Hans Knot's International Radio Report - October 2007 (1)
A good day to you all
out there in radio world. Just a little more than a month before a lot
of my readership is coming together at the annual
Radio Day in Amsterdam.
Almost time for a celebration as next year is not only the 30th year in
a row that the Radio Day will be organised by us, but also the year the
Freewave Media Magazine, which I’m the Editor in charge since 1978, is
30 years old. Another celebration next year is the fact that The
Foundation for Media Communication in Amsterdam will be 30 years young.
Main man there is Rob Olthof and FMC is the financial backer for the
Radio Days and many productions in books, audio and video through the
years. But of course next month we have to celebrate another ‘first’ as
in Amsterdam we have the Radio Day with for the first time the
presentation of the bi-annual Radio Awards. Sponsored by an anonymous
person, the Radio Awards will be awarded in a few categories and later
on in the report I come back to this subject. Also thanks for the
enormous amounts of e mails coming in with interesting material. Some of
them are in the report, others have to wait till the next issue or got a
more personal response.
First one this time is from the south of Holland and Michel van Hooff,
who found a wonderful memory to the
Communicator, written by
Peter Moore from the Caroline organisation:
www.radiocaroline.co.uk/communicator.asp
Autumn has come in the Netherlands and so it’s nice to get an email from
a warmer place. Here’s Richard Jackson: ‘Hello Hans, greetings from
sunny Bangkok, A few weeks ago I recorded a few hours for the SWE
Swinging Radio England internet stream which ran for the week during
August 14th. It was great fun. Now the stream has finished your readers
may be interested to find many programmes are available for download.
You will find an excellent production called 'Offshore Radio Remembered'
presented by Noel Edmunds plus many rare recordings of SRE, Radio
London, Radio Scotland and others including my favorite: A very good
quality recording of the Johnnie Walker show on Caroline.
http://www.nowthatsradio.com
Peter Moore from the Caroline
organisation is here again after a long break with news about the
station, the Ross Revenge
and some other nice and interesting things: ‘Hi,
Hans. It will have been noticed that aside from some special programming,
Radio Caroline did not do so much to commemorate the 40th anniversary of
the Marine Offences Act in August. There are various reasons for this
and the first as ever is money. We did have a very bold plan to move
Ross Revenge to a public place and then to hire some very high power AM
and cover the UK with some ‘pirate‘ broadcasts. For several months now,
Cliff Osbourne and I have been getting very involved with the ship,
working on her and seeking a public location where she can be used to
advantage. The crew of the ship have been brilliant, recently there were
eleven people working on her and parts of the boat are starting to look
brand new. However, with both the ship and the negotiations, everything
takes longer than you hope and it started to be clear that no way would
we have her out of Tilbury by Aug 14th.
In the same way, the person who was retained to raise sponsorship for
the above activities promised hundreds of thousands of pounds as being
easy to obtain, but in the end raised nothing at all. So, we took the
view that Caroline was hardly ever going to run out of anniversaries to
commemorate and that we may as well look to 2008. Consider, we can
always celebrate Easter and perhaps June, when Ronan fought an election
campaign in June 1970 or
Aug
14th next year or the 19th. We have two possible locations for the ship
and perhaps we will go to one and then the other, but of course we also
need to know that we can go back in to Tilbury sometimes for the heavy
and noisy work that would not be tolerated at a public location. All the
same, the other activities surrounding Aug 14th did help us in terms of
extra awareness, which translates in to more listeners, more sales and
more support.
I went to the Radio Academy event in London with Saskia Vischer, the
film producer who has a wish to make a feature film about Radio
Caroline. I had promised to take her there for her research and indeed
had it not been for this promise I doubt I would have attended, since
pirate reunions hold little fascination for me after so many years.
Saskia spent the whole afternoon furiously writing notes and said later
that she had learned a lot of useful information.
