Contrary to popular belief, Dave Callan’s Radio Gaga doesn’t have much to do with the certain Lady that springs to mind. Instead, it’s an exploration of the mid-dawn radio culture on one of Australia’s best-loved radio stations, drawn from Callan’s own experiences hosting The Graveyard Shift on Triple J in 2005.

Radio Gaga is a collection of stories and audio clips of some of the strangest, most hilarious and most indecipherable calls received between the hours of 1 and 6am on a Sunday. For over 250 Graveyard Shifts, Callan played host but also confidante and counsellor to many, as they divulged their Saturday night antics on national radio, which perhaps wasn’t always such a great idea.

Highly entertaining, funny and appropriately bizarre, Radio Gaga captures a world of radio that has to be heard to be believed. The calls chosen by Callan are some of his most memorable, and his continuing astonishment about many of them is both funny and understandable (particularly one call in which the listener spoke coherently and convincingly of his abduction by aliens and subsequent conversion to homosexuality).

Callan breaks up the calls with several clever segments, including an experiment in what Triple J would sound like if it censored music as commercial radio censored Cee-Lo Green’s F*** You, and one segment titled ‘Real Or Fake’, where Lady Gaga makes her sole appearance for the night, and we learn that Grandmaster Flash may not actually be a real Grandmaster.

The calls are funny, but these breaks were appreciated by the audience, for there’s only so much stoner hilarity one can take before it all gets a bit dull. However, there’s no denying that Radio Gaga was a show begging to be performed. And for those who might have missed Callan’s Graveyard Shift, it’s an entertaining insight into the seedy underbelly of early morning radio.