The Bin Weevils Show

ellieleekz’ fanmade logo for the show.

### Website

https://www.funkidslive.com/binweevils/ (2014-2016), https://www.funkidslive.com/show/the-bin-weevils-show/ (2016-2018)

### Podcast Link

https://omny.fm/shows/fun-kids/playlists/bin-weevils-on-fun-kids

> “Across the UK, it’s just on 10 o’ clock! You’re listening to The Bin Weevils Show on Fun Kids!”
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**The Bin Weevils Show**, also referred to by fans as **Bin Weevils Radio** or **BW Radio**, was a British children’s comedy music variety radio show that was broadcast on Saturdays and Sundays from 10-11 am on Fun Kids, presented by Bex. It first aired on July 5th, 2014, as collaborative effort between 55 Pixels, the creators of Bin Weevils, and Folder Media, the company that owns Fun Kids, and ran until September 9th, 2018 for 4 years.

The show featured a variety of segments, ranging from horoscopes, jokes, gossip, news and more. Each segment is hosted by a different character, all with different traits, and can tell viewers what’s going on during that segment.

The show also featured lesser-known sections, such as fun facts and a song of the week. The show mostly consisted of music, but would switch to a segment sometime during the programme.

The radio show was also played in-game at the Shopping Mall, where users could receive a free radio item for their Nest room. Secret codes were also given out during the show, allowing players to redeem rewards.

## Background

Not much is known about the show’s background, but the announcement of the Fun Kids and Bin Weevils partnership dates all the way back to 2013, 1 year before the show would start airing.

On an article from Earshot about the show that would originally air before this show, Beanotown, these details shown were revealed, along with others:

> “As a small independent radio station, we don’t really have much money to spend on marketing, but we do spend significant time on it. We mainly look to see how we can leverage our audience and our platforms to either generate content that will be shared or discovered or we strike partnerships with similarly targeted organisations to contra marketing opportunities.
> These relationships have meant we’ve had adverts in lots of kids magazines (with circulations topping 200k), in-game promotion on virtual worlds like **Bin Weevils** (2m monthly users), live event activity on the South Bank and later this month at Lollibop, and last week a brilliant integration with DC Thomson’s The Beano.”
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Nicky Tate wrote the show, and people like Andy Goddard, Charlie May Bingham, Alex Perkins and Geoff Motley were chosen to play some of the characters appearing in the radio show.

On July 1st, 2014, the show was officially announced, and was to premiere on July 5th on a blog post on the Bin Weevils website.

## Show Outline

***NOTE: This is my theory on how the show will play out, please respect this theory if you can.***

The show would begin with an introduction from the hosts, Tink, Clott and Bex, featuring some sort of funny opening banter to start off the show, before moving on to play either a Bin Weevils tune or a non-Bin Weevils one. This could range from songs like The Great Bin Weevils to Troublemaker by Olly Murs.

After the first song or so, a random situation or talk would be played, mostly a talk. And during the show, a segment would be played before moving on to another tune.

The segments, listed here, are:

* Horrible Horoscopes
* Clott’s Terrible Jokes
* Bunty’s Bin Gossip
* Gam’s Great Stories
* Bin Weevils News
* Ink’s Poetry Corner

After a few minutes or so, either a secret code, a scoop from Scribbles, a Club Fling Song of The Week or a fun fact would play out. This gives the viewers more information or a reward for them playing the game, except for the Club Fling Song of The Week, in which a specific tune is the “record of the week”.

Also, during the shows, Bex or Scribbles would answer questions sent in by Bin Weevils players, and they would be answered on the show.

## Podcast

There was a Bin Weevils Show podcast that ran for 100 episodes throughout 2014 to2016. It features the best bits (mostly segments) from the shows throughout the weekend. There were also 36 Ask Bin Weevils episodes uploaded onto that same podcast, which featured Bex answering the users’ questions on the show. The podcast used to be available on iTunes, but is still available to listen on websites like Omny and TuneIn.

## Specials

The first special was broadcast on Fun Kids on Friday, October 30th, 2014 during another of Bex's shows, The Club with Bex. At 6pm, Scribbles joined Bex to DJ alongside her for the **Fright Night Party**, a version of the Friday Night Party, which is a part of the show on Fridays where listeners can send in requests to play their favourite songs on the radio. A Halloween special was broadcast on October 31st, 2014, but not much about it is confirmed or known. A Christmas special was broadcast on Friday, December 26th, 2014 at 3pm, 1 hour before The Club With Bex. It featured Christmassy editions of sketches and segments on the show, and there were also some Christmas continuity links in between songs and segments. We don’t know if an Easter special of the show was aired, but it could be confirmed by someone who worked on the show. Refreshed editions of the Halloween and Christmas specials were aired throughout 2015 and 2016. In the 2015 Halloween special, there were some Halloween Nest shout-outs.

## After BW Radio & Acknowledgements

On September 9th, 2018, the Bin Weevils Show aired for the very last time, before **Frankie Vu** stepped in to extend his weekend show by an hour. The last non-BW song played was the song **Perf** by Baby Ariel, while the last BW song played was **Splosh The Dosh**. After this, The Big Bin Weevil Ball would still be played on Fun Kids from time to time. On August 25th, 2023, **The Great Bin Weevils**, a song which was never played on Fun Kids since 2018, was played as a thank you for ellieleekz (That’s me!) meeting Bex at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival earlier in the past week during the Friday Night Party. It was also a special negotiation with the bosses. This was the last time a BW song played on Fun Kids, according to Soundcharts.

## Trivia

* From what we have gathered so far, it seems like the radio show began pre-production in early 2013, whilst Beanotown was being developed and shortly after Bin Weevils’ first single, “The Big Bin Weevil Ball”, came out on streaming platforms.
* Andy Goddard, Alex Perkins, Charlie May Bingham and Geoff Motley are known to have voice acted the characters on the show, all working at Create Productions around the same time the show was being developed.
* Bex, the main presenter of the show, also hosts another radio show on Fun Kids, called The Club With Bex, which still airs on the station today, starting from mid-2013.
* Some of the elements in the show are taken from another show in the Saturday and Sunday timeslot called Beanotown, which has similar segments and features to the show. An excerpt from the Moshi Monsters takeover show in December 2013 was also used for the program in one of the show’s core scenarios.
* Dosh, Posh and Fling are also known to have appeared and mentioned in the show, but it is unknown if they ever spoke in any of the non-segment corners of the show.
* Bex is also a proud supporter of the fanmade BW Radio Supporters Club.