Peter Moore, Saskia Vischer and
Bob LeRoi (Photo Peter Moore collection)
I have said elsewhere that I was disappointed that none of the speakers
during the whole afternoon could bring themselves to make the simple
comment that Radio Caroline continued after August 14th and to the
present day. Some have told me that this was outside of what the event
was about and that in effect I should ‘get over it‘ which I guess I have,
but conversely since the things that were done in the seventies and
eighties etc. to keep the station on air were far more remarkable than
anything that happened during the period 1964-1967 it would have done no
harm to simply acknowledge this.
In the same way, the various TV coverage, played down our continued
existence, but I was able to get a few useful comments on air via
Regional BBC and Radio 4 and I must thank Johnnie Walker for cleverly
plugging us on Pirate BBC Essex. So, now that all the fuss is over we
are back to the usual slog. John Brocks, a pirate from way back, will
have rejoined us by the time you see this. Further, from some
discussions that started when Bob Lawrence organised a reunion of Mi
Amigo staff, some of our old Dutch colleagues are returning to present
programmes each Saturday afternoon.
Soon, after an absence of 27 years, we will be announcing ‘News From The
Radio Caroline Roadshow’. We have arranged to restart these events
around Norfolk, Suffolk and Lincolnshire and perhaps Essex. These areas
were Caroline ‘heartlands ‘ many years ago, but they are also the
heartland for Big L so perhaps we can snap a their heels a bit. I met
Ray Anderson at the Radio Academy day and he was charming as ever. He
said that Big L was losing money (but not as much as before) but that
everyone was in too deep to stop. I think I know how he feels. We are
making our own economies by finding a new way of getting our signal from
Kent to London. Ideally we should move our studio closer to London,
perhaps on or close to the ship, in the lucky event that we get her out
of prison at Tilbury. Good wishes to all, Peter Moore.’
Thanks a lot Peter for the informative e mail with news and keep them
coming. See you in Highgate later this year or in January with some
glasses to drink!
In the last issue I mentioned the tragic murder of one of the former
tender captains, Caroline had in the seventies.
Clive Warner e mailed the
next: ‘I'm very sad to hear of the death of
Kees Toetje. My last
memory of him is a happy one, he was handing me a large bundle of Dutch
Guilders as I left on the well-known fast British launch that got
intercepted near the UK coast. I remember him as a very no-nonsense guy,
I felt he was a person you could trust. Teun wrote: "At the funeral many
people appeared including former Mi Amigo crewmembers Jaap de Haan, Hans
Roos and myself’ (Class of 74) .
Teun Visser. "
- I can't recall Teun but I do remember working with Jaap, I believe.
There was a big chef called Jos, I can't recall the name of the first
chef. The image of the tender coming alongside, getting the hoses across,
the transfer of stores, people, water, diesel, albums, tapes, mail, and
so forth, it might as well be yesterday. Clive (‘Corell’) Warner.
Another sad news which came to me versus a couple of persons is the
death of one of my readers who did post regularly in the Hans Knot
International Report. On September 22nd
Keith Warren aka Jan Van
Jaeger died. Harry was one of the readers who brought the sad news:
‘Dear Hans, I am Harry Boothroyd aka
Doctor Boogie and I read
your report. It is with great sadness that I have to report that my good
friend Keith Warren aka Jan van Jeager passed away on Saturday 22nd
September at Arrowe Park Hospital after a short illness. He was the man
who was running Imagine 963 and wanted to do the Voice of Peace on
internet. I will miss his chats on the mobile and the CB. So sorry to be
the bearer of such bad news.’
