to refresh the site, give it a new look and post a new entry on the blog.

You will also find on these blog pages a range of music and other products that we hope you will be interested in and of coursem you can still buy your tickets to big events via the banner on the left.  We hope you like the changes and with a bit of luck, we’ll be able to add to them in the coming weeks.

So it’s 800 shows and counting this weekend, coming just before the busy Christmas season.  Next week, we look back at our Christmas shows from the past before our live big Christmas show for 2011 – 5 hours of fast moving festive fun in a show that takes several months of planning.

And in a month;s time, we’ll be live on Christmas morning in a one-hour show that will be linking up with other stations around the UK as well as playing requests collected earlier in the morning.

So there’s lots to come on the show and hopefully on our refreshed website in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, if you were in any doubt that Christmas is on the way, the launch of the BBC One Christmas trailer has surely changed all that!

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/news/a352984/bbc-one-unveils-christmas-trailer-watch.html

Image via Wikipedia

So spring has come and just about gone, the football season’s over and the show has taken its usual 3 week summer break, to return for its new series.  We always take the opportunity to refresh the running order, add a new jingle or two and one or two new features, and also give the web site a bit of a refresh aswell.

That’s always the plan anyway.  The website hasn’t looked good for a while now and this time, it will be revamped for the better with a new look that will stay the course. 

Any new running order takes a little time to settle in and although we started moving things around slightly towards the end of the last series, it will take a little time before things flow nicely again.  It’s not the same every week of course, we have special guests in from time to time and on Sunday 3 July, we’ll welcome Cheryl Baker from Bucks Fizz to the show.  She’ll be talking about winning Eurovision and celebrating the 30th anniversary with a special evening in July.  I’ll also be asking her about her TV presenting alongside Roy Castle on Record Breakers.  I was lucky enough to meet Roy when he came many years ago to open the Basingstoke Carnival and he must have been one of the nicest guys in show biz.  On holiday earlier this month, I happened to find a copy of his autobiography and it’s a book that’s well worth a read.  As well as his battle against cancer which he sadly finally lost, there’s lots of other stories and anecdotes about his busy life performing. 

My new yeasr’s resolution was to update this blog at least every couple of weeks.  So that’s not really worked then!  It’s taken me until now to write for the first time in 2011!

We’re two weeks away from the show’s 20th anniversary and we’ll be celebrating with a Best of the Guests Special, to be broadcast on 27 March.  So who shall we repeat?  The choice is from:

Maggie Philbin

Keith Chegwin

Trev and Simon

Ortis Deley

Peter Duncan

Mitch Johnson

Noel Edmonds

We’ll repeat 3 of them on that show in a couple of weeks time. Leave a comment with your vote below.  So far Trev and Simon are in the lead!

As always, The Sound of Sunday Christmas Show was a lot of fun with so much going on and three happy winners at the end of it. 

This week, we’ll be playing out a compilation of the show as part of our last show before Christmas.  There’ll be the return of Superman 1940s Style and all the news from the football.

This Sunday att he slightly earlier time of 1pm.

It’s the show that takes the most time to put together and the longest Sound of Sunday of the year at 5 hours, but it’s also the one that’s the most fun to do as it involves staff, patients and the stars of the local pantos.

The Sound of Sunday Christmas Show has a format all of its own and has been running in one form or another since the mid 1990s.  It started in its current form in 2002.  The Christmas Cracker dash takes a team of HRB members up to the wards to pull crackers with the staff.  The staff get to enter a competition that could win them a trip to the local pantos and the stars of the local pantos come onto the show to talk about them.  Over the years these have included Keith Chegwin, Toyah Wilcox, Barney Harwood, Simon Davies, Chris Lillicrap and Guy Siner. 

So this weekend we’ll do it all again and at the same time start Christmas on HRB.

The Sound of Sunday Christmas Show 2010 Sunday 12.30 – 5.30pm on HRB

There are a few things that come round that show it’s getting close to Christmas – the lights being turned on, the Christmas music, the publication of the Christmas Radio Times, and the various Christmas events that go on around the area.  One of those events has been a regular part of HRB’s Christmas since 2006 – Alton’s Yuletide Festival.

The entire town centre and high street of Alton is turned into a festive event.  Street entertainers, stalls, a market, and of course Stan the Town Cryer amongst numerous other things going on have made this a great event.  It’s always a risk I guess that the weather will intervene, as it did in 2007, but apart from that one year, the organisers have been lucky with the weather.  It even looks as though the temperature may reach the dizzy heights of 5 degrees and stay dry for this Sunday’s event which is apparently going to be bigger and better than ever.

Yuletide in Alton 2009

I’ll be there along with Paul Le Feuvre and the results of what we find will be heard on HRB on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. 

The other reason it’s a special event for HRB is that in 2008, we won Gold at the National Hospital Radio Awards for our coverage of the 2006 event.   Maybe if this year lives up to its promise, it will see us win an award again. 

Since the August Bank Holiday weekend, we’ve had Noel Edmonds and Matt Allwright on the show and next week, Mitch Benn will be talking about his record “I’m Proud of the BBC“.   We’ve also given this section of the web site a bit of a facelift as part of a much needed update to the site. 

This Sunday there are 3 more Premier League games so we’ll be reflecting what’s going on at Arsenal V Newcastle, West Brom V Manchester City and Liverpool V Chelsea, and we’ll have all the regular SOS features as well.

LIve on HRB on Sunday at 1.30pm.

In the meantime enjoy Mitch Benn’s video…

The last Bank Holiday before Christams comes round this weekend and on Monday HRB will be featuring a brand new to radio comedy called Our Gaff for the very first time.  The show can be heard every Sunday thereafter as well as on a Friday morning and also features on other radio stations around the UK.  It’s writer,, Steven Munn will be joining me on the show this Sunday to talk more about it, what it’s all about and what makes a good comedy series in the first place. 

Whatever the answer to that last question is, Last of the Summer Wine has certainly had it for 37 years.  What has become a TV institution bows out with its final episode on Sunday evening on BBC One and no doubt we’ll be talking about it to Steven as well. 

All the regular features on the show too.  We’re live from 1.30pm.

Last Sunday, myself along with HRB’s Paul le Feuvre and Hospital Radio Reading’s Gerard Rocks travelled down to Brighton to meet up with members of othe hospital radio stations from around the south.  I had my other hat on as the Southern Regional Rep of the Hospital Broadcasting Association, but ut’s always good to see other stations and see how they do things. 

Coastway Hospital Radio is based in Abbey Road in Brighton in a building that is separate to the hospital.  In fact the whole hospital complex seems to be hidden away in the backstreets of Brighton with virtually no signs to it. 

Coastway HR itself has two fairly small studios and an office area.  They do what all hospital radio stations do, play requests for patients, and try and produce a range of shows for their audience.

It was an interesting afternoon and the weather was pretty good as well.

Back to business this weekend though with the second weekend of the new football season bringing us two Premier League matches.  We’ll have news of both plus a round up of all the other sport from the weekend including the cricket and the Youth Olympics in Singapore.  All the regular features are there as well.

Live from 1.30pm this Sunday.

A compact show this week, just 60 minutes from 3 – 4pm.  3 main features, The Quiet Quarter of an Hour as usual at 3, the current Superman 1940s Style story continues and also on the show talking about social networking and barbecues, Saturday mornign TV‘s Mr Show Andi Peters!

We’re back to normal next weekend and coming soon we’ll have the writer of the brand new radio sitcom that will be starting on HRB at the end of the month.