In celebration of 50 years of community radio, Paul Davies, the host of Radio Adelaide’s The Big Little Breakfast Show, talks about how he ended up behind the mic in the early morning and why he loves it so much.

Paul Davies has a rule on his breakfast show: don’t play Queen. But it was hearing Queen on just about every station he’d flip through in his car that led to his discovery of community radio.

“I love Queen but I don’t need to hear them every 20 minutes of every day so I developed this rule about changing the station whenever they played a Queen track and if you do that, you will find a community radio station sooner or later,” Paul says.

With a gift for banter born out of his life in a pub in Wigan, near Manchester, he ended up in Adelaide for love and long held a deep desire to be a breakfast radio presenter. The gift of an entrée into the world of community radio came via his first wife and Life FM, the Christian station.

The path wasn’t easy.

He started doing bitsy shows at Life FM on the weekends while working in the sales team and sent in a submission for the breakfast slot which fell flat with the program director.

“I don’t think our audience is ready for an English voice,” she told him.

Davies didn’t resent it. He was grateful for the truth. When the program director was replaced he offered to buy the new guy lunch and said he wanted to do a proper show.

“I’m sorry Paul. I don’t like what you do,” came the reply.

“What don’t you like about what I do?” Paul asked.

“I don’t know,” said the man.

Paul kept pushing.

Taking a cue from the theory of motivation, he wrote: I want to present an Adelaide breakfast show. What he didn’t write was he wanted to be paid a load of money for presenting an Adelaide breakfast show, the reins of which he now holds for nothing.

“I just wrote I want an Adelaide breakfast show because my kids live in Adelaide. I don’t want to go anywhere else,” he says.

Stuck trying to figure out how he was going to do it, he ended up on the board of the South Australian Community Broadcasters Association.

“I became aware of Radio Adelaide and I realised it would be a better home for me but they didn’t want to acknowledge my work at Life FM,” Paul says.

He did the Radio Adelaide course and straight away knew it was a better home, starting with The Big Little Weekend Breakfast Show.

He laughs and explains how it started at seven on a Saturday and he pushed it into both days, because the guy on Sunday left.

He was able to dry run some of the things he does these days, like naming the show, and Elephants Can’t Jump, the crazy trivia section that happens in two editions at around 7:50 and 8:30.

“I’m not capable of being serious for very long and honestly that’s a thing that’s weird for anyone who’s not English,” Paul says.

He points to the resonance he experienced when he read Bill Bryson’s Notes From A Small Island, and was struck by Bryson’s insight into the English character.

“He said: ‘It’s a fact about the English that whenever you get two of them together at any time, before long they will be laughing.’ The English are almost cursed with seeking out the funny in stuff and running a bar was an amazing place to find funny,” Paul says.

“The reason I do this is because I love it. I’d rather be doing this than sleeping at five o’clock in the morning and if there are secrets to radio one of the biggest is you’re only talking to one person. It’s not that family listening to Arthur Miller like it was in the 40s.”

Which brings us to the music, and the only advice Davies received when he took over the show was don’t play heavy metal, which you know, if he’s told that, he’s gonna play it.

“Sometimes it comes out but we have a heavy metal show here on Radio Adelaide so I don’t need to build that niche. But I do like Motorhead occasionally. I do like a Def Leppard track sometimes,” he says.

This listener has noted a recent penchant for obscure ABBA songs.

“Oh christ,” says Davies. ‘That ABBA song was just horrendous this morning.”

When it finished playing Davies remarked: “It’s got a riff like a Christmas Carol.”

Still he doesn’t think about the music a huge amount, he just plays what he likes.

“The expectation from the listener is that I know a lot about music. I don’t. The Big Little Breakfast Show is not a music show. It plays a lot of music but it’s not about the music it’s about the listener. That’s what it’s for. It’s the soundtrack for your morning. And yeah there’s some chat because it’s not Spotify. The thing is, this is the same but different every time,” he says.

It starts proper after the 7am BBC News when Davies plays Turn Up Your Radio by Aussie 70s rockers The Master’s Apprentices. Davies phases in his desk mic. “I nearly timed that wrong,” he says. “I was making a coffee.” He phases the riffs back in and then is back at it again.

