The Cumberland Sausage Show

The Cumberland Sausage Show is a radio programme broadcast on British commercial station CFM (Carlisle) every Saturday between 10am-1pm and is presented by Pete Moss and Laura Jones. Usually descibed as "saturday nonsense", the show is presented in a zoo format and includes plenty of interactivity with its listeners.

It centres around life and places in Cumbria with live outside broadcasts from local events, a focus on local sport and a weekly competition called Hide The Sausage where the location of a fictitious sausage has to be identified from clues.

Technical operator, Jonny Chapman, also regularly features on the show and is often referred to as Techno Jonny.

History

The Cumberland Sausage Show was the creation of its original presenters Pete Moss and Andy Wood and began on August 6 2005. It became a regular fixture of CFM's Saturday afternoon schedule between 2-6pm. Sally Crangle appeared each week as Sally Sausage and was the show's outside broadcast reporter. She left the show in May 2006 to be replaced by Sarah Story who played a more prominent role until she was replaced by Laura Jones in November 2007.

Until September 2006 a specific theme dictated the show's content and music. Andy Wood was often based at football team, Carlisle United's, football ground, Brunton Park, for much of the show.

On September 30, 2006 Andy Wood left and the Cumberland Sausage Show was moved to a better time slot of 10am-1pm. It no longer had a weekly theme and would concentrate more on local events happening on that day and would put a humorous spin on the week's news.

Regular Features

'The Magic Number' was introduced to the show on August 25, 2007. It is a competition where listeners are given a number which forms the answer to a question. Whoever correctly guesses what the question is wins a star prize.

'Hide The Sausage' was introduced to the show on February 25, 2006. Listeners win a prize by correctly working out the exact location of a 'virtual' sausage. The sausage is surreptitiously placed somewhere in Cumbria and three clues are given over the course of the show to help listeners work out the sausage's location.

'The Cumberland Sausage Show Games Compendium' began on August 25, 2007. Two listeners choose one of the four games from the compendium to play each. The games are a series of 30-second quizzes which change every week and are often topical. The listener who scores the highest amount of points wins.

Previous Features

'Touch Me Feel Me Win Me' was a competition on the Cumberland Sausage Show where listeners had to correctly identify an object in order to win it. To do so they could ask three questions about the item to which the answers could only be yes or no. It usually took some months before enough intelligence was gathered about the item that its identity could be correctly guessed. It was one of the show's original features and ran until August 2007.

'Misheard Song Lyrics' exposed lyrics from songs which are heard differently than their writers intended, usually to humorous effect. The feature was dropped from the show in September 2006.

'The Singles Review' was an original part of the show where a panel of three would listen to, and give their views on, four new single releases. The feature was dropped from the show after just twelve weeks.

Thongsbury

'Thongsbury' was the show's weekly soap which parodied many of Britain's television soaps and ran for 27 episodes. It was named after a fictional Cumbrian town which had a pub called The Golden Swan, a doctor's surgery, a casino called The Aladdin, a corner shop and Thongsbury General which is the hospital in the soap. Regular characters were played, and named after, the presenters of the show but the characters Doctor Williams, PC Bill, Vonda and local businessman, Steve, have also featured.

It was decided that the soap 'Thongsbury' should be discontinued in September 2006 and it ended with the four main characters losing their life following an explosion in the street, called Plum's Court, which the soap centred around.

The soap played twice during the Cumberland Sausage Show at regular times.

'Thongsbury' even had its own theme tune. The lyrics of the song read:

Dancing through the villages on a summer's night, Got some matches in my pocket and they don't seem to light, I'll down my drink in here then it's home to Thongsbury, Yeah!

Although the theme tune was written and performed by presenter Pete Moss it's firmly believed that the lyrics were written from the character Sally's perspective because she makes reference to some of its lyrics as part of her dialogue in the final episode.

Songs

The show often creates parodies or write new comedy songs as part of the show and then made available to download from CFM's website. These include a Christmas song, a song about halloween and a football song to support local football team Carlisle United in their bid to win the Football League Trophy Final in April 2006. The song, entitled 'Carlisle's Soldiers', was downloaded from CFM's official website over a thousand times in just one week.

Tracks

  • This Christmas (2005)
  • Aliens (2006)
  • Carlisle Soldiers (2006)
  • Grabbed By The Ghoulies (2006)