The Pirate King of Frinton-on-Sea
IWAS about three-quarters up the mast of the ship when I suddenly stopped and began to think, “What the hell am I doing?” I’d only climbed up because the boss of Radio Caroline, Ronan O’Rahilly, promised he’d give me £25 if I could get up there and remove a bit of cable that was preventing the station broadcasting.
That really was quite a lot of money in the mid-1960s, so up I went. It really was pretty hairy and I recall the ship lurching about below me in the North Sea off the Essex coast. What rankled me was that I never did get the £25!
I grew up on the south coast and, by the time I was 18, I was singing at the Bournemouth Pavilion with a band. It was a fantastic experience but I was struggling to find a way into the music industry to take the next step.
So I was intrigued to see an advert in the New Musical Express that stated that Radio Caroline were looking for disc jockeys. It was an incredibly quick process.
I went and auditioned at the pirate station’s offices in Chesterfield Gardens, London. Despite my obvious lack of experience, within a week, on July 25, 1964, I found myself on a ship anchored three miles off the coast of Frinton-on-Sea.
My father was a doctor in Bournemouth and my mum was a housewife, raising me and my sister. She had been a nurse and my parents met working in the same hospital.
They were delighted about my new career and Dad rigged up a giant aerial in the garden so he could tune into Radio Caroline. He had never wanted me to become a doctor, he felt is was too difficult, so he was very encouraging.
The fact the audition went smoothly was a surprise, especially considering I couldn’t even hear Radio Caroline from where I was living on the south coast. You had to be listening from in the right area to pick up the pirate stations.
There would often be lines of cars parked up along Frinton seafront so that drivers could tune into the broadcasts. By the time I was on board, we could actually see all the vehicle lights from where we were broadcasting.
I don’t think the people of Frinton-on-Sea were especially impressed. This was a town that didn’t even have a pub at the time and it didn’t seem like they were keen on the Swinging Sixties coming anywhere near them.
We would get to the ship by passing through immigration and sailing out from Harwich on a small boat. We were “supposed” to be going to the Netherlands but, of course, we were actually heading to the pirate ship which was moored just outside British territorial waters. The little boat that took us to Radio Caroline had a Panamanian flag on it, I recall.
Sailing under a “flag of convenience” meant that it was impossible for any maritime police to stop us without causing a diplomatic incident!
Conditions on the ships weren’t nearly as bad as a lot of people think. We were all very
young men – I was only 21 at the time – and we were more than happy to sleep in bunk beds and eat whatever was on offer in the canteen. But, naming no names, there were a couple of DJs who had to leave after a few weeks as they got so seasick.
I never had that problem, thankfully, though I do remember the ship lurching about so much sometimes that I had to put threepenny bits on the arm of the record player so it wouldn’t jump about and scratch the vinyl. Rag Doll by The Four Seasons was the first song I played. But the show back then was very similar to what I still do now: music, chat and some jokes.
THE PIRATE radio stations began because there were huge restrictions on what was known as “needle time” at the BBC. This meant that you could only play a tiny number of records – the rest had to be live bands.
On the pirate ships we could, of course, play as many records as we liked. I’ve always loved Motown so The Supremes and Marvin Gaye were two of my favourites. Closer to home, I also loved the likes of Tom Jones and Petula Clark.
They all got played a lot.
But sometimes the elements would interfere. One evening, all the other DJs went back to the mainland as they were told the transmitters were potentially not working properly and they felt there was no need to be on board until it was fixed.
I stayed on board and ended up presenting for seven hours solid, never actually being sure if anything I was doing was being broadcast.
I ended up falling asleep in front of the microphone and, when I woke up, I spoke into the microphone: “You’re listening to Radio Bull **** ”. It was just my luck to find out later that this was one of the moments my show was being picked up back on land.
I got quite a few letters after that saying that we should rename the station with that title permanently!
Radio Caroline was the earliest, and probably the most famous of the pirate stations. But it wasn’t the best one – at least I don’t think it was. I moved from Radio Caroline to another pirate station, Radio London – which everybody called “Big L” during my time – and there was a huge difference in quality.
The ship was larger and more comfortable, the station was run in a much more professional way and it had a more powerful transmitter so potential listeners were much more likely to be able to hear it.
It was on Big L that I first met Kenny Everett, who I still think is one of the most talented disc jockeys of all time. Though he seemed to believe for a long time I didn’t like him, which just wasn’t the case. It was just one of those things that happens sometimes.
We did become firm friends when we were both at Radio 1 later on. He was a very odd guy, but wonderful. I remember inviting him to dinner at my house in Berkshire and he asked me what time he should get there for.
I said about 7.30pm but he didn’t turn up until midnight.
He told me that he’d just had a bit of an adventure as he’d taken the wrong turn-off and ended up driving to Wales by accident.
After three years at sea, I joined Radio 1 when it launched in 1967. What really pleased me was that the BBC didn’t try to tell me and the other new DJs – most of whom had been recruited from the pirate ships – how to do things on a pop radio station. In fact, it was really quite the opposite.
They had more of an attitude of “show us how it’s done” which was refreshing. They were very hands-off and, to be honest, there wasn’t really any difference between my early Radio 1 shows and what I had been playing on Big L.
WHEN THE Richard Curtis film The Boat That Rocked came out, I watched it – but it was nothing like the reality of the pirate stations. I really didn’t like it all that much. I might be 81 now but I do wish there were still some pirate ships around, as I’d love to have one more go at broadcasting from the sea.
It’s incredible that today marks the 60th anniversary of the launch of Radio Caroline. And I still don’t believe pirate radio ships did any harm to anyone.
The argument from the Government was that these pirate stations were jamming up the airwaves, but there was almost nothing else being broadcast at the time anyway.
We also saved a few lives by alerting the RNLI if we saw other vessels in trouble.
I ended up interviewing Tony Benn, who led government opposition to the pirate stations, a few years after their era had ended.
I challenged him, asking: “There never was any real problem with the pirate stations, was there?”
He didn’t reply but gave me one of the biggest winks I’ve ever seen.