Johnny Walker meets the Pirates

[Junk Box Nick]

BBC Radio 2 tonight 22.00

'Admiral' Robbie Dale will be there along with Keith Skues, Rosko, Roger Day, Tom Edwards, Paul Burnett and more of the usual piratical suspects!

Shame that they can only make it an hour programme - it really should have gone to midnight. I remember listening 50 years ago tonight on my Philips Popmaster to Caroline South as it defied the Marine Offences act.

Curiously, Johnnie Walker's Sounds of the 70s repeat is on at midnight. I wonder if at that moment he ever considered that exactly fifty years on he would be heard on the BBC's most listened to station...

[Andrew2]

Thanks for that, I must listen. I too was a teenage pirate listener, they absolutely fascinated me. When I woke up and put my radio on one morning in March 1968 and neither of the Caroline ships was on I knew something was wrong. And here is Johnny Walker, 50 years older and still broadcasting!

[Sideband]

It's a great pity that Kenny Everett couldn't be there as well. I wonder if he would still have been at the BBC?

[Junk Box Nick]

I wasn't yet a teenager - I wasn't even at senior school. I loved music, got fascinated with the pirates and the music I heard nowhere else and my subsequent fascination with radio had already gained me a Philips Electronic Engineer kit which amused me for hours at a time. The other kids thought I was bonkers. Fifty years on I realise they were probably right.

[Radio Wrangler]

Bonkers?

Most probably your interest in electronics made a bigger contribution to your life than their interest in football (or whatever) made to theirs.

One person's bonkers is another person's sanity...

David

[Half a Mullard]

They also were live on Radio Essex today. I think it started around 12 and went on until 4. it featured Johnnie Walker and there was also a tribute to Dave Cash - his widow was there and they used a lifeboat to scatter his ashes. They also linked up with Manx Radio and Caroline too. I imagine it will be on the I-player. The broadcast was coming from an old lightship.

[Junk Box Nick]

Originally Posted by Sideband

It's a great pity that Kenny Everett couldn't be there as well. I wonder if he would still have been at the BBC?

And Dave Cash.

Plus a few other absent friends: Ed Stewart and Simon Dee to name but two.

Not this era but Mike Ross of RNI has recently passed on.

Kenny was always in and out of trouble at the BBC. Attitudes change. I think he would have been very at home at the Corporation if he had been around today.

[camtechman]

In the 60's it was great fun to drive down to the coast from North London, in my mate's Ford 105E and park up on the front and, as requested by the DJ, flash the car's full beam headlights out to sea.

I'm now a few weeks away from being 70 and I still get a buzz thinking about it.

I still listen to "Cardboard Shoes" on Sunday night on 3 Counties Radio in Milton Keynes and his show is a great nostalgia fest ! (Also goes out on other Anglia region BBC local radio stations)

[stevehertz]

Lovely story.

[Hybrid tellies]

I remember listening to Radio Caroline North when I was very young. One touch of the round tuning dial and you found yourself listening to the BBC Third programme. I can only assume that Radio Caroline North was on 199m. When we moved to west Cornwall the only available stations back in 1966 was the Light programme on 1500m, The Home Service West region on 285m and Luxembourg on 208m on a good night.
West Cornwall was out of reach of all the pirate stations unless you had a very elaborate receiver and aerial system.

[Restoration73]

You were unlucky. Night time Caroline South and London were clearly heard on my long
wire and old KB. In daytime Caroline North was my choice, although I could hear Manx
Radio and an RTE around 1277 I think. I remember when RNI started on 1611, as Lands
End Radio was on 1650, AM then of course.

['LIVEWIRE?']

Manx Radio was then on 1295kHz by day, but on, IIRC 1594 (an International common frequency) by night, RTE's main Transmitter was on 567kHz, but there were relays on 1250kHz. I didn't know that RNI ever used 1611, which would have been outside the tuning range of many MW Radios. Presumably Lands End Radio was a coastal (maritme) station, not a broadcast one. The BBc Third Programme's relay stations were on 1546kHz, Simon, with the main station at Daventry being on 647kHz (as it then was). After the frequency changes in 1979, this became 648kHz, used until recent years by the World Service, now, perhaps ironically, allocated to, and used by, Radio Caroline in Suffolk.

[Station X]

RNI started out on 1611 kHz (186 metres), but quickly moved, I don't remember where to, as it caused interference to Maritime Radio Services. This got them a lot of publicity.

[dave walsh]

I wonder if it was Caroline North that I could hear in Bury during the 60's. I've still got a recording of Like a Rolling Stone and Positively 4th Street rolling in [like a wave] with a very long delay after the fade! I knew that this chap called John Peel had an interesting program but there was no chance of getting that so far north South East Today did a short TV feature on the "Pirates" shown here at the coast yesterday.

I recall my generation as being somewhat more astute and really involved than today's. There were mock elections in schools in 64 for example and then later, during the "hippy" period experiments with modulated light transmitters [a design appeared in Practical Wireless using a parabolic dish]. There was a plan to connect up various bits of communal London.

Tony Benn was seen as a very progressive and approachable politician by many young people as most of the others were fairly dull and unimaginative [sounds familiar?]. When as a Minister though, in response to the off shore broadcasts and maybe alternative systems he brought in a Telecommunications Bill that monopolised everything he lost a lot of credibility. There was a clip of him -rather uncomfortably, defending his actions to uphold the law on the program while someone who'd been involved said "we could have gone to prison for playing music-can you believe it?".

Dave W
Bexhill on Sea
"Narrow Casting" by wire

[emeritus]

Was it Caroline that offered listeners a "Kiss in the Car" licence? I didn't have a car myself in the pirate era, but did see a couple of their licence discs on parked cars; same size as a car tax disc, complete with expiry date.

[Graham G3ZVT]

Originally Posted by dave walsh

during the "hippy" period experiments with modulated light transmitters [a design appeared in Practical Wireless using a parabolic dish]. There was a plan to connect up various bits of communal London.

That will be a reference to Radio Love? (see the 6th image on this page)

http://www.modulatedlight.org/Modula...Amateur79.html

I remember the contemporaneous publicity, but I always assumed it was never more than a concept.

I was experimenting in a modest way about the same time, with torch bulbs and ORP12s

Graham.
G3ZVT

[telstar]

I also enjoyed the programme. It is a great shame that it was only an hour long and that it could have been extended to midnight to mark the time when the original stations were closed down in 1967! There should be more emphasis on this important subject.
I agree with the d.j that stated that he could never understand about the law that was made to ban the stations. If you were able to explain to the youth of today what extremes people had to go to change the way that music was featured on the airwaves, they would never really comprehend it. It was such a difficult time and especially when pop music was in its infancy. There was nothing wrong with pre-Beatles music either, the thing that was wrong was the way that the BBC tried to promote it.
The BBC also caused interference from their World Service transmitters on Orford Ness, Suffolk in the 1970's, to the ship-shore communications systems. The authorities had the cheek to blame it on the "pirates", but it was not of the "pirate" stations making!

[Andrew2]

Very enjoyable, but it was obvious that the 'chats' with his surviving fellow pirates were pre-recorded and then just slotted into the proceedings. It sounded a bit rushed and heavily cropped. It would have been much better if they could have been in the studio together and had a good old natter with Johnny holding it all together and spinning the discs. At least we got to hear some of the less-commonly told tales.
One other small gripe - the sound quality of the old clips was in many cases abysmal, with some of them sounding as if they had been downloaded from the 'net. I've got identical snippets that sound a lot better!