Bill's Big Bag Of Onions

11/12/2025

Ypres, in Belgium, was one of the major battlefields of the Western Front, repeatedly fought over for its strategic location. By 1918, Ypres was a shattered landscape of rubble, shell holes, and broken foundations. 300, 000 men gave their lives in and around this one town of just 20,000, a place abo...

11/12/2025

'The cost to both sides in human casualties was immense at around 400,000 - that's the number of inhabitants of modern-day Coventry, or Leeds or Middlesboro'

Ypres, in Belgium, was one of the major battlefields of the Western Front, repeatedly fought over for its strategic location. By 1918, Ypres was a shattered landscape of rubble, shell holes, and broken foundations. 300, 000 men gave their lives in and around this one town of just 20,000, a place abo...

24/11/2025

Stanway FM's response:
"we dont want someone whose better days were doing a show after taking mescalin"

Well, the gloves are off now. Just be ready Stanway FM. This is radio-war…

08/11/2025

Then silence. Pure silence. Radio silence. Then a month later, I ran into him at Dog and Gusset, here in Wivenhoe, pint in hand, grinning like a stoned Cheshire cat.

Another set of memories gone like fat squawking Canadian Geese accidentally flying into a giant offshore wind turbine…

25/10/2025

imagine my even greater surprise when she told me she had been having an affair with my brother Colin...

Rory was digging a flower bed like he was attacking one of his rather chewy Rabbit burgers – and mother had just finished servicing her sit-on mower. With Kate Lawrance

17/09/2025

Egg-cellent radio...

Lovely stories, mixed with undeservedly unfamiliar music to make soundscapes that entertain, beguile and absorb. With Adrian Coen and Yvonne Pini - and the great Onionistas, our writers. Slacker with the Bag: Bill Lawrance

17/09/2025

styling it all the way from there to here...

Jazz penguins practicing philosophy…

15/09/2025

Konnie Huq was there – she had driven to Noel Edmond's farm on East Mersea in her own London Routemaster bus...

At Surrey Quays a man with a trumpet played just one note, as if to warn us of something unspeakable. I eventually arrived in Peckham, where I had intended to buy a lightbulb. The shop was closed

30/08/2025

I was rummaging through all the drawers in her bedroom, and I found some juggling balls, a curly red fright wig, white gloves and a pair of enormous floppy shoes...

You don’t get Glamour these days, with your TikToks and your podcasts. Everyone’s got a podcast now—plumbers, dentists, even the bloke who does Basil Brush.

14/08/2025

Artie investigates cranial flatlining...

Box 39’ US correspondent Artie Funkhausen charts the waning reason of a nation drifting into empty-headed complacency and confusion.. This is the final radio show made for Colne Radio by Adrian Coen (1964-2025) with Artie Funkhausen

01/08/2025

The Pope went viral — wearing some serious ‘drip’...

There’s more TRUTH than there has ever been before, thanks to the ever-growing access to the ever-growing technology, to globalisation and to the invention by Alexander Graham Bell of the hoverboard. In loving memory, this show is dedicated to Adrian Coen.

29/07/2025

Beyond the melody lies meaning—this show uncovers hidden layers in familiar songs with wit, wonder, and wild insight.

Thematic streams of thought and music, from the interludes found on Box 39, a sibling radio show that ought to know better… and probably does!