A Brisbane breakfast radio show has become the latest ratings hit.
Wake Up, Brisbane features a unique trio of hosts, including a ‘hillarious’ stand up comedian, a popular reality show star, and a former rugby league player.
WUB is hosted by Peter Trengrove, a comedian who starred in a few episodes of some quickly forgotten Australian sitcom and ‘chose’ to move to Brisbane breakfast radio after struggling to crack the Melbourne stand up circuit. He’s struggled to reinvent himself after spending most of the 90s and early-2000s doing moderately funny observational humour.
He is joined by Chenyarra Starr, ‘famous’ for appearing in The Bachelor, Big Brother, Married at First Sight, and Beauty and the Geek. Chenyarra is the typical big-lipped, skinny, big-boobed bombshell (whose hair colour deviates from blonde to red to brunette) and is convinced that she’s on the verge of superstardom.
Rounding out the cast is Michael ‘Macca’ Mangrove. While he’s listed in his bio as a ‘former Broncos legend’, in reality he played 103 games for the Eastern Suburbs Tigers in the Queensland Cup and a handful of games for the ‘Baby Broncos’ sides during the busy Origin period. He was known for being a cheeky and talkative hooker who annoyed the s*** out of his opponents because he never shut up.
WUB specialises in light, pop culture-heavy news stories, and fun games ‘inspired’ (ripped off) from social media, figuring that punters don’t want to listen to serious news on their way to work. This is punctuated by the most crowd-pleasing pop/R&B hits that are currently in the charts and hourly news bulletins read by a team of students studying Journalism at Griffith Uni who are looking for work experience.
The most popular segment is ‘Meme Along with Us’, where the team discusses the latest viral meme on social media and give their long and pointless opinions on it. Because why not? This segment usually ends with Chenyarra’s Freddy-Krueger’s-nails-on-a-chalkboard ‘hyena cackle’ laugh (that makes Fran Fine’s seem reserved), which she busts out whenever Peter makes a mildly amusing joke about a meme.
It can also get a bit heated, as proud Queenslander Macca and ex-Victorian Peter (a passionate Richmond fan) regularly argue whether rugby league or Australian Rules is the best footy code.
Despite – or maybe because of – the high annoyance factor of combining three mega-extroverts so early in the morning, the show has become a huge hit.
Though opinion is divided on social media, with comments including “I love how free-spirited everyone is. Even on my worst days they never fail to give me a boost,” and “These three muppets give me an immediate headache and put me in a s****y mood. I’d rather listen to someone mowing their lawn for three hours!”
Producer Colin Anderson encourages the split feedback.
“Any controversy is gold, so I encourage Chenyarra, Peter, and Macca to be as loud and annoying as possible. Punters will either love it or want to smash their car radios in! And you can guarantee the haters will run to social media to loudly complain about how much they hate it and that they’ll never listen again. And then they’re back next week with the same complaints. It’s perfect.”
The WUB hosts are trialling a new segment, called ‘Gender-Swapped Movies.’ A blatant rip-off of a similar idea on Cracked, the team pick a classic movie and debate what it’d be like if it was gender-swapped, which usually fills an hour at least.
Everyday News is a brand new general news/parody section of The Gurgler, and definitely not a lame rip-off of ‘The Betoota Advocate’. We swear.
