BURST RADIO v4.qxp_Layout 2 25/02/2022 15:48 Page 1
LOOKING BACK
Students broadcasting from Burst’s old studios in an annex at St Paul's Church in 2000
Burst turns 25 This year, the University of Bristol’s radio station, Burst, celebrates its 25th anniversary. Here, Head of Production, Xander Brett, catches up with Burst’s founder and looks at why student radio is now more important than ever...
A
t the studios of Burst Radio, there’s a constant stream of presenters. With over 75 live radio hosts, and even more recording podcasts, the station (during term time) is on air 24 hours a day, broadcasting its own schedule from 10am-10pm before joining the award-winning community station, BCfm, overnight. Burst itself is award-winning, receiving prizes from the Student Radio Awards and attracting the attention of national presenters including Jeremy Vine, Jo Whiley, Steve Lamacq, Scott Mills, Cerys Matthews and Phill Jupitus. This year, Burst turns 25. To celebrate its anniversary, we caught up with founder Paris Troy, who saw the birth of Burst as his way out of studying law. After graduating, Paris went on to host the Heart Bristol breakfast show before enjoying a long and illustrious career in local radio. Looking back, he fondly remembers the early days of Burst, which finally came to fruition in 1997 after a UWE radio station collaboration came to an end. “UWE had been running Fresh FM for some time,” he explains. “They were very developed. They brought Bristol uni students onboard to contribute but we were very much on the UWE coat-tails. The Bristol University Student Union wanted to start its own station, and it advertised for a meeting. I went along, thinking there’d be loads of people there. When I got there, I was literally the only person.
30 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE
|
MARCH 2022
|
No 208
I walked into an empty room. The General Secretary said: “Well, do you want to do it?” I said, “yeah…” And that was it. I got some friends involved, we managed to get a short-term licence, we enrolled for presenters, producers, runners and coffee makers and built up a team of almost 50 people.” Next came the name. Which, Paris says, was “remarkably hard”. Sitting in a pub, the team came up with Burst, standing for ‘Bristol University’s Radio Station’. “I worked on Burst for a couple of years, managing it and presenting on it,” says Paris. “When I left university, other people took the reins. It’s fantastic to know that it’s still going strong.”
Most prominently, comedians Marcus Brigstocke, Danny Robins and Dan Tetsell found their voices on Burst, hosting a breakfast show in the early 2000s