Then there was time to get the dust from my DVD player to watch a brand
new DVD produced by ‘High Seas Media’
The Offshore Radio Years Volume
13 brings the story from Radio Caroline from the time of the Mi
Amigo sinking in March 1980 up till the hectic period the British
authorities thought there had to be made an end to the transmissions of
Caroline’s competitor Laser 558, way
back
in 1985. In audio, video and photographs, many very rare and never seen
before, the editor has made a wonderful 85 minutes long documentary in
which also Peter Chicago tells his memories to the time the Ross Revenge
was in Spain for rebuilding. This documentary is a must for those who
are still in love with the Lady Caroline. For more information and how
to get your own copy go to
www.offshoreechos.com
August 4th 2007 is for many ‘the day of the year’ as it
brought
back so many memories. Well for me it is to, so far in 2007. See what
the other three months can bring. On that day one of the many people I
spoke to was Carl Thomson,
former engineer on board the radio vessels Mi Amigo and Fredericia. Carl
showed me on that day some unique photo’s from his personal collection,
from which maybe 15 were published before. His daughter worked several
hours on scanning the photos for us and my webmaster Martin has put them
now online. So a big thank you Carl, also to your daughter, for sharing
this with us.
http://www.hansknot.com/carlthompson
Before we go to a longer e mail I would like to bring back some memories
to earlier Radio Days. Soon it will be the 29th year in a row and this
year probably bigger than ever before. But who remembers we started very
small with venues in Scheveningen and at the Amsterdam Speerstreet?
Here a photograph from the archives which shows the late
Hans Verbaan, chairman of
the Free Radio Campaign Holland talking to some visitors. I think the
photo has been taken 22 years ago.
Two nicknames to add to the long list of
nicknames, which can be
found on www.hansknot.com On the
Reunion in London’s Sugar Reef, early August, it was Tony Blackburn who
mentioned a lot. The next two were not on my list yet: Tony 'Bessie'
Blackburn and Kenny Everett 'Idy Feverett'
The lessons of pirate BBC Essex 2004 that still haven’t been learned was
the title of a long article written by Geoff Baldwin and was published
in the Hans Knot Radio Report in early August. In last issue we had
already published some of the response and all the others have been sent
directly to Geoff. He will come back to it, either in an answering
session or in a new article at the end of the year.
Eric Wiltsher wrote a
long response from which I want to take a few items for this issue:
To Geoff’s A) If you
want a proper offshore radio station on the air again and so on…
That may be an anorak view. It were in a position to ask non-radio
people a question I suspect the answer would be very different. The
question I would ask is, "Was there any difference between Radio
Caroline, Radio London and Radio Luxembourg?". I am very sure the answer
would be no - the general public viewed all three as being pirates and
many thought 208 was a ship. So with that in mind the public didn't see
any difference between those broadcasting from a ship and a station on
land.
On Geoff’s B) New computer/internet/satellite technology can't replace
old technology as far as offshore radio is concerned.
AM isn't going out of fashion it's gone out of fashion. Offshore radio
was not only pioneering in terms of broadcasting, it was pioneering the
adoption of the portable radio - yes it did. So pioneering in both
broadcast and platform is exactly what so many stations do today. I
agree that some don't do that for us oldies, and oh yes I am one of them
being 53 years old, but we are no longer the rebels we were - well a few
of us are. The new youngsters want something they can tune into on a
global basis. That to me suggests the new offshore is still that - it is
offshore from the country you live in (well in my case being land-locked
now over the border).
On Geoff’s C) If you are running an organisation called the BBC with
something like £3 billion of public money to spend (from licence fee
charges) and you have access to a huge record archive, numerous am
frequencies and you have the captive audience (like BBC Essex have), not
only can you make a great success of putting on an offshore radio
station in the modern day, you can, arguably, even make improvements on
the original "pirate" stations that operated.
To start with the BBC can't just swap frequencies around how they
did.Ofcom are involved just as they are with commercial radio. The level
of income the BBC has also needs to be balanced - we all love the
offshore days but ask yourself how many member of the public (you'll
need hundreds of thousands) actually care that much about offshore in
the way we do. There are more followers, I suspect, of various other
things that they are probably sitting in pubs somewhere asking 'why do
those radio anoraks get all our license fee money - the BBC should be
doing this..........' But why would they want to? As it goes the only
two most people remember, I mean the license fee payers, will be
Caroline or London.