“The show can only get better from here,” he laughs. “I’m nearly ready. Just got to turn my phone off. Anyone who knows me, please don’t ring me…”

And then he’s into it.

This morning it’s Electric Light Orchestra’s Don’t Bring Me Down leading the charge out of the gate, and you’d be hard-pressed to wipe the smile off Pual’s face or stop him talking. Davies likes an analogy drawn from Shrek.

“When Shrek talks about Donkey he says ‘It’s not a miracle that he talks. It’d be a miracle if you could shut him up,'” says Paul.

Included in the schedule are two editions of Elephants Can’t Jump, the compile of half-a-dozen or so weird facts that he admits to stealing from English radio presenter Steve Wright, whose death at 69 from a ruptured ulcer in February hit Davies hard. He ran the afternoon show on BBC Radio 2 for 20 years and had a feature called Factoids. After hearing Mark & Lard on BBC Radio copy it as well with Rats Can’t Vomit, Davies named his version Elephants Can’t Jump and instantly made it more comic.

Elephants Can’t Jump is where you learn that NASA has a project to put robot bees on Mars. Davies like the rude’ish ones like “moths wiggle their genitals to confuse bat sonar”. And recalls one about the huge number of manscaping injuries that result in visits to emergency departments in US hospitals.

“They’re all like that,” he says. “But there’s the thing, instantly forgettable as well.”

The banter ramps up the closer we get to The Bottom of The Internet, when Davies will insist you make sure the kids are not within earshot at around 8:50 to bring us a segment where you really cannot go any lower. But it is always funny.

In one recently there was the story of a guy’s wife who thought he dropped his phone in the toilet while he was watching porn. The reality was that he was trying to record the audio of a fart amplified by the bowl.

“Why do people do stuff like that?” Paul laughs. He laughs again and then he’s catapulted into the home straight with the legendary ska tune Enjoy Yourself by Prince Buster, itself originally released in 1963. Age or style doesn’t matter to Davies. “That’s just a great track,” he says.

And there are guests that join him in the studio.

His live schedule shifted from Monday to Thursday to Tuesday to Friday in part to give guests the chance to come in and “spruik their show” before the weekend. Most approach him. ‘

“During the Fringe, it goes crazy,” Paul says.

He doesn’t do phones.

“I like to look into people’s eyes. I like to have the immediacy of a live, in person chat, and I like us to get to know a bit about them. Then we talk about their show. I believe that this is also better for the artist,” he explains.

He also likes his guests to join in alternating on Elephants Can’t Jump.

“It’s better radio to have another voice, and it’s easy for the guest because it’s mostly reading and I think it’s relaxing for them,” he says.

His favorite interview? Tristram Shackerley-Bennett of The Inflatable Church, who famously staged theatrical weddings in Light Square during Fringe 2024, and was the subject of a vandal attack.

“We just laughed for the best part of an hour! Always enthusiasm, that’s the key. Tristram brought great stories, and that’s gold for me,” he says.

A more recent guest, sports physiotherapy lecturer Lewis Ingram, provided commentary around the Olympics and was found when Davies put a call out to a personnel firm.

Lewis is a former junior national champion in canoe sprint with two Youth Olympics under his belt. In his 20s and early 30s he ran half-marathons, and is currently researching flexibility training.

“I like Lewis’ slant on sport because he has a true understanding of what athletes go through,” says Davies. “He’s less an interviewee in my mind, and more of a co-host, and to be fair, I know very little about sport, and I’d been looking for someone for a while.”

Davies just loves what he does and loves even more to share it with people. We’re lucky to have him as a voice that rises above the bland wilderness of commercial FM radio with intentions that are not typical of morning hosts. ‘

“Go and Carpe your Diem!” he exclaims.

“My expectation of the listener is that I am not that important to them. I don’t expect to be important. I hope to be on in the background for a few minutes of a morning and that’s all,” he says.

“People are busy in the morning. You’re there. Occasionally you might cut through. Just occasionally.”