Sunday Brunch Went WILD!

Clive Hilton and Andy Brown took SUSY Sunday Brunch on the road for an August Bank Holiday fun broadcast from Tilgate Zoo — mixing wildlife, conservation, community fun… and a fair amount of chaos.

At the heart of the day was a serious issue: illegal wildlife trade. Supporting Tilgate Zoo’s Wild Weekend fundraiser for TRAFFIC, we explored an industry driven by demand for trafficked animals, skins and body parts — and heard how those smuggling routes could lead all the way back to the UK.

With our mobile studio set up between the meerkats and guinea pigs, we discovered how Tilgate Zoo used real artefacts seized by HM Customs to make the scale and cruelty of wildlife trafficking impossible to ignore.

But it was Bank Holiday Sunday — so things didn’t stay serious for long!

There was face painting, games, a bake sale and kids’ activities, plus a brilliant animal-sound challenge where we turned the tables on the keepers to see whether they could recognise the calls of animals living at their own zoo — JUMP to 15:15 to hear.

Then things got competitive. There was a timed obstacle course, a slime bucket challenge, compelling evidence that small children were considerably faster than radio presenters… and allegations that Andy cheated.

We also met the team behind Turtle Tally, a citizen-science project tracking pet turtles that had been released or escaped into UK waterways. Those cute little hatchlings can grow surprisingly large and live for decades — highlighting the wider problem of impulse-buying animals that later become difficult to care for or rehome.

We rounded things off by getting up close with beekeeping, before looking ahead to more Bank Holiday live music with Ash Miles and CRASH Music at The King’s Head, Horley.

Wildlife, conservation, community, live radio and two presenters let loose in a zoo. What could possibly have gone wrong? ️