On Geoff’s E) Offshore "pirate" radio isn't a broadcast phenomenon of
any BBC Radio Monopoly (and the fact that it wasn't meeting the music
tastes of young people) the pop music explosion, the arrival of the
Beatles on the pop scene and, of course, the loop-hole in the law (as it
was at that time) that allowed new radio stations to spring up just off
our coastline, seemingly, overnight from almost nowhere!
You are so right in the decades you mentioned - today it's different. I
recall the argument when MNO started broadcasting from HF transmitters
in the UK - there were screams of foul from a few. The fact is we found
a
way to solve a problem and it worked. The same applied when I did a show
under a callsign CMR which some anoraks thought was Caroline Music Radio
- Wrong! So yes the offshore guys go around problems - others have done
so since. You are so right that ‘meeting the music tastes of young
people’ is still so very important, equally meeting the music tastes of
young at heart people. Now stations can spring up for a fraction on the
cost of offshore - it's now up to those station to collectively push
receivers like the wireless sets now available. And before you screen
again - I tried a wi-fi radio under some power lines, it worked.
Couldn't get any reasonable AM there.
On Geoff’s G) PBBCE was the most lively radio station heard on the UK
airwaves, certainly for 20 years and, possibly for 40 years and the most
important lesson of all, therefore, from the 2004 broadcast seems to be
that there is a whole audience out there in radio listening land (they
may be young or they may be old) that just isn't being catered for by
the existing BBC and ILR radio stations, people who just don't listen to
the radio much anymore. People, perhaps, like me!
Huge respect for your final comment ‘like me’. That I do respect.
However, lively radio means exactly what? People that do show prep,
don't have liner cards, can have fun with the audience? All of these are
being done now. Lively radio also needs to include the music - I love
hearing "Strange Crew", "Days of Pearly Spencer", "Teenage Opera" every
now and again. I can even manage of odd Queen or Elvis track, but there
is so much more out there now - young people working there socks off to
get airplay,making recording in a garage etc etc. So in that way, sure
nothing has changed. However, I do wonder if the rebels of the sixties
have become so establishment that they don't want new things anymore -
my late father was often to say "If I ever get old.....". He was so
right. Please remember and enjoy the past - Offshore, the first heart
transplant, the Moon Landing, England Winning The World Cup, but can we
at least give the youth of today everything we were fighting for 40
years ago – the choice we craved.
And to Geoff’s ending of the article: ‘Going back, however, to the PBBCE
broadcast, the point I'm really trying to make is that, if the people in
their ivory tower at the BEEB were really in touch with their listeners,
they'd have picked up instantly on the success of this broadcast
Oh they did - they saw a great opportunity to build up to the 2007
anniversary and offer something excellent for the listeners and the
Corporation - again I say it was fantastic. Best Regards to all of Hans'
Readers, Eric the Shark in sunny Slovakia.’
Thanks Eric for your long response and Geoff has the complete version
already received.
The Radio Day Awards 2007
The Radio Day 2007 will be held on November 10th in Amsterdam
Information about the Program of this years Radio Day, which is the
29th in a row, can be found at:
http://www.offshore-radio.de/radioday |
Time for another memory and photograph: ‘Hello Hans, I enjoy reading
your Reports and it's a pleasure to contribute this time! I attach a
photograph showing a number of us from Radio Hertford (Hospital
Radio)
whilst on a trip in 1977 to visit Caroline. We set sail early one Sunday
morning from Brightlingsea, Essex and spent about 12 hours at sea,
visiting Caroline, talking to the crew who greeted us as well as
throwing the latest newspapers on board together with a few jingles we
had made for them. Later we visited some of the North Sea forts on our
way back and revisited the area again the year after. We were all free
radio fanatics at Radio Hertford and some of those on board were myself
(in glasses and white shirt at the stern), Chris Pike, Andrew Davies,
Steve Dean, Bill Issitt and Robbie Owen (veteran of Voice of Peace and
Heartbeat FM) along with John Quine and Jane Brockbank. Our skipper for
the day Mr Ord was a veteran of dozens of such trips. Regards to all.
