The Shebang

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The Shebang
The Shebang hosts: Fifi Box (left) and Marty Sheargold (right).
Genre	Comedy
Running time	180 minutes
Country	Australia
Language(s)	English
Home station	Triple M Sydney
Syndicates	Triple M Sydney
Starring	Marty Sheargold Fifi Box Drew Chapman (anchor)
Producer(s)	"Steven" and "Anna"
Air dates	2003 –
Website	The Shebang
Podcast feed	The Shebang

The Shebang is a current radio show broadcast weekday mornings from 6am to 9am AEST in Sydney, Australia on Triple M. It is hosted by Marty Sheargold and Fifi Box with Drew Chapman as the show anchor.

The show mainly works around observational humour, derived from various media sources.

Formerly the Triple M network's main syndicated drive-time show, Austereo (Triple M's owner) announced on 14 December 2006 that the Shebang would move to the breakfast shift for Triple M Sydney in 2007. The Shebang commenced the breakfast shift in Sydney on 29 January 2007.

[edit] History

The program began in 2003 as "The Whole Shebang", a drive program on the Melbourne Triple M station, with a cast of comedians and celebrities. Following on-air shakeups at the station in mid-2003, the program extended to be broadcast in Sydney as well, with the cast being Mikey Robbins, Fifi Box, Marty Sheargold, Jodie J. Hill and Jo Stanley. "The Whole Shebang" was nominated for the Award for Outstanding Radio Comedy Performance in the 2003 Comedy Awards (Radio). By the end of 2003, Robbins, Hill and Stanley had left, leaving Box and Sheargold. At the start of 2004, the show was further extended to Brisbane and Adelaide, although later dropped from Adelaide following poor ratings.

In 2007, The Shebang moved to a breakfast slot for Triple M Sydney only.

The Shebang had a float in this year's Sydney Mardi Gras.

[edit] Hosts

The three regular cast members of the show are Fifi Box, Marty Sheargold and Drew Chapman. The show is aired 6am to 9am AEST weekdays in Sydney, although it was originally broadcast from 4pm to 7pm (and later 4pm to 6pm) in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

[edit] Fifi Box

Box is a fan of Simon Baker Denny and often refers to him as the worst/rudest interview ever,^{[citation needed]} above Heather Mills and Gene Simmons. She also went to Tintern, a private school in Melbourne's outer eastern suburbs. When Fifi was younger she had a pet pony, which Marty often refers too.

Is starring in the current season of 'Dancing with the Stars' with partner Paul.

Fifi's mother Pearl often coments via email about the show, Fifi and Marty and Fifi's work on 'Dancing with the Stars', 'Thank God You're Here' and 'Sunrise'. Pearl also dislikes it when she shares a bed with her daughter and she is naked.

[edit] Marty Sheargold

Marty, is a stamp collecting germophobe who loves it when newspaper articles put someone's age after their name and whose parenting techniques often include salad tongs. Marty has tragic pink carpet with salmon curtains and has a soft spot for Naomi Robson, Deborra-Lee Furness, Gretel Killeen and Adelaide as well as a few other selected individuals. He has a fetish for Irish women that have red hair and green eyes, has a mancrush on V8 Supercar driver Steven Richards and would turn for Robbie Williams. The only notable item of Marty's wardrobe (quite possibly the only item of his wardrobe) is his Elastic top travel pants. Marty is still hard at work on the Sheargold V. This may never happen.^{[citation needed]}

Has asked Fifi many times on air to get off his lap, put some clothes on and to marry him.

[edit] Anchor

Former anchor Byron Cooke moved to America with fiancée Chrissie Cooke to work in radio in Los Angeles. He was briefly replaced by Adam Barrat in the latter part of 2005, before Brownie took up the reins in 2006. Brownie has hosted The Awesome 80s (6pm Monday - Thursday) and currently panels the Melbourne version of Triple M's Saturday morning sport show Dead Set Legends. It was announced on Friday December 1st that Brownie was leaving as he would be moving to SAFM in Adelaide.

He was replaced by Drew Chapman, who also hosts the Awesome 80s for Triple M Brisbane.

[edit] Regular Guests

• Glenn Robbins
• Mark Beretta
• Paul Calleja
• Steve Richards
• Liz Ellis
• Colin Lane
• Tony Martin
• Other guests include Jamie Durie, Lawrence Mooney, Scott Cam, Andrew Denton, Stephen Curry, Chris Murray, Tim Smith, Richard Marsland, Peter Rowsthorn, Tom Gleisner, Johanna Griggs and David Koch.

[edit] Audience

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The time slot and varied content make the show popular with young people, and often the funniest comments come from stories told by the listeners themselves.

A common theme amongst callers to the show is the use of the phrase "long time listener, first time caller". Variations on this theme are used for those who listen via podcasting or live stream feeds, for those contacting the show via email, and those who either are regular callers or infrequent listeners.

