O'Connell Ousts Pete & Geoff

By london_ken Last edited 226 months ago
O'Connell Ousts Pete & Geoff
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Christian O'Connell's XFM breakfast show has seen off the competition at Virgin Radio. At this stage, we'd normally insult Pete & Geoff, Virgin's current breakfast DJs, but we never listen to them so they might be geniuses for all we know (but we doubt it).

O'Connell isn't content with trouncing the Virgin DJs for entertainment value and causing their 'reshuffle' though. No, according to the BBC, he's decided he's going to occupy their territory by moving to Virgin to take over their Breakfast Show. He'll go there in early 2006, which should give XFM listeners a little time to get used to the idea, then forget he's moving at all, then get a shock when they tune in next year.

Whilst the XFM Breakfast Show is notable for its banter rather than its music, as we opined in our post celebrating O'Connell's Sony Awards, wild monkeys will be required to make us retune our radios to Virgin, O'C or no O'C.

Of course there is a ready-made replacement for O'Connell in the form of Shaun Keaveney, who's done an excellent job filling in for O'Connell when required. We can't think of anyone else on the XFM roster who could do a better job than Keaveney, but O'Connell will be a hard act to follow. The Breakfast Show blog has already had some comments about the news, none of which were positive at the time of writing this post. A commenter called 'Rob', who may or may not be one of the whip-cracking Londonist editors said:

I don't think that I could endure Virgin even if Chris joined Christian. But I might be forced to if that talentless git JLC takes over at breakfast

Just so long as Ian Camfield doesn't return to the Breakfast Show, we'll be prepared to give the new presenter a decent chance.

Last Updated 18 May 2005