Graham Jones (founder and former Stn Mgr Radio Hertford).
On a question by a reader what "Grease
the diesel" meant in the special Veronica program on Arrow,
August 31st, also Robbie Dale can’t give the answer, so who from the
Veronica team in the readership can tell more on this subject? All
answers to Hknot@home.nl
Oeds
Jan Koster wrote: You had a link in your report about the history of
Radio Jackie. I wonder if
you know this one too. It’s a site made by former Radio Jackie presenter
Jimi King:
http://jkwebdesign.net/radiojackie/
A very special music site is recommended by Bert Alting. Give some time
for this site:
http://docent.multiply.com/music/?&=&page_start=0
Going back to Robbie Dale he wrote: ‘Hans, These are some pictures taken
by Stella on 31 August 2007 at the
Radio Veronica Commemoration on
Arrow. You will need no introductions to the others in the frames.
We received a lot of emails on the day; I was pleasantly surprised by
the amount of audience reaction and the distance of listener to what was
after all a fun thing. Ad Bouman had told me he would set up
a
self operate desk for me. On the day in question it turned out to be the
some original technician operated desk gear with the inevitable crashes.
I enjoyed seeing them all again. Juul has changed very little over the
year. Yes they all looked so well. Greetings. Robbie
Juul Geleick, Ad Bouman and Robbie
Dale Photo Stella Robinson
Here’s one interesting thing I never heard of before sent to me by
Martin van der Ven: ‘During the 7th Erkrath Radioday on 8th September I
chatted with a friendly German guy called Klaus Barker, who told me
quite a surprising but reliably sounding story. Klaus who had worked for
German BFBS in the years gone by, had a stepfather from Britain working
for the Rhine Army in Germany. Klaus grew up bilingually and was
interested in anything that had to do with radio. During the sixties,
his stepfather had close connections to the Radio London organisation.
As a sixteen year old boy Klaus recorded three shows for Radio London to
be broadcast from the MV Galaxy. He used several London jingles and some
from his own collection. And some weeks later, he couldn't trust his
ears: These three programmes were indeed broadcast from the ship in the
evenings at about 10 p.m. Klaus who had a bit of a Cockney accent in the
mid sixties used the name ‘Nick
Barker’ for his Radio London shows. "And my voice was sounding a
bit older than I actually was at particular time..." So there we are: A
Big L deejay whom nobody knew until 2007. I wonder if anyone reading
Hans Knot's International Report remembers to have listened to the ‘Nick
Barker Show’ on Big L in the 1960s? By the way Klaus would of course be
more than happy if anyone might even have a recording of one of his
shows (which he unfortunately doesn't have after all these years). He
has also a website:
http://freemusic4all.weltensegler.net
Nick Barker 2007 Photo: Martin van
der Ven
More photos taken at the Erkrath
Radio Day in Germany are on
www.offshore-radio.de
Svenn Martinsen likes to have another plug for his ‘Radio Rose of Texas’
Wonderful site which tells you the most interesting story about the
stations on the MV Olga Patricia
aka Laissez Faire. The new reference is
www.northernstar.no/olgapatricia1322845.html
A big thanks to Graham
Brown from Ealing in London who sent me a copy of the in house
publication from the BBC called ‘Ariel’. In the week 32 edition of Ariel
there was a front page article called ‘Pirates
of the Caroline’. Wonderful to see those pirates as first article
in a BBC publication. So thank Graham and maybe you could send your
correct e mail address to me as the one on the letter was incomplete:
Hknot@home.nl
Next an email from a reader about Rusty Allen and more: ‘Dear Hans,
Thanks for a great web site. I edit a trade newspaper, ‘Railstaff’,
which goes to people working in the rail industry - drivers, guards,
signallers. I published the article below in our August edition. I was a
fan of Radio 270, and of course Caroline and London. Do you know what
happened to Rusty Allen?
