Hospital radio show feature ideas - help needed please! :)

[ComingUpTrumps]

I've just started volunteering for a hospital radio station, and am receiving training for it at the moment.

It's been great so far, and the aim is to get me set up with my own show around mid-September hopefully.

The person training me has asked me to think of a few ideas for features in my show. I've really been thinking about this over the past few days, but haven't come up with any ideas so far.

AIBU to ask you for your help with thinking of feature ideas please?

Thanks :)

So far I've thought of a couple of possible titles for the French music feature.

1. Paris Calling (rubbish pun on London Calling by the Clash)
2. Something for the oui-kend (Geddit?! Thought of it as the radio show will go out on a Saturday I know it's a shockingly bad pun, I'll get me coat )

confuuuused thanks, that sounds like a great idea! :) We don't have a phone line unfortunately :( just Twitter and email.

It sounds silly but in other countries some children's hospital have a radio or fb show that does bingo. The kids call in and can win prizes. Could you do something like a quiz that people call in and answer? Get some tiny prizes donated from local fb groups

Ok I completely forgot I had replied to this a couple of weeks ag!
What a shame re phones

I feel like everyone likes to read or hear about embarrassing moments. There used to be lots inside the teeny magazines and they have a strip of them in one of the older lady mags so they work well across everyone, maybe you could get people to send in theirs and read out a couple?

I love a good general knowledge quiz on the radio. My local one has the tombola of doom, they spin the tombola to choose a category. You then have to answer as many questions in 30 seconds.

How about an Agony aunt section. You could make up some silly ones...

I used to do hospital radio too, it was great fun. If you can get co-hosts to come in and chat with you that makes for more entertaining radio! We did guess the year, read out top tips from magazines, talked about (very light) current events.

Very hard to not turn into Partridge though but who says that's a bad thing?!

If there are a lot of elderly patients chat about your life, nothing too personal but general stuff. I do a radio show and last week I played music that either had gold or yellow in the title as we had been away for a weekend and there was a gold panning championship in the village.

Listeners enjoy the bits of chat and people stuck in hospital who are lonely will enjoy hearing what you have been doing.
I also use The BBC On This Day site for ideas of what happened on the day in history, that gives me loads of ideas. I have to say that my DW chooses the music but we do discuss the theme and I make up the chat as I go along

I've just remembered when I was last an inpatient the radio station did a piece on the local town as was. They spoke to lots of older people who talked about the shops and large businesses, plus old schools and their memories of the town in the forties and fifties. It was interesting to me as a younger person who didn't know the town very well but the elderly patients on my ward loved it and it sparked conversations between them.

Listen on iPlayer to my local BBC DJ, Jim Hawkins on BBC Radio Shropshire. He does really good features, and is a wonderful broadcaster and human being.