The Shebang show has Australian expatriate listeners from around the world. Since podcasting their daily show, they have reached a much more international audience, many of whom are Australians living abroad. Lately, there have been listeners streaming the show over the internet (whom Marty sometimes refers to as "Golden Streamers"). Marty and Fifi love to receive emails from podcasters/golden streamers and seeing how many countries they are listened in; the latter has generated a segment, "Shebanging the World", as a snapshot of their overseas audience.

[edit] Segments/Content

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Perhaps the longest running joke within The Shebang is Marty poking fun at Fifi for being an Ice-smoking, pregnant lesbian with her top off, and calling her a "naughty, diiirrty little bird". Of course there is little truth to this.

A focal point of the show has been revelations about Fifi's relationships, with Box sharing her insights to her previous relationships, which had on-air nicknames. It has recently been revealed that she has a new boyfriend (AKA 'The Man').

One of the most popular segments on the show was the reading of the 'Mayor of Casterbridge', which took over from Marty's reading of Tim Winton's 'Cloudstreet' (a book inflicted on many final year students in New South Wales). Often Sheargold tried to lobby the listeners into endorsing a return to his particular literarture choice, however Fifi's hilarious readings of the 'Mayor of Casterbridge' became a staple, the highlight being her inability to do proper accents.

The pair have interviewed the likes of Jennifer Aniston, Kiernan from Augie March, Bill Gates, Will Ferrell, and the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard.

A notable segment, (in main now completed) was called Operation Mandarin. Sheargold threw one eighth of a mandarin at a rubbish bin and missed. The crux of the experiment was to identify how long it would take cleaning staff to identify and remove the mandarin segment; the duration was just over seven weeks.

Sheargold made two findings from the experiment: that the cleaners don't listen to the show and that the cleaners cannot bend. The experiment was also reported to have cost the contracted cleaners at the time their jobs; the mandarin was located soon after by a new group of cleaners.

[edit] Caller Questions

Sometime around the start of 2004, Marty and Fifi occasionally started asking 'sub-questions' as part of their phone topics. For example, if the phone-in question was 'name your celebrity crush', then they would follow this up with a random sub-question ie: 'what's your favourite bun', or 'what's your favourite smell'.

Fellow Triple M radio show Get This has seemed to follow on from this concept.

[edit] From the School that Brought you...

Similarly to the subquestions, Marty and Fifi have also done a number of phoner-series'.

"From the school that brought you 'Where have you been trapped?' and 'Where have you been stuck?'...'Where have you been wedged?'"

Mentionable examples include "Where have you put your brother/sister?", "Who would win a fight between Kerri-Anne Kennerly and Bert Newton/Tracy Grimshaw and Naomi Robson/Andrew O'Keefe and Ed Phillips/Jemima and Big Ted/Peter Andre and Jordan/Seany B and Axle Whitehead/Megan Gale and Jennifer Hawkins/Daniel Craig and Sean Connery/Robbie Williams and Noel Gallagher/Rosie O'Donnell and Donald Trump/Andrew O'Keefe and Eddie McGuire/Roger Federer and Serena Williams/Britney Spears and rehab?" and the classic: "Where have you been trapped/stuck/wedged/lodged/caught?"

[edit] Shebang Polls

Every once in a while, Sheargold and Box decide to do a poll where they take in calls from listeners and tally up the votes. Box will then calculate the end result as a percentage. For example "Women, do you like moustaches?" and "Dobbing: good or bad?"^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Friday Fun Ones

As the name suggests, 'Friday Fun Ones' occur every Friday. It is usually accompanied with loose, 'fun' attitudes (for want of a better term), Captain Obvious and as of 2006, a new sound effect every week. Often, there is usually a 'Friday Fun One Acoustic'. Past Friday Fun One Acoustics include The Fray, Tim Finn and Sarah McLeod.

[edit] Changes

Throughout 2006, there were rumours that The Shebang would be moved to the breakfast shift, replacing struggling breakfast show The Cage in the Sydney and Melbourne markets. This was all but confirmed in a report in The Daily Telegraph on November 3, 2006, which suggested the move would be announced shortly for 2007, and would make Box one of the highest-earning women in radio.

It was reported on 29 November 2006 in the Melbourne Herald-Sun, that Fifi and Marty had recently filmed a pilot of "The Shebang" chat show concept called "The Late Night Little Big Show" with funnymen Glenn Robbins and Tony Martin. The article makes reference also that Nine Network has given it the thumbs-down, but Seven Network is considering it. Also the article mentions that the negotiations between The Shebang and The Cage shows and timeslots are still in progress and nothing is confirmed at this stage.^[1]

In an article, Fifi Box is understood to had signed a new contract worth $500,000 a year, making her one of the highest paid women on the air.^[2]

Austereo had announced on 14 December that The Shebang would move to the morning shift for Triple M Sydney in 2007. Wil Anderson has taken over the drive-time shift as of 2 April 2007 with the show Wil & Lehmo airing from 4pm to 6pm Monday to Friday.

[edit] References

1. ^ http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,20838148-28957,00.html
2. ^ http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,23663,20880739-7484,00.html

[edit] External links

• Official The Shebang Sydney website
• The Shebang podcast feed (XML)