Thanks again and best wishes, Andy.
Rusty Rides
Again
Disappointed by the White Paper Andy Milne takes heart from an unlikely
chapter in the history of rock and roll 14th August 1967 was a bad day
for railway historian, Vincent Allen. Tired out after nearly a month at
sea and battered by a force eight gale, he lost his job at midnight.
Amidst heavy seas he came ashore at Scarborough harbour early the
following morning. Vince had seen Beeching’s axe peak the year before –
closing 750 miles of railway. Now out of a job Vince Allen, 29, slipped
down to Scarborough station. The line from Whitby closed two years
before. At this rate, he pondered, there wouldn’t be much left for him
to photograph. Vince was no ordinary rail enthusiast. From a Dutch
lugger, Oceaan 7, anchored three miles off shore ex-US serviceman, Vince
‘Rusty’ Allen, broadcast rock and roll on
Radio 270. The ship was
much smaller than its sister pirates but local people loved it.
The
swingin’ sixties started on the rolling deeps of the north sea. Stations
like Radio 270 rolled up audiences numbering millions, broaching a whole
new market. The government failed to understand the excitement of the
pirates and closed them down on 14th August 1967. It couldn’t stop rock
and roll. Teenagers rioted in London, schoolboys rigged up illegal
transmitters on rooftops and rock stars like Lulu recorded tearful
goodbyes broadcast on the ships.
Radio 270 Oceaan 7 Photo Freewave
Archive
The establishment, rather rattled by all this, leaned on the BBC to
start up Radio One and local radio among the first - Radio Leicester.
Eventually a Conservative government legislated for independent radio.
Capital Radio started in 1973 with the wonderfully appropriate, ‘Bridge
Over Troubled Waters.’ Commercial radio is now a multi-million pound
industry. Every town sports radio stations. Hundreds eventually took to
the air where before the pirates there were three, that’s right three.
Vince Allen went on to work as a professional photographer deep in the
heart of Wessex, having helped create a whole new industry. Modern radio
may lack the magic of the pirates, in the same way modern rail has
little of the charisma of steam. The lesson is the pirates won in
the
end. Rock and roll beat its capacity restraints. The new rail industry –
also attracting millions to its market - is equally misunderstood by an
establishment similarly unnerved by our success. Detractors argue that
rail arithmetic can never stack up the way commercial radio does. Think
carbon trading, green imperatives and gridlock - our maths make more
sense than ever. High time they too were given a stable future on dry
land.
Vince Allen (Photo Mike Hayes
collection)
Rusty Allen may never have returned to the airwaves but the justice of
his cause prevailed. Rail staff who believe that right triumphs over
expediency should take heart. The establishment has yet to grasp the
excitement and energy of new railways. Britain needs Crossrail, High
Speed Two and Three, electrification, light rail and new freight lines.
Lets ride out the force eight White Paper as we did Beeching. The rail
industry will win whether under this government or the next. Misleading
headline? Just another example of RailStaff’s eternal optimism first
heard articulated on the ‘Rusty Allen Radio Programme’ forty years ago
on Radio 270. Where ever you are out there in the wide and wonderful,
this August, Vince, many thanks and best wishes. Andy’.
Once again another John Peel site to mention in the Hans Knot Radio
Report
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/johnpeel/artists/b/brainiac/
One of our readers with the name ‘Paul’ wrote: ‘lots of old
Radio London recordings
under mixed format Wonderful Radio London
http://pirateradionetwork.com/
Gary Lee is next: ‘Hi Hans. Whilst I am writing, I must thank you for
being a constant source of valuable information. I first got interested
in free radio back in 1970 as a child, (as my mother listened to RNI),
so missed out on much of the early stuff. The first big station for me,
was Radio Atlantis. I was absolutely gutted on the day they closed down
in 1974, I remember it vividly. I have been involved with free radio (many
landbased), since 1982. Since which, I threw the towel in 2001 and
decided to go legal. I currently programme for Radio Seagull 1602khz in
Holland and also River Gibbs FM, (an internet station). Between the two,
I feel very lucky to be on air 6 days out of 7 each week and try to
provide some alternative, or more interesting music, that I hope will
appeal to the slightly more challenged listener! Let's hope that's the
case anyway.
