URN

Wednesday was the long-awaited turn of the Presidential candidates. Alex ‘Corcky’ Corck-Adelman and Ngok Tran were apprehensive, but soon got into the swing of things after the first few ‘Candidates Questions’. Corcky’s show and tell was his Law Society football shirt from his first year when he first joined the team. Ngok’s was also a t shirt, from the Demo day in London which she helped to organise.

The president’s challenge was to ‘construct a cabinet’. The first part of this was to think up a cabinet ‘dream team’, filling the positions of AU, Welfare, Dem Comms, Finance and Activites. Corcky chose David Beckham for AU, ... for Welfare, Mark Zuckerberg for both Dem Comms and Finance, and ... for activities. Ngok went for Zidan, Mother Theresa, Chris Moyles, Bill Gates and Tom Cruise.

The second part of the challenge involved the candidates building a cabinet out of cardboard to keep their dream ‘cabinet’ in. Valiant efforts were made all round, with Ngok’s ending up as a bookcase style cabinet, and Corcky’s more of a filing cabinet. You can see the photos below.

For Exec Factor, the candidates went for a more simplistic approach, deciding to keep to only three words...

Second show of the week, on Tuesday, we welcomed the FSO candidates down to the URN House of Fun, for some hard-hitting journalistic interviewing by Ollie and Liam again. Phil Geller, Rob Hudson and Sam LePard endured The Third Degree amicably.

On to Show and Tell now, Sam brought in a collection of passport photos for us to see, however these were no ordinary pictures, there were a number of just random people that he had never even met, interspersed with a selection of his nearest and dearest. Rob told us all about his collection of antique weaponry that he had been collection for years. Finally, Phil told us all about a box of Quality Street that he received during his Freshers year, and was still yet to open to this day, however, for his Show and Tell he went for a personalised pillow that he received from working on a New Theatre show back in year one.

The highlight of the show had to be the wittily entitled SU-permarket Sweep, because looking after the finance of the SU Shop is a skill every good FSO must have. We sent all the candidates upto the SU shop with £1.50 and asked them to get eight items that were: red, sticky, long, made of paper, hot, cold, they like, they dislike. We then called them back down to the studio after a bit of Paolo Nutini and you can hear below how each person did.

Monday saw the turn of the DemComms candidates to be comically interrogated by Ollie and Liam. Danny Barry and Sammy Bucknall were a little apprehensive at first but soon got used to the vibe of the show after being asked questions such as ‘Legolas or Gimli-Duplo?’ and ‘Tiramisu or Sue from the SU?’.

Danny’s show and tell was well received in the URN office, a packet of ‘Fox’s Chunkie Extremely Chocolatey Cookies’ , the only things he loves more than Week One. Sammy brought in his bow and arrow, archery being one of the first societies he joined at Freshers Fair in his first year.
We wanted to cover both aspects of the position; democracy and communications, so we decided two games were required. Democracy, it turns out, is a hard subject to base a game on, so we resorted to Democra-sea-lion; a game of skill and precision. We introduced the URN Democra-sea-lion and the two candidates were each given four rings to throw over her head. It was a close call with Danny winning by one ring, 2-1.

For the very first edition of The Elections Show 2011 we welcomed the candidates for Equal Opps and Welfare. Rosie Tressler, Sophie Hindley and Elorn Haligah joined us in the studio, whilst Matt Byrne pre-recorded some parts of the show as sadly he couldn’t make it due to emergency dentistry.

The candidates first task was to reveal what they’d brought along for Show and Tell. Rosie tried to woo presenters Ollie and Liam by bringing them each a present of a bright pink Women’s Network pen. Matt brought along his t-shirt for ‘Any-Body Month’, a scheme he was participating in later in the month. Sophie chose a bottle of Lucozade – the one thing getting her through her campaign. Elorm’s Show and Tell was rather more bizarre, an orange highlighter that he’d won in a competition set by a lecturer who had promised an ‘amazing prize’...

Next up the candidates were introduced to The Exec Factor. A selection of instruments were revealed for them to utilise in creating a jingle persuading people to vote for Welfare and Equal Opportunities. Rosie foolishly mentioned at this point that she could play the guitar, leaving Sophie to decide between the tambourine or a harmonica....