Peace & Best wishes to you and yours, Garry Lee.
www.starshipoverflow.com
www.myspace.com/starshipoverflow
From Gary over to PJ from Dorset: ‘Here is a picture of my great friend
Neon Nancy on board Weymouth Diving/Angling charter boat Als Spirit, I
hired the boat to produce some programmes for a new Internet radio
station I am involved with, Nancy - who was a presenter on the 2002
Radio Mi Amigo rsl from LV18 at Harwich Harbour kindly agreed to travel
from the Essex area to Weymouth in Dorset to help record four programmes
for the project, a great day we had by all floating on the harbour, the
skipper later gave us a tour around Weymouth Bay, it was quite amusing
as the boat made her way out Weymouth and towards the sea with my studio
on board.....pity I never had a transmitter!
Very Best wishes Hans, keep up the great work.
Best wishes to all your readers out there.
PJ
Special Music Radio.
And this came in to late for me, as I read it late in the evening: Hi
Hans, today Sunday September 16th at 2 till 4 in the afternoon
UGLI RAY TERET (Radio
Caroline North 1965) will be doing his first radio show from Manchester
Uk:
www.manchesterradioonline.com see also the blog
http://ugliray.blogspot.com/
which was sent in by Ray. Did you record it Ray and if so could you
upload it somewhere for the archive? Thanks in advance.
Next a former Mi Amigo deejay from Radio Mi Amigo deejay who’s still a
big star in Flandria: Ton
Schipper. He recently updated his internetsite, which you can
find at: http://www.schipper.be
Fons living in Limburg Holland wrote to me: Since the day the MV Mi
Amigo sunk 26 years ago I started with writing down a complete report
with facts of everything which has been told, interesting and also all
nonsense, by the deejays in their programs. You’ll get a good idea what
happened on the Mi Amigo between April 15th 1979 and March 290 1980. Go
and have a look,
Alfons’.
http://radiocaroline79.punt.nl/
Another plug goes to Sweden: The Radio Nord-forum I started in early
January has been a success. Have a look at :
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/radionord/
I don´t want to come empty-handed so I enclose two letters I bet you
have not seen before. Best Wishes, Göran Lindemark, Stockholm
Thanks a lot Göran and one of the letters I enclose in this report gave
me directly the thought ‘were was the time deejays personally answered
letters from listeners?’
Samantha on Radio Caroline did, as you can see in the letter.
I recently changed some e mails with
Guy Hamilton, former
Radio Essex deejay and one of the subjects he mentioned, without going
into detail, were ghosts, so I wrote him to tell me more about it: ‘Hi
Hans - The only ghost story I can personally vouch for is this one: I
was new on Radio Essex, so was doing the newcomer's overnight show on
Knock John Fort from about 3 till 6 a.m. I was in the on-air studio
about 3.30 when engineer Mike Brereton - still a close friend - rushed
into my studio without caution, looking very shaken, and asked me, "Have
you been out of here? When I told him no, he slammed the door and went
away. Afterwards I learnt what had happened. The other engineer, who
also tended to stay up all night, was Dick Dixon. Working with Mike in
the transmitter room, he'd suggested a cup of tea, so Mike had gone to
the mess, carried the electric kettle to the fresh water tank room,
filled the kettle and returned to the mess to plug it in - the only
place on the fort you could do this. He'd then returned to the tx room.
Later, Dick had suggested to Mike the kettle must have boiled by now (a
very slow process in those days) and so Mike had passed the studio once
more, gone to the mess to get the kettle and found it - gone! Looking in
the tank room, where
there
was no electric power provision, he found the kettle - boiling hot. It
was not possible for anyone else to have come up the iron staircase
without hearing them, and pretty unlikely that any of the DJs would have
wanted to get up at 3 a.m. anyway! They would not of course have known
that the kettle was boiling in any case, so the movement of the hot
kettle remains a mystery. Unless you believe in ghosts, of course...
Radio Essex QSL Card
Knock John Fort was a spooky place in the dead of night, and Dick Palmer
also told tales of spanners which moved by themselves in the generator
leg...
Of course, with Dick, one is never quite sure if he's kidding or not!
Regards, Guy Hamilton.’
Thanks
Guy indeed a nice memory and some will shake reading it others will have
a big smile on!
Radio Caroline has been given a free plug in a 120-page paperback
appealing to cat-lovers everywhere. And, with copies of the book
advertised on more than a dozen internet sites in English, Japanese and
other languages, The Lady could be picking up thousands of new listeners
at home and abroad. Former Daily Newspaper journalist Steve Anderson,
who lives near York, wrote “Growing up with Ginger: The Cat-lover’s Book
for Cat-haters”, after retiring through ill health. His
fully-illustrated, laugh-a-minute work, which has been praised by a
number of critics, is aimed at all age groups. Its 10 individual stories
describe how one feisty feline saved the spectacular 2005 “Live 8”
concert in London just as members of Pink Floyd were staging their
famous reunion. Other tales tell of the same cat’s mishaps on a North
Sea Ferry, his fears of the vet, his encounter with aliens and other
adventures that claimed several of his nine lives.
Ginger’s creator has also devoted a whole 15 pages to the role that his
cat played in demolishing a 90ft communications tower. Much of the story
involves amateur radio – Steve (callsign G0EAT; ex-G6VBU) has been
licensed for 25 years – although there is a special mention of Radio
Caroline and several other former offshore broadcasters.
“I couldn’t publish a book without referring to The Lady,” Steve told
the Hans Knot International Radio Report. “This station in particular
has played such an important part in my life since the 1960s and, indeed,
continues to do so. My wife, Helen, and I even named our daughter after
Caroline and, not surprisingly, our bungalow is called Mi Amigo. “I tell
readers of the book how Radio Caroline always bounced back after
suffering disaster after disaster at sea and how its ‘home’, the former
Grimsby trawler Ross Revenge, is now being preserved as a floating
museum dedicated to the history of offshore radio. And, of course, I
just had to mention that the station is still alive and well thanks to
its satellite and internet transmissions.” ‘Growing up with Ginger’,
which is being printed simultaneously in Britain and the United States
of America, has the ISBN 1846854180. It is priced at £6.00 GBP and
$12.00 US and can be ordered from bookstores worldwide or from Amazon,
Waterstones and a multitude of other online retailers.
Nobert Dengler is keeping an eye on what’s happening in
Wikepedia Encyclopedia on
Internet and updates regularly when a new item on our favourite subject
Offshore Radio is published. The list you can find on:
http://www.offshore-radio.de/wikipedia.htm
Mike Terry wrote me on Saturday September 22nd: ‘Radio London was
mentioned on Sounds of the Sixties on BBC Radio 2 this morning at about
8:25 BST - there was a request for a record called Portobello Road as
played on offshore Radio London. I can't recall the station ever being
mentioned before. Better still send in your requests of favourite Radio
London plugged hits (or good misses) and get Radio London mentioned
again.’
Hmmmm another cartoon sent in, this time by Marc Walker from Ipswich. He
wrote me he doesn’t recall from which newspaper and when it was
published. So to see it must have been from RNI days way back in 1970.
Anyone else who has a cartoon in his collection please don’t hesitate to
send a scan to me for further publications:
Hknot@home.nl
Well that´s all for now and keep your memories coming. Till next time,
all the best. Hans Knot.
Offshore Radio Programme Names - Programmanamen Zeezenders 1958-1990
Read Hans